In this age of constant change and work pressure, there is need to have a work-life balance. For this, it is important to skill yourself in a manner that is innovative so that one can create a path that will lead to a fulfilling career ahead, says Dr Nidhi Maheswari
The expectation for meaningful life is determinedly cemented in the minds of generation X at the workplace. In this age of constant change and economic pressure, everyone is struggling to have meaningful work and fulfilling inner life. Till now work/life balance was accepted as a tool to justify the meaningful existence. But it was more a tradeoffs among the four main parts of our lives: Career (commitment and priorities at work), family (relationships), society (community) and self (mind, body, senses, spirit).This tradeoff among all the four aspects of life needs to be reassessed through the lenses of meaningful life with integration of all the parts.
Therefore, we need to change our perception regarding work and life being two ends of a beam to be balanced to a more appropriate frame where all the aspects of life need to fit together in synchronisation. This means integrated approach of life assimilates work as one aspect of meaningful life rather than as opposite end. This meaningful life integration demands realistic evaluation, innovative approach to skilling yourself and acting with integrity in pursuing more four-way wins.
Realistic evaluation examines the self to know the real identity, purpose and agency. At this point we think about our values, interest and goals in each aspect and evaluate how much value we are giving to each phase. The career that fulfills the intrinsic need for autonomy, relatedness and competence can result in the attainment of meaningful life. Self-evaluation must not be taken as selfish-determination rather life and career should be worthwhile to self as well as family and society at large. If one feels that one of the four phases is being neglected then it is the right time to do the assessment of the current integration equation and identification of the less importance gaining phase. Here one can comment that it is the most idealistic picture of integrated life but we need to question ourselves what efforts are we putting for meaningful integration.
Are we changing our career or even working style to achieve our desired purpose which is boosting our personal value system and self satisfactionIJ Are we helping our family to understand how our work life is meaningful for them too in order to gain support from themIJ Are we involving/sharing non-work life moments into our work to share among your colleagues how it helps you for stress busting. This kind of sharing helps as conversation starter and motivates self to build relationship at the workplace.
Innovative approach to skilling self helps to identify creative ways for integration. We need to encourage ourselves to follow new behavioral pattern, uncommon routine for self like twenty minutes walk at the workplace just after lunch hours. Meaningful integrated life is a craft and by practicing it gets better. As everyone’s life is unique so the integration style will also be unique for each individual. The thrill of meaningful life lies in the journey not in reaching the destination. Therefore learning is a key to continuous improvement and experimentation for personal growth.
Acting with integrity means all the roles which one plays make up one whole person and we should encourage others also to view us the same way. For this we need to find out new ways to connect our all the four phases like involving our sports skills for team building at the workplace or involving our family member’s contribution in the community services activity of the organisation. These activities can motivate an individual to put extra efforts at the workplace and at the same time will give a chance to spend quality time with our family members while performing organisational duties.
Abraham Maslow rightly said — People strive to become whole, or to complete themselves, through their choices activities, including their work.’ Innovative ways should be applied in such a manner that the various domain of our life. We need to identify the ways which are fulfilling the requirement of one domain and the same time helping the other domain. like a marketing manager who was struggling for including innovative profitable feature for product launch organised an event in his daughter’s college and collected wonderful ideas as well reenter at the workplace with less stress.
Meaningful work is about the relationship between self and work while meaningful life need a integration in which work needs to fit in the larger context of our lives and our lives need to fit in with the larger context of our workplaces, our communities and society and the globe.
(The writer is Asst Prof, HR-OB), Asia Pacific Institute of Management New Delhi)