How to Have Work Life Balance (without self-sabotage)

---

All videos in the Work Life Balance for Solopreneurs series:

• Top 3 Tips about Work Life Balance as a Small Business Owner
• How to Find Time to Work Toward Your Goals as a Freelancer
• How to Have Work Life Balance — Without Self Sabotage (that's this one!)
• Work Life Balance Mindset When You Are a Small Business Owner

---

How to Have Work Life Balance WITHOUT Self Sabotage...

Let's talk about three ways to prioritize your personal life with the same care and dedication and high quality attention to detail that you give your clients and customers and your business… 

1) Stop glamourizing overwork. 

You are so far beyond toxic productivity. You have been in business for a while and you are a successful business owner. So why are you stuck in toxic productivity? Why are you letting that hold you back? 

When you succumb to hustle culture, it just holds you back from achieving more success. Toxic hustle culture is just a way to play small. You need to learn how to unpack your own workaholic tendencies — and really this is just about your ego being at play. 

Your ego is simply telling you that it's a good thing to be super busy all the time and stressed out and exhausted and burned out, because that indicates that you are productive… But you're not actually being productive, are you? You're just being busy. 

There is a difference between productive and busy. So, stop glamourizing overwork. Instead, approach your work through a neutral lens. Neutrality is the key here. We don't want to over-glamourize either end of the spectrum, overwork or under work. 

Instead, it's really about being honest with what is the work that actually needs to happen, and be neutral about it. The glamourizing of overwork and under work is simply getting in your way. 

2) Start with your personal life first, then your business. 

By this I mean that you really want to think about: What are your personal life needs? What is your lifestyle requiring from you or asking from you? What do you want from your personal life, now and into the future? What are your personal values, your personal goals? What are your personal relationship needs?

When you know the answers to all of those questions, then you can start looking at your business and ensuring that your business always connects back to your personal life. 

It's really important here when you are looking at your personal values and goals and all those types of things that you are looking at them through YOUR lens, not through someone else's lens. It's not about what other people want for your personal life. It's about what you want for your personal life. 

It's the same with your business: rather than trying to structure your business because that's what other people are telling you to do it in a certain particular way, instead, you really want to focus on what is a good fit for your business. 

When you are starting with your personal life first for work life balance, this can be very practical, in the sense of putting together a schedule where you put in all of your personal appointments first, and then you look at, “What does my business schedule realistically need to look like in order to accommodate for all of my personal life things? Is there anything that I need to change with how I run my business so that it creates that space for my personal life to shine?” 

The more that your personal life is lifted up, the more that it's going to ensure that you have more bandwidth and capacity so that your professional life also gets uplifted. 

3) Create check-in points so that you can start to see when you are self sabotaging your work life balance. 

What ways have you traditionally sabotaged yourself from enjoying healthy work life balance? What are the thoughts that often come up for you and what are the specific actions that you often take? 

Take a step back here and analyze what has always happened in the past when you have self sabotaged, especially when it comes to your work life balance. Then you can start to look at, “What exactly was I doing? And also what came before that? What were the thoughts and beliefs that were running through my head? What actions did I take?” 

Those are your signs and symptoms of self sabotage. When you know your own signs and symptoms of self sabotage, then you can start to break that cycle. You can create new thought patterns for yourself and even set up specific actions so that you can prevent the self sabotage in its tracks. 

For example, if you have a tendency of overworking, then that could be a really good opportunity for you to reconnect with what matters most to have your values front and centre. Or, if you lean more towards your personal life, then reconnect with what you love about the work to do and the fun of it to the joy of it. 

In either case, you are applying what feels awesome and just really great and resonates really deeply within you. You are applying that to the thing that isn't quite as appealing in this particular moment. 

Get yourself into that headspace of sitting with those feelings: What are the things that you love about your work or about your personal life? What are the things that just lift you up, that light you up? 

Sit with those feelings: How do those particular aspects of your personal life or your professional life make you feel? Sit with that warmth of those feelings, and then hold on to those feelings. Carry those feelings with you as you shift into the task that might not be as much of a draw for you in this moment. Carry those feelings with you as you shift from your personal life to your professional life or vice versa. 

This also means that in every aspect, you are living your values and infusing your work with genuine pleasure. We do all of this and more in my Productivity Powerhouse e-course! If any of this is resonating with you, then you are going to love love, love Productivity Powerhouse.