By Toronto Life & Mindset Alignment Coach Stephanie J. Marshall

The Benefits of Work-Life Balance Coaching 

Are you feeling overwhelmed? Juggling between work and personal life can be exhausting, and it can be challenging to find the balance that leads to happiness and success. That’s where work-life balance coaching comes in. By helping you navigate the demands of your career and personal life and aligning it with who you want to be and how you want to live, work-life balance coaching can unlock the key to that feeling of inner peace.

From reducing stress and burnout to fostering stronger relationships and improving overall well-being, work-life balance coaching provides the guidance and support needed to create a more satisfying and rewarding life. Work-life balance is about finding a healthy integration of work and personal life, where both aspects are given the time, attention, and energy they deserve.

Signs of an unhealthy work-life balance

Recognizing the signs of an unhealthy work-life balance is the first step towards making positive changes. Some common signs include constant fatigue, feeling overwhelmed, neglecting self-care, strained relationships, difficulty concentrating, and a lack of enjoyment in activities outside of work. If you find yourself constantly stressed, unable to disconnect from work, or feeling like you never have enough time for yourself or your loved ones, it may be time to seek help from a work-life balance coach.

Work-Life Balance and the Perfectionist Fantasy

Many people come to coaching with the assumption that work-life balance is primarily about control and it looks like this:

• Work will be all work, and your life will be yours, no more procrastinating
• You’re going to set boundaries and enforce them like a MOFO
• Healthy sleep, diet, and exercise are the new normal
• You, your family, and your colleagues will execute the new rules and systems with military precision

But what I just described was PERFECTION, it doesn’t work because “perfect” is not real life.

Willpower Doesn’t Work

You might think that if you summon all of your willpower every day and do everything right, you will finally win work-life balance.

But you’re exhausting yourself chasing a fictionalized ideal and you think that once you achieve it you will finally feel like everything is under control.

The good news is that you can decide to feel that way now. Real life is messy and unpredictable, and realistically the balance of work and life will ebb and flow based on what’s going on. You can do everything right and sometimes still wish that you had more time for one or the other.

Work-Life Balance Coaching Basics

Work-life balance coaching involves self-reflection, goal-setting, and the development of practical strategies to manage time, set boundaries, and prioritize activities. In Kickstartology we use the Alignment Framework (also called Alignment Coaching) to do this effectively.

People who have work-life balance have this in common:

• Big picture clarity: They know who they want to be, how they want to show up, and what kind of life they are creating (the details may be vague but they know their values and the direction)
• Acceptance of what they can’t control right now, but attention to what they can (both short term and long term)
• The ability to say “no” in the right situations without guilt or overwhelm taking over
• The extra time and energy that comes from a well-managed mind that doesn’t get distracted by spinning thoughts, mind drama, and self-judgement

This is living in alignment. You get to enjoy your life now as it unfolds. Alignment makes it easier to have more fun, but it also makes it easier to make decisions and stick to them and to prioritize the right habits. Expect more ease and more certainty in the day-to-day.

The simplest and the fastest way to get to Alignment is with the Kickstartology Alignment Framework.

Work-Life Balance as a Goal 

It’s boring. And that’s the problem with it

Would you be thrilled if your tombstone read “She was very accomplished at work-life balance”? Probably not.

Work-life balance sounds depressing: It implies that your options are limited, but you’re going to figure out how to make it sucks less. Ugh.

But the problem is, it’s very hard to put effort into changing anything for an outcome that just “sucks less”.

Work-life balance focuses on scheduling, boundaries, and efficiency but what we really want is more. We want to stop feeling tired, rushed, and spread too thin We want to:

• Time to rest, recharge and have healthy habits
• To feel energized and engaged with life and work
• Connection with the people we care about
• To show up as our best

The solution is to aim for Alignment. 

Alignment means making the pieces of your life work together, but it goes deeper. It takes the work-life balance stuff and also integrates your values, long-term goals and desires.

Alignment allows you to show up the way you want in all of the roles in your life. What kind of a life do you want to live? Ideally, what would that look like five or ten years from now?  You may not know the details, but you will know enough to get started.

This will feel irrelevant if you are stuck in the weeds struggling with how to make your to-do list manageable, but factoring in the big picture is more likely to help you come up with new solutions right now (#science).

Alignment means living for today as well as working towards the future that you want to create. And when you are considering your current circumstances and connecting with your desired future, it makes it figuring out the stuff that’s getting in your way much more compelling.

It might seem like a lot, but the thing is, the components of the Alignment Framework are simple and they all work together. Once you start putting it all together, change is inevitable. You will find solutions you didn’t think were available to you, and you will have a deeper understanding of your own motivations. You will put your brain to work and figure out what to prioritize, when to say no (without feeling guilty or worrying about letting people down), and how to manage your mind when things go off track.

The results are so much better than having “She was very accomplished at work-life balance” on your tombstone, you will start having even more fun. You will better enjoy what’s already great in your life, be exploring what’s possible and looking forward to the things that you plan on improving.

The sooner you do this work, the sooner things are going to start feeling easier. Don’t wait until “things calm down”.