Work has been very demanding on me lately. It's not because I'm a workaholic. It's not because I've been mismanaging my time. It is because we have a huge project due on Wednesday, and we have to finish… even if it takes ten hours a day, six days a week.
Usually I spend my time feeling desperately guilty when my work is so demanding. That it's my fault. That I have to apologize to the world. I also expect the same amount of time and effort in every other area of my life.
This is a physical and mental impossibility. There is only so much time in a day. There are only so many hours I can be awake. There is only so much mental fortitude I can apply before I am exhausted.
So, balance is about giving yourself some grace. Understanding that to give time and effort in one area, you must take time and effort from another. Balance is about honoring what you're taking from and making sure you give back when you can. This week, I am required to be of service to my employer. When the project is done, I must give back to my family and myself.
Boundaries are important because they protect me from the guilt. I cannot change what is right now. I don't need to beat myself up about it. I need to honor myself and maintain my conscious contact with my HP to make sure that I am accepting the things I cannot change, having the courage to change the things I can…and not the other way around.
(P.S.) When I originally wrote this the sentence "I must give back to myself and my family" and then I changed it to be "my family and myself." Is that co-dependent?
That sentence sounds pretty CoDA-ish to me...
ReplyDeleteHey You! That was what I figured :)
ReplyDeleteyou've got balance perfectly figured. hard to do, though, isn't it...
ReplyDeleteRemember too that as long as we have balance in the "bigger picture" we should be okay. Meaning, sometimes the individual days themselves get crazy, however, if we're maintaining an overall balance, then we're usually ok.
ReplyDelete