The COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t made it easy to achieve a healthy work-life balance. Whether you’re working at home or leaving the house to work, you’re still experiencing unprecedented levels of stress. We haven’t had to factor in a pandemic into our work-life balance before. Add in all the lifestyle changes that we’ve had to make, and it can push anyone to feel overwhelmed.
In these challenging times, caring for our loved ones is a priority. To do this well, our health must be at the best it can be. An unbalanced life can cause stress, which affects our mental and physical health. Stress causes blood pressure to rise, inflammation in the body, and digestive problems. Too much stress can also lead to anxiety and burnout. With all that’s going on in the world, we need to remain as healthy as possible.
Tips to Achieve a Healthy Work-Life Balance
Establishing a healthy work-life balance is essential to remaining mentally and physically strong. The following tips are the four ways to achieve a healthy work-life balance.
Do an Inventory
Take a look at all the items on your work-life plate and start an inventory. More often than not, you’ll find that many items can either be removed or delegated for someone else to do.
Take a very close look at the things that keep you busy. Does the house need to look spotless every night? No one is visiting, after all. We’re all social distancing. And having everyone at home most of the time might mean that a small mess is present at all times. You can remove your nightly house scrubbing without compromising cleanliness. As long as the crumbs are swept and the trash is taken out, your family will be fine.
Follow a Routine
If you’re working from home, a routine is vital. The temptation might be to let the kids sleep in and go to your Zoom meeting in your pajamas. However, sticking to a schedule and a semblance of professionalism helps keep your work life separate from your home life.
To keep the hours and days from blending together and causing confusion, keep a schedule and dress for work. If the kids are doing school online, have them follow a schedule also. Pre-pack your lunches as if you’re all going to school and work. Boxed lunch takes the stress out of preparing a meal for a family mid-day while you’re struggling to work.
Enlist Help
When you do your inventory, you will need to delegate some items. Whether it’s work or home, you’ll have to be okay with how things turn out after you hand things over. For instance, you need to make peace with how the laundry is folded if you delegate the laundry to your spouse. It doesn’t have to be perfect. it just needs to get done.
It’s perfectly fine to ask the kids to do more around the home. It builds a sense of responsibility. If they’re old enough to pack their own lunches or cook dinner, let them help. You don’t have to do it all.
Control Your Stress
It’s natural to feel overwhelmed. The past few months have been difficult to adjust to. However, it’s not healthy to allow the stress to pile on. Finding ways to manage your stress through self-care is vital to a work-life balance.
Take the time to do the things you enjoy or be by yourself. You use any extra time you have to improve your health by mediating, exercising, or learning a new hobby.
You may even want to think of fresh, new ways to tackle your stress. Hypnosis, for example, is a quick and natural way to relax the body and alleviate stress. A certified hypnotist can access your subconscious and train your mind to soothe itself. Eli Bliliuos, the President of the NYC Hypnosis Center says, “through visualization and hypnotic suggestion, a hypnotist can program your mind to prevent stress from even starting”. Hypnosis can also help you to reduce your weight by programming the mind to automatically eat healthy portions of healthy foods. Hypnosis, done either in-person, online, or through a pre-recorded download, is a convenient way to achieve a healthy work-life balance.