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Key points
- Active recovery is needed to prioritize our wellness to figure out a way to live within our values.
- Living within our values is an active way of refusing to allow our drive as professionals to supersede our need for healthy relationships.
- Life with work integration allows employees the opportunity to put active recovery at the forefront of their career mindsets.
- Exhaustion is not a marker of success; it is a sign that rest and recovery are needed.
The colder months are upon us, and it may be easy to find yourself staying inside, diving deeper into your profession, and disregarding your time for rest. But no job, role, career, or relationship is worth your physical, emotional, or spiritual health.
I appreciate that there is an abundance of privilege in me saying this. I appreciate that when people are in situations that are riddled with social injustices, this statement can be triggering or frustrating. No one signs up to be put in situations that negatively impact their overall health. And sometimes, we stay in those situations longer than we should even if we do have the agency to make small changes.
Each and every one of us has the right to be well and feel good. We should not be ashamed for wanting more. It feels good to feel good. And when we are feeling good, we do good work. We actually do great work.
Why "Life With Work" Instead of "Work-Life Balance"?
A phrase most of us know well is "work-life balance." But if you have been following my work, you may already be familiar with how I have adapted this adage to read "life with work balance" to emphasize that our life is the priority. Life is the main course—work is one side dish. To do our jobs well, and to live the good life, we must find wise ways to include work as one aspect of a multifaceted and full life well lived.
Take a moment to reflect on all that you have gone through.
And take a moment to think of all that you have grown through.
Life, especially life with work, has radically changed, perhaps for the better. To embrace what is possible, we first need to let go of the idea that there is a "normal" out there. There is no getting "back to normal" anymore. In fact, there really is no normal, and there definitely is not a "new normal."
I prefer to use the word familiar. We had a way of doing things before March 2020 that was familiar. During the peak of COVID, we developed new familiars. And now, as we move into more in-person work or work on-premises, we are embarking on creating yet another system that will become familiar to us, eventually.
We are in an integration stage of recovery from this crisis. If we simply return to what was, we are missing out on the learnings from the past 18 months. Our work efforts from the last year and a half have been one major proof of concept exercise. It is OK and even smart to take the lessons learned with us into co-creating our future. Life with work balance may have worked in the before times, but now, in this new era, we are tasked with meeting emergent hybrid workforce practices with a transformational approach to self-and-professional care.
Value-Aligned Active Recovery
In sports, athletes build recovery into their schedules because it is an essential part of their job. To be able to perform, they need to make time for recovery. An athlete does not feel guilty for taking time to recover. They are entitled to their recovery because they know they cannot perform without it. Yet for leaders, we think of recovery as "it would be nice to," or "I will get to that," yet our very lives are depending on it.
Active recovery for leaders and teams is a multi-layered concept that meets high-performance professionals where they are—amid the constant hustle to be better, to accomplish more, deliver, and to have it all. It is so important that we have an invigorating framework for self-and-professional care that allows us to recover in real-time as we continue to strive for achievement in a fast-paced and ever-evolving work landscape.
At higher echelons of professional practice, "hustle culture" is praised and celebrated as the only way to get ahead. And as high-performing individuals, we are constantly bombarded with the message that we need to be superhuman to succeed.
Leaders are told to put the needs of clients and those of their team above their own, and too often, this means pushing themselves beyond their capacity to cope. We are urged to perform, achieve, and excel at all costs. The tragic paradox of this approach, however, is that we are often so depleted by the time we get to the next finish line that we are too exhausted to enjoy the fruits of our labour—or worse, we look around and realize that we have no one with whom to share our success.
We know that this kind of hustle is not sustainable, and yet here we all are, caught in the perpetual loop of overwork and overwhelm, reaching for harmful forms of fuel, burning the candle at both ends, and so tired! It can be challenging to prioritize our wellness, our need for rest, rejuvenation, and play—to figure out a way to live within our values. Living within our values is an active way of refusing to allow our drive as professionals to supersede our need for healthy and harmonious relationships—our relationships with others, and most foundationally, our relationship with ourselves.
A New Paradigm of Professional Values
Chaos and calamity have a way of yielding clarity. As devastating as the COVID-19 pandemic has been on so many levels, there are some key learnings to be discerned. For one thing, many leaders and teams forced into a work-from-home scenario over the past 18 months have realized that there are some benefits to life with work balance in this kind of setup.
This, of course, is not to downplay the very real struggles that working from home can present, especially for caregivers, those without adequate childcare, and those with accessibility concerns. As the brilliant Melinda French Gates said, our economy "is powered by people with caregiving responsibilities."
Despite the challenges, it can be done. However, we must remember it comes at a cost. We can work remotely and still produce winning results. We can accommodate one another and reach creative, collaborative, and hybrid solutions to work challenges. We can offer one another grace. We can practice patience even in the face of pressure. This refreshing perspective is part of the reason for the new paradigm of professional values currently emerging across the workforce landscape.
Professional Pivots
Job mobility is at an all-time high. The growing trend in job migration shows talent and leadership leaving their positions over the crushing cost of working outside of our values—of working without the ability for active recovery. Forbes recently reported that over 50 percent of employees are currently considering a job change in 2021.
Among the myriad reasons that can prompt employees to consider a switch, Deloitte reports that some of the key factors for retention in a millennial workforce are a sense of belonging, safety, and emotional wellness in the work environment. Research shows that over one-third of the workforce would be willing to take a 35 percent salary reduction if it means having more life with work balance! Our collective ideas about "having it all" have shifted. This indicates a big opportunity for a new form of life with work integration that offers employees the opportunity to put active recovery at the forefront of their career mindsets.
It is not easy to put ourselves, our wellness, and our self-care practices above the bustle of life and the hustle of a demanding career. It is an investment, but it is the kind of investment that pays infinite dividends. Integrating active recovery into our professional practice takes a willingness to be self-aware and to prioritize our wellbeing. It is not easy, but it is so worth it. And I know that you can do hard things.
Be sure to check out next week's article to explore the action steps that can make this happen. Here we discussed the principle; in the next article, we will explore the practices.
