Find Your Balance

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We're at the park with my eight-year-old daughter and her bicycle. It's a bright and sunny day and my husband and I have decided it's a perfect time to teach her to ride a bike. After three years of using the training wheels (which are not so helpful with training!) and riding tandem with my husband, we figure that it's now or never.

It doesn't help that she has zero motivation to learn. "Why can't I just sit tandem?" she asks. "Because sweetie, you're getting bigger and it's so much more fun to ride on your own," I respond. (Not because you're getting heavier and not really doing much work on the tandem). "Come on!" I say. "It will be fun." And after much cajoling and some bribing, she is off trying to make it work, two little legs on the pedal, taking off in much anticipation.

"Find your balance!" I yell out behind her.

Three simple words and yet so profound. In the context of life, what does balance mean? How does one find it? Or how is it achieved? It's what I have strived to understand and accomplish in my adult life, and have used the concepts and lessons I learned in my clinical practice with patients for over a decade.

It's not uncommon to hear clients say, "I have worked my entire life and now I am fired! Why did this happen to me?" Others are confused and don't know what to make of their situation, or of themselves. Eric, a 32-year-old lamented, "all this while I didn't realize that I've used work as a distraction to keep me from thinking about other things I'd rather not deal with...the emotional neglect I experienced as a child, the relationships that never stick, the family that continues to disappoint. I feel like I've lost everything and have hit rock bottom."

Eric's story is representative of a growing trend among working men and women. Too often they overly focus on one part of their lives as a way to (unconsciously) escape from something else. Work is an easy distraction for the simple reason that not only is it socially acceptable, but people actually look up to you when you prioritize your job. Working more can easily be misinterpreted as having a tough attitude, a hard-working demeanor, demonstrative of true "grit" and, of course, the payoff that the boss is always happy. Never mind that your health is suffering, your spouse or partner is overburdened with the home and the kids, or barely sees you. Or that your relationship(s) are falling apart.

Working overtime is bad both for the mind and heart (literally). Dr. Marianna Virtanen, an epidemiologist at University College London and the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health has long studied the effects of working overtime. She has found the people working longer than a normal, seven-hour day had a 60 percent higher risk of heart-related problems including death due to heart disease, non-fatal heart attacks, and angina. A different study of hers, also found that working long hours appears to substantially increase a person's risk of becoming depressed, regardless of how stressful the actual work is. We also know that working more is correlated with drinking more.

When it comes to working long hours, it's important to remember that the focus is not on the low-income Joe who has to take up three jobs in order to make ends meet. The focus is on those who choose to work more than they need to. Because now "work" doesn't just extend to what takes place at the office but also the emails you're checking at home, while on a date and between restroom breaks at the movies. Heck, we also log in while on vacation, answer work texts as we sit on the beach and sip on our piña colada, mentally checking off the eternally busy, always-working box that seems to fit so well with our self-image. The day job is no longer the day job, but also a panacea for all that is wrong with our lives.

It's never too late to find balance, whether you're eight or 65. It may not be as straightforward as instructions to ride a bike, but it means looking closely at how and where you choose to spend your time and whether you really need to. It means making choices other than the ones you've been making. Not sure? Ask yourself whether your work defines you?

If the answer is yes, you may want to reflect on what you're avoiding by over-focusing on your job. For some, this may mean confronting our issues with power, or the desire to be important, ambition or pride, or guilt, greed and a skewed sense of responsibility about work, or alternatively a desire to avoid dealing with aspects of our personal lives. We may discover that like the emperor's new clothes, the overworking shroud actually reveals our nakedness beneath.

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Let's face it, we're not always ready to work on our issues, but let's be more willing to face our issues related to work.​