If the bulk of your waking hours goes to your job, you’re in for some trouble: Life will eventually grow unfulfilling for you. Sure, you love your work, but pouring long hours over it can transform love into addiction. It’s time that you break away from your workaholic tendencies.
Identifying Underlying Problems
Underlying problems are often responsible for fueling your workaholic tendencies. While work pressures and deadlines do push you to your limits, there is a greater possibility that you’re using work as your defense mechanism against other problems and insecurities.
Examine yourself. Assess your schedule. Then answer these questions:
• Do you work so hard for the money?
• Do you work so hard so you can minimize social interactions at home?
• Do you work so hard so you can elude some issues?
Working too hard to grab financial rewards is not something you can sustain for a long time. This habit will take a toll on your mental health and physical well-being. Work hard but strive to contain it within a definite timeframe. If you can’t live with this arrangement, then maybe you should aim for a new job that pays better than your present company.
It’s crucial that you address problems plaguing your home as well. Although work can give you temporary relief, it won’t solve anything. In fact, problems don’t get resolved by themselves. You have to face them and act on them. The power to improve your situation at home lies with you.
Restoring Balance
After targeting the underlying problems responsible for your unhealthy work habits, do your best to reintegrate balance into your life. Several strategies can help you with this area.
Make room for the following:
1. Personal Time. Use this concept to place yourself (and your health) above your job. You are entitled to your own time, so when you are in the middle of a well-deserved personal vacation, do not allow deadlines to interrupt you.
2. Bedtime Ritual. Unwind and treat yourself to enough hours of sleep. Set a specific hour when you’re switching the lights off. Spend half an hour before your designated bedtime to do something relaxing. Make sure the activity doesn’t remind you of work.
3. Movement and Physical Exercises. Include exercise routines in your weekly schedule. The frequency need not be daily. You can do it once in every 2 or 3 days if you want. Physical movement helps you to de-stress from work. Exercise is good for both your body and mind.
4. Breaks. You need time away from work. It’s a given. Regular jobs usually designate weekends as rest days. Make an effort to spend your weekends not working. Don’t even try to remember or talk about your job. Just free your mind and enjoy your break.
Starting Out Slow
Breaking away from your workaholic tendencies need not be drastic. Distance yourself from the unhealthy habit one step at a time. Remember that your work doesn’t define your life. There are plenty of activities that you can enjoy, and none of them have to remind you of deadlines, quotas or reports.
Restore balance into your life today with a strategy or two. In no time, you’ll get the idea: Life outside work does exist!
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