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Balancing work and family life is one of the most common sources of stress for working adults. In this productivity-driven society that we are living in, more and more people are finding it hard to adequately fulfill their roles both at home and at the workplace.

More often than not, people are unable to find a point of balance between their careers and their families and one is given more priority than the other. This behavior has been associated with a number of dysfunctional outcomes-strained familial relationships, inefficiency at work, and poor physical and mental health.

Hence, it is very important that we are able to work on balancing work and family life. This may seem like a daunting task, but it is possible if you take the time and care to make it a priority. Here are some steps to help you get started.

1. Make Balance a Priority

Achieving work life balance, whether you work full time or part time, is a long and often difficult process. If you do not make the conscious decision to achieve balance, it is likely that you will fail along the way. I have learned through my experience that it is very important to make an effort to provide yourself the opportunity for balance.

For instance, you need to find a job that is challenging but not overwhelming; also, carefully think about how big of a family you can responsibly raise at the moment. By making wise decisions on the most important matters in your life, attaining balance won't be a difficult thing.

If you are already settled into a career and have a growing family, you can still make small changes that will help you achieve balance. This could include requesting more flexible work hours, reorganizing the responsibilities you share at home, or bringing in trusted friends and family to help pick up the slack.

2. Talk to Your Family

I used to think that I was the only one who could solve my work versus family life conundrum. However, over time I realized that there is no way for me to get things right if I only rely on my perspective. Since then, I've made it a point to have discussions with my family regarding their perceptions, opinions, and even objections to my work and how much I'm focusing on it.

These discussions opened my eyes to a lot of things and made me more aware of the issues that I needed to improve. I also made sure that the entire family understood my obligations and responsibilities at work. Thus, there was also more understanding on their part.

Once you spend time conversing and allow your family to have a say in how you're tackling the balance between work and family in your life, you'll find they have a lot of helpful feedback. Also, when they feel heard, they will react better when you have to stay late at work one evening or have to leave the dinner table early to finish a big project. Make sure the communication flows constantly.

3. Allow Others to Help You

There are times when balance is more difficult to achieve. Maybe you're vying for a promotion at work, or you have a huge project for a client due before the weekend. Once you've communicated those problems to your family, it may be time to bring in some help.

Most people have friends or family that are willing to help out. Make sure these are people you trust to handle tasks like brining your children to sports practices or picking them up from school. In most instances, they'll be happy to pick up the slack for a week or two.

If you're not sure how to start asking for help, check out this article.

4. Establish Boundaries Between Work and Family

It is important that we create boundaries between work and family. This means determining which actions are acceptable and unacceptable. Boundaries hold the line to protect your work from the distraction of family, as well as to protect your family from the obligations at work. With clear boundaries, it is easier for you to tell when your action is not in favor of one aspect of your life.

For example, you and your family may set a rule that no one is allowed to use a cell phone at the table. This will help your older children, but it will also help you avoid taking work calls during dinner. You may also decide not to check emails while on vacation.

This can be difficult, but it may be a necessary step to help your family feel like a priority and draw a firm line between work and home. The TED talk below may help you find inspiration to achieve the work-life balance you're seeking.

5. Accept That Imbalance Is Sometimes Unavoidable

During my struggle to attain balance between work and family, I realized that there will always be times that I will have to let work or family take priority. It would be impossible to perfectly balance everything in your life at all times.

For example, when a family member is sick, you may need to skip a work event. Or when an important deadline must be met, you might need to miss dinner at home and stay working late at the office.

The most important thing is that you don't allow imbalance to become the norm. The scale may tip for a few days or weeks, so the key is to bring it as close to the center as possible once you have the space to do so.

Final Thoughts

Learning how to balance work and family life isn't easy. There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Every person and family must find specific solutions to their issues depending on their own preferences and needs.

Essentially, a balance between work and family occurs when a person is able to sufficiently meet family commitments and adequately perform responsibilities at work. There is nothing wrong with working hard to get ahead, but don't forget the worth of the things and people that really matter most.

More Tips on Work-Life Balance

Featured photo credit: Andre Jackson via unsplash.com

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The Secrets to Balancing Work and Family Life

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Balancing work and family life is one of the most common sources of stress for working adults. In this productivity-driven society that we are living in, more and more people are finding it hard to adequately fulfill their roles both at home and at the workplace.

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- Prioritize balance between family obligations and personal work or goals
- Understand that imbalance is normal and sometimes is unavoidable
- Communicate with family members to help them clearly understand your goals and your obligations in the family, that way everyone is on the same page
- Set clear boundaries between personal goals and family. Family and work should not interfere with each other

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7 Steps to Achieving a Healthy Balance When You Work at Home

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Working at home doesn't automatically bring work-life balance. In fact it can bring the opposite. Here's how to achieve work-at-home balance.

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- Create and follow ground rules: drawing clear boundaries -- don't let work interfere with family and vice versa
- Embrace change: understand that change happens and just deal with it
- Organize: so that you're not stressed and so you can improve time-management
- Work the right amount: balance between work and family

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The family: a traditional source for love, advice, kind words, emotional support and apple pie. Also, quite often, a real pain in the ass when it comes to living the life you want. Let's face it: you probably owe your family a lot, but at the same time, there are at least one or two big ways you feel it's sabotaging your dreams.

I know in my family, I constantly felt pressure, especially from my dad, to live a certain way. The more I found out what I really wanted, the more I discovered it was not that way, and the pressure grew. Until at one point, I decided to move out of the family house completely, set some firm boundaries in the relationship with my parents and live exactly how I wanted.

