The Secret to Work-Life Balance

People pleasing is inherent in women.  We are raised to help others, often above and beyond ourselves

We are last.  

Taking a stand for ourselves doing what suits us seems selfish.  I used to judge people who laid down boundaries because I grew up with few.  Indian culture begets freely flowing relationships with minimal boundaries.  The delineation of one family member ending and the next one beginning is absent.  The response of “no” is met with a lot of resistance.  

Force yourself to try saying no to things you don’t want to do.  Practice it over and over again.  See what works and stick to it.  You won’t regret it in the long run.

We are taught to go out of our way to other people at a young age.  It becomes so much of who we are that we may fail to recognize it.  We are also taught that hard work is rewarded.  Perhaps many of us learned in medical school that studying smartly was better than studying hard.  The same goes to the way we live.

We can find a better work-life balance by saying no and not taking on more work than we can manage in the allotted hours.   We also can utilize systems to make note-writing easier and find an efficient way to talk to families.  We can stop documenting after we get home.  We can put a do not disturb on our messaging and emails when we aren’t on call or unplugging.  Furthermore, the unpaid work in medicine as opposed to other professions, ie attorneys who can bill hourly for work, needs to be minimized because it is wearing us out and down!

We should apply the same principle to social events.  Planning a dinner with people you do not connect with is a waste of precious time.  It isn’t restorative.  Be more picky about how you spend your time outside of work in order to have a better balance.  It’s not easy, but it is certainly doable.

When I first started learning how to say no, I would feel so guilty.  Eventually, I practiced prioritizing my desires and needs.  I found this practice eliminates stress in an already complex life.  Saying no to things that seem boring, complicated, or not aligning with my values has simplified my life and left me feeling more content.  I can honestly say I am content 85-90% of the time regardless of what nonsense comes my way. The method described above is a part of how I achieve this and you can too.