How To Reconcile Family And Professional Life?
There is so much to do in a day that sometimes we overlook some important aspects. Often the balance between family and work is not easy, especially when you consider the list of pending applications that we carry with us. How to reconcile family life and work?
This is a question that seems complicated. Sometimes the working hours are longer than they should be, the vacation periods are too short, or more than one job is needed to have enough money.
The world of work asks us, the family asks us… we find ourselves immersed in this no man’s land without knowing what to do to combine family and professional life. Here we explain how to achieve this.
Reconciling family and professional life in the present
According to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE), to reconcile means “to make compatible”. In this case, it will be about making work and family compatible. How to get there ?
For starters, it’s important to make the most of the moment. It’s about not getting stuck in the past thinking about things, as that causes us to feel overwhelmed by harboring negative thoughts like “What if I had done that…?” , “Why didn’t I…?”, Etc.
And of course, it’s also about not anchoring yourself to expectations, that is, avoiding thinking about everything that can happen next. Otherwise, we can create an ideal scene for anxiety and frustration to manifest. Better yet, we don’t really know what’s going to happen, so why bother?
To live in the present moment is to live “here and now”, it is to take advantage of what is happening every moment, second by second. It means enjoying our children if we are with them, our partner or the family walk, but also work obligations in our working hours.
Thinking about work while playing with our children represents the past or the future, but not the present. It is stealing time in our family life for work matters that we can barely resolve at that time. Thus, living in the present moment helps us reconcile family life and work.
Learn to delegate
Sometimes we think we are all-powerful and carry everything on our shoulders. Without realizing it, we impose our own condemnation and over time we feel overwhelmed because we cannot face it all. The problem is, the frustration grows and sometimes we explode emotionally.
We can prevent this from happening. To do this, we must learn to delegate, to assign tasks to others to make our lives easier. Now, it is not a question of offloading all the responsibilities, but of not taking more than what we can take on.
At first this process may seem complex, but once started it seems easier. These tips can be helpful:
- Adjust responsibilities.
- Ask for help if you feel it is necessary.
- Find out about the work team to find out what responsibilities to assign to each person. Do the same with the family.
- Place your trust in people who have been delegated responsibilities.
- Realistically distribute tasks and activities.
An important aspect is that to know how to delegate, you have to work on yourself. Knowing yourself means knowing where our limits are.
Create routines
Routines may seem boring to set up, but they all have one good thing: They help us organize our time! Thanks to this, it will be easier to reconcile professional and family life.
On the other hand, prioritization can also be helpful. For that, it is worth asking what to do and eliminate what consumes a lot of energy and which does not make us happy, for as long as possible.
In addition, it is important to consider the schedules according to the reality. Sometimes we are unrealistic and think that we will be able to do it all and we set ourselves unrealistic goals. Relax!
Manage emotions to better reconcile
Managing our emotions is vital to making family and professional life compatible. Not getting carried away by our impulses and identifying how we feel is the key to our relationships.
Because, often, it’s not how we feel that determines our well-being, but what we do with our emotions, how we react to what happens to us.
James Gross, director of the University of Standorf’s psychophysiology lab, says managing our emotions can prevent illnesses like depression or borderline personality disorders.
Thus, to manage emotions, the following indications can help us:
- Release tension through physical exercise or artistic activity.
- Practice active listening.
- Use breathing techniques.
- Seek professional help.
- Address your concerns to just one time of the day.
- Think about it and ask yourself what can happen if your fear occurs and find a solution.
As we can see, managing the emotional sphere can be a good ally against stress, frustration and nervousness.
But also…
Other ways to combine family and professional life may be to change jobs. To travel near you so as not to waste so much time. To research labor laws to find out if we are entitled to other types of hours or work situations …
Chilean psychologists Andrés Jiménez Figueroa and Emilio Moyano Días emphasize the balance between family and professional life as a measure to ensure a better quality of life. But when it’s not in our hands, what can we do? The answer is simple: look for alternatives.
Reconciling family life is not impossible. Identify priorities, take time, get to know each other, take advantage of every moment. Organizing time with routines and above all taking care of others and taking care of ourselves is essential.
Our thoughts A sense of humor and laughter have many benefits, both for our mind and for our body. We tell you about it in this article …