My dad is still not very happy with how I spend my time, what I eat, the fact I have my own business instead of a regular job. Despite that, we now get along pretty well, and at the same time I don't succumb to family pressure. This is how I do it and what I also teach others.

Most of the time, close family members like your parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters have positive intentions in trying to push you in a certain direction. They mean well, they do it out of love. But, this doesn't mean they also do the right thing for you. I think there are 2 major problems with how families often guide their children.

1. They try to keep them in the safe zone. They don't want them to do anything risky or unconventional. They encourage them to choose the career filed in which you can find the biggest salaries, and you can get a job even if you're half retarded, ignoring what the children really want, can and like to do.

2. They spread out-of-date wisdom. Because our society has changed so much in the last decade, it's very probable that older family members like parents in their 50's or 60's have understandings of things which no longer applies. Yet they continue to believe in them firmly, and to guide their children using these understandings.

The results you get is a lot of family pressure directing you in the wrong direction. And this doesn't apply just to teenagers, who are still kind of immature and financially dependent on their parents. Most mature, experienced and financially independent adults I know also get this kind of pressure from their families, and they often give in to it.

Family pressure can be a powerful, hard to ignore factor for most people, applied with incredible skills. The good news is there is way to effectively deal with family pressure and live the life you want. Here are the main things which can help you:

Put some distance between you and the rest. If you're living in the same house with your parents or grandparents (which in today's world is common even for married people) and you see them every day, it's hard not to succumb to their pressure. Make moving out at priority, save the money it takes and do it.

Realize you don't need to please your family. There is this false belief that because you family is, well... your family, you must get along perfectly with every family member. You don't. It's a myth. There's nothing wrong with upsetting dad once in a while or not living up to mom's dream for you to be a doctor.

Learn to communicate assertively. Assertive communication is one the most valuable people skills you can have. It allows you to express yourself in a clear, direct way, but from a position of respect for others, and it's a great way to deal with all the criticizing and negative comments you can get from family members which are not happy with your actions.

But these points are really only a frame to set for rising above family pressure. The most important thing is action. This is YOUR life, not your parents' life. And while they're not to be completely ignored, it's only naturally to live the way YOU want.

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How to Rise Above Family Pressure and Live the Life You Want

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The family: a traditional source for love, advice, kind words, emotional support and apple pie. Also, quite often, a real pain in the ass when it comes to living the life you want.

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- Put distance between you and your family: move out
- You are not obligated to please your family: live your own life and your own dreams
- Communicate assertively: Talk clearly and make it clear what you want, but also respect who you're talking to

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Everyone has a family from which they come from. And though we may exist as individuals, everyone can agree that our family has an enormous influence upon who we are as people. Perhaps we desire to emulate members of our family; or alternatively, we desire to become completely different from them. Either way, families serve as a template we draw from when we seek to define who we are and who will become.

Since we draw upon our families in defining ourselves, they, inevitably, also impact our mental health. This impact can be both positive and negative. Positively, family can be a source of emotional support and a place to retreat to when the world happens to be cruel. We may call our family members to be a shoulder to lean on or just a listening voice that we may not find in our social circles.

On the other hand, family dynamics can also have negative impacts. Criticism and judgement from our family members may wound more deeply than the criticism we receive from others who are more distant from us. Particularly, if we love our family dearly, the criticism and judgement impacts us on a deeper level. Even if it is criticism intended to better us, the delivery is a significant factor that affects how we will take what we have been told. Sometimes, we are able to recover and find the good in what was told to us. But other times, what was said can be a lingering scar, one that does not heal.

As someone who comes from a Muslim family, I have seen how our faith binds us to obey our parents and honor our families. Of course, there is ample reason for this beyond the doctrines of Islam - retaining harmony within the family serves as a way to bolster closeness. There are positive mental health effects from the security that we gain when we are able to turn to our families in times of difficulty.

At the same time, as individuals, we each set our own goals that we strive to reach. While some of these goals may align with what our family wants, other goals may not. The latter, which may cause us to deviate from being who our families want us to become, is where negative mental health impacts are felt. For example, when we seek a career that deviates from the path our families want us to follow, judgement and criticism may arrive. We may feel stressed and ashamed that we are not living up to the people our families want us to be.

When we do not desire to become someone our families want us to be, we then feel a dilemma of identity. Identity is a complicated thing, one that is more of an ever-evolving process than a defined image. Our relationships with others and with ourselves are an important part of our identity. But if our family strives to define our identity in an unwanted way, then, our relationship with ourselves dissolves. We do not have a relationship with ourselves anymore, as our families have decided to define who we are. We begin to see ourselves from a distance, a place of judgement rather than understanding.

Family can then be part of a limiting world, one that strives to restrict us. Sometimes, to become our own people, we have to break free from the definitions placed on us. Maybe then, and only then, we will find out who we really are and want to be. Though we may be imperfect, at least we will be authentically so.

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How Family Pressures Affect Mental Health - Nafs

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Everyone has a family from which they come from. And though we may exist as individuals, everyone can agree that our family has an enormous influence upon who we are as people. Perhaps we desire to emulate members of our family; or alternatively, we desire to become completely different from them.

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- Pressures can be positive and negative
- Positive pressures: emotional support and mentor voice
- Negative pressures: criticism, judgment, and pressuring us to do things against what we want
- Sometimes what we want to do and what our family wants us to do differ, causing in negative pressures and are harmful to our mental health