The myth of the two lives

Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once" ~ Lillian Dickson

We all live one life and we remain connected to various people. After stepping into a professional life, human life revolves around professional and personal aspect. We are constantly trying to separate the two lives so as to live an exciting and a happy life. The first step in balancing your work and personal life is recognizing that it is not just going to happen. Separating personal and the professional life is a myth.

The work-life balance definition sets out to achieve an ideal balance between a person’s working life and private life. Colleagues are often viewed as the “second family” because they spend so much time together. Relationships between people are highly complex and difficult to influence due to many individual factors. It is an unachievable task for setting the boundaries between the personal and the professional life. Our behavior with all the colleagues is not the same as it tends to get affected due to the personal attachment we grow with them during the course of our work. For separating these two lives we should first separate the person belonging to each halves and behave accordingly.

The pleasant personal life provides happy mind set which will increase the work productivity. Similarly the supporting work environment helps to balance personal life. Having a rough day at work tends to affect your personal life as your mind is sub-consciously preoccupied and vice versa. No matter how hard we try to balance the two lives, each of our two halves is affected by the other. At the end of the day we all enjoy hanging out with our family and friends trying to overlook the burden about our professional life. We tend to enjoy our personal life more because that truly reflects who we are and we feel comfortable around them as they are the people we have chosen to be around us.

We all live one life and trying to separate it into two halves causes the constant burden and a continuous pressure of chances of involvement of these two, rather thinking it as one and balancing it  simultaneously and focusing in the present rather than thinking about the past or the future will lead into a healthy life. Also, prioritizing your needs based on the circumstances and balancing it with the expectations put forward on us by the people around will automatically balance our relation with others and also with ourselves.

Hence, to view life into two different sets, it is better to view life as a single being. Incorporating both social and personal need of the human leads to better balance of life and better performance in both. So, two lives is a myth as there is only one and there should be two roles recognition by oneself and everyone else for better relation and better productivity.

Aarati Koirala, aarati@suvodassociates.com.np

The views expressed in this piece are of the Author solely. This blog or any part contained should be taken as an advice or suggestion. UHY Suvod Associates does not guarantee the accuracy of the technical content or material provided on the information if any. Picture Credits - Dark Indigo