You Can’t Have It All, But You Can Be Happy
Key Insights:
In this blog, I share the real ups and downs of juggling work, family, friends, exercise, and more
I will share tips and insights from my research on work-life balance, workaholism, and stress management
Today, I turned 40. It seems like a good day to start a blog. As a management professor, my expertise is in work-life balance and employee well-being. I know many relevant theories and research articles that tell us what work-life balance can look like on paper. On top of that, I find that my experience as a mom of a toddler and a preteen, and a stepmom to a teen, helps me understand what balance looks like in reality.
If you ask me, the reality of work-life balance is that you can’t have it all. It is difficult, if not impossible, to be a perfect parent, a star employee, keep in touch with friends, and stay fit. Some people pull it off. Good for them. This blog is likely not for those superstars. This blog is for people like me, who find it quite challenging to keep all the balls in the air while still experiencing some happiness during this juggling act. My reality is that I make trade-offs and put things in perspective.
Today, I really wanted to go for a run. It’s my birthday after all, so I should be able to do something I truly enjoy. It meant, however, that my 8-year-old son had to stay in after-school care until 5 pm. He did not complain. I still felt a ping of guilt. In the morning, my sister called me from South Africa to wish me a happy birthday. Her calls are consistently amazing and make me happy. They also consistently occur during my workday due to the time difference. If I call with her for an hour, it means I don’t get to prep for a work meeting. The trade-offs for those juggling roles are real.
People who only know parts of me might think that I have it all. My students are aware that I am a mom, and they probably picture a happy family of 5 as I usually speak very positively of my family. They might not realize that I teach some classes on 5 hours of sleep because the youngest was teething. My friends might think that I am very successful at work because I have a stable job and, at times, publish academic articles. They do not know that I receive rejection letters for my research papers 75% of the time.
Social media does not really help you see life as it really is, because most people only post about what is going well in their lives. In this blog, I’d like to do things a bit differently. I am planning to post real-life experiences about juggling work and family, including both failures and successes. Or just plain routine-like days. There are many of those days in most people’s lives. Yet, we never talk about them or how we get through them. I plan to post tips, research insights, and dos and don’ts based on my own trials and errors of being a happy juggler.
Hopefully, you find these tips helpful, and with a little luck, entertaining. I hope to see you here later.
– Lieke