Balance or integration? I believe in work-life symbiosis

It’s easy to get caught in daily or weekly patterns and cycles that don’t serve us well. You have a tough day at work – it’s busy, more to get done than you have hours in the day, maybe pressure from your boss, or perhaps a challenge with your team. You come home (or these days, you already are home) and the feeling of stress, pressure and busyness spills into your evening or weekend.

This leaves us with less patience and energy for friends, family or hobbies. We are less likely to be fully present, more likely to binge watch Netflix than go for the run that was planned, and we might even have trouble sleeping. This impacts our work and builds resentment, and so the cycle continues.

Work-Life Symbiosis is all about connecting with what’s deeply important to you and creating positive symbiotic connections between different parts of life and work to get more out of each because of the other. Dependent and mutually beneficial. It’s a model for happiness and balance, so you can lead a happier, healthier life, and do your best job, in whatever it is you choose to do.

The question to ask yourself is does the sum total of your choices about life, work, family, friends, leisure overall make you happy? Healthy? Fulfilled? Content? Inspired? Energised? Does it make you regularly feel those good things?

Or does it too often feel like you are sprinting to stay on a relentless treadmill of life that just keeps going at the same pace whether it’s too fast for you or not?

And if that is how you feel, the key question is what is stopping you making different choices?

The model of Work-Life Symbiosis has four parts:

1) Be True to yourself (the cornerstone of the model)

2) Be (absolutely) Fabulous

3) Ruthlessly Prioritise

4) Have Crystal Clear Boundaries

Each part of the model is important in it’s own right, but the real power is in the connections.

Of course, we can’t always have a wonderful, great time, and deadlines, difficult relationships, and various pressures are very real. But we can know what’s really important to us – what will really matter in the end - and align our life behind it.

So, why not take a step back, and consider how symbiotic your work and life is?

For more about Work-Life Symbiosis, including tips, tools, and real life examples, check out my impactful, fun and relatable book.