Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Happy Monday. Oh, I’ve got my phone turned on a different angle, so now I don’t know where to look. That’s so funny. I’m like, that way I know where to look. That way I don’t know where to look. Okay, that’s bizarre. I need to look over here. Yes. Okay. I’ll try and look over there. Oh, I think I’m going to do this. Then I’ll kind of be with it. Yay. Okay. There we go.
So happy Monday, everyone. Tonight, I want to talk about work-life balance, otherwise known as work-life bullshit because there is no such thing. There truly is no such thing as work-life balance. It’s a myth that books will sell you and Instagram influencers will sell you to make you feel like you’re doing the wrong thing because you’re out of whack. It doesn’t actually work. So, when I talk about work-life balance, I kind of think of it more as a work, life, cha, cha, cha. Work, life, cha, cha, cha, because you know I have to have that musical metaphor in there somewhere. To me work-life balance is about finding the things that make your life, the wheel of your life and what you’re doing in your life kind of fit.
And for me, being a single mom, I’m both blessed on one hand and it’s also hard on the other hand because these days I have Elody week on, week off. So, for a week of my life, I’m wearing my mom hat and everything is about Elody and I have to say no to things and my to do list goes out the cod bush. That’s not even a word. Out the whatever. And then on the second week when I don’t have Elody, I try and fill my life up with as much stuff that makes my heart sing and also as much stuff that’s actually going to get me ahead in work. So, the moment my mantra is health, wealth and wisdom. So, everything in my day, even in my diary, you’ve all seen my diary. Where is it? In my diary every day, I have, what is it today that’s about my wealth? What is it today that’s about my health? What is it today about my wisdom? Because I’m a great believer in education.
So, the wheel of life thing that we did the other day is actually good at helping you get your wheel, work-life, cha, cha, cha balance figure eight, limbo in order. Where you’ve got to be really careful with your work-life balance. Should I just do an inverted commas? Work-life balance. There we go. It’s really important to get your boundaries right. Now I am not an expert in boundaries. It’s something I’m working on really, really, really hard. And when I’m not good on my boundaries, that balance goes completely out of whack and the scales are tipped and I might get sick, I get resentful, I might get a wee bit down in the dumps, definitely get behind in my work and my study and I’ll walk the dog for half an hour instead of an hour because I haven’t had my boundaries right and that.
I heard this great saying a couple of weeks ago. I think it was a podcast I was listening to and it was, the quote was, champions don’t have balance, and at first I thought, well that’s just rotten. Everybody should be able to get balance. And then I was like, well actually I don’t believe in work-life balance, so okay, let’s bear with that a second. And I thought about it more and it was more that if you’re giving … We’re like a jar of … Our beings, our souls, our hearts, our minds, everything is like a jar. And if we’re giving 100% of something to something, which is what you need to do a lot of the time to succeed in something, then there’s nothing else left to give. So, you can’t be giving 100% to your wife and 100% to your swimming coach at the same time.
You can give 100% to your swimming coach when you’re with your swimming coach and you can give 100% to your wife when you’re with your wife, but you can’t actually do them at the same time. So, therefore I will then actually agree with that statement. So, a couple of the tricks that I think help with that work-life, cha, cha, cha, really looking at what you’re doing. So, bare with me if I’m looking at a screen here. I just wanted to bring something up. Oh, and that’s what I wanted to do. I wanted to share this and I forgot that I wanted to do that. Now I don’t know how. Does anyone know how to do a Facebook live and share it? Oh, here we go. I can share it like this. Oh look, I’m trying to do something on Facebook at the same time. This is so exciting. Share it. Oh, no. I can only share it on a page. I can’t actually share it on my personal. Well, now I’m confused. Okay, so let’s not do that.
Sorry. Thank you for bearing with me on that. We’ll figure that out for tomorrow because I want to work it out and I can be a determined mother trucker. Got to be careful there. So yeah, a few of the things that you need to do to work-life balance is your systems. And I used to be a real systems nerd. I used to get up on stage and speak to people about systematizing their business and their life. I used to go into businesses and help people systematize their life. It was my, that split in my brain could actually do all that stuff. So, we’d talk about hardware, software, training for people.
I worked with a matrix called, Ditch it, Delegate it, Leverage it, and Live it, which I rehash every so often because I think I just believe in it. It’s really good. And that’s about getting rid of the stuff in your life that doesn’t serve you, doing more of the stuff that does serve you. Delegating stuff, leveraging some of the stuff. I’m leveraging food at the moment because I’m getting Hello Fresh and making Elody cook. Shit, that is a game changer people and she’s loving it. She’s learning how to cook. So, that’s then given me a little bit of extra time at night to do my evening routine stuff while she’s cooking. And it’s good for her and it’s great for me because I get to get in that bath with all those beautiful Epsom salts and make myself feel better. So, systematizing your life for a bit more balance is one thing.
Another thing that’s really good is talking to, when you’re in a busy stage of life, talking to people about what’s going on so they’re not pushing your boundaries and they’re not making that balance get even worse [inaudible 00:06:35] stop saying balance. And so the moment most people in my life know I’m really tracked and one-tracked mind and focused on a few things. And they can’t ask me to do other stuff. If they ask me to do other stuff, I’m going to say no. And I don’t want to say no because I’m a yes girl, and I like to be needed and it’s my love language to do stuff for people and then be told thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So, that’s hard for me. So, I need to protect my balance in my life by letting people know that that’s what’s going on. So, your inner circles good. And don’t tell everybody because people will think you’re a wanker. Can I say wanker on video? Oh, probably.
The other thing to do when you’re feeling out of whack is actually take the time to do something for you. Even half an hour in a bath or having a massage or walking the beautiful Charlie dog. Anything like that can actually make you feel balanced even if you’re not. You could have had a crazy ass day and think your life is just totally out of whack and you’re letting down your children and you’ve let down your job and you haven’t got this finished and you really want to go to this party, but you can’t get it done because you haven’t vacuumed. And if you take half an hour to just feed your soul by doing something nice for you, that all dissipates and somehow you manage to get more shit done. I don’t know how it works, but I promise you if you take half an hour to go … You will get more stuff done.
And on that, when you’re a working person, and as I know, a lot of you watching have businesses and might be parents and don’t need to be parents to human children, parents to animal children, I’ve now discovered is a shit load of work. And again, that’s one of those things where you’ve got to decide what’s important to you on that one. If having little Johnny at school early every morning and reading to his class and doing all that kind of thing is a really high importance to you, then that’s going to be high in that wheel, and you’re going to want to fit that in with your balance.
If being the perfect mother and having baked goods there everyday for school is not important, then you’re not going to be busting your ass at night and you won’t feel bad about that. So again, that’s an important thing to me. Important thing to you rather or me. So yeah, that’s all I want to say is don’t believe the hype of work-life balance. It’s absolute bullshit. It’s work-life cha, cha, cha, and do the stuff that makes your heart sing in the meantime. Now, have a great night and I’m going to work out how to use this camera on this side. I’ve got to look over here. Hello. Oh, I think I’m getting better, and I’ll talk to you all soon. Bye.