Alisha Leytem: Hello everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Unlock Your Wellbeing. I'm your host, Alisha. I want to share with you guys some mindset shifts and beliefs that you can implement for yourself to help you start thinking differently about maintaining and creating a better work-life balance.
The reason I wanna talk about this with you guys today is because this topic has been coming up for me quite a bit in a lot of my conversations with clients and colleagues. I just returned from a lunch meeting, and this actually came up yet again. This idea of the problem of people pushing and working themselves into the ground and expecting other people around them to do the same or to not do what you're doing.
We all know someone who works all day, every day, sending emails or calling well into the night but then they might say, you don't do that. You don't have to do that. Just ignore me sending this, or you know, I'm just gonna send this right now because it's top of mind for me and think that it's not going to affect the other person or your team, but it does.
So I think that there is a, a lot of unlearning that a lot of us need to begin to implement in order to really create this beautiful balance of work and life. Now, if you don't know my background and my history, I'm gonna share a little bit of this with you because I think this will give you context into my belief system around this.
So I started my company Alisha Leytem Well-Being consulting back in 2018. Prior to that, I was really heavily involved in the wellness and well-being industry. A lot of it was working on my own, like personal growth and self-development. I was a becoming a certified wellness coach with the Mayo Clinic up in Minnesota. I was teaching many yoga classes as I had just become a, a registered yoga teacher. I was running group coaching programs for women. I was hosting lots of wellness workshops. I was coaching people.
When I decided to transition into the work that I do now, which is consulting companies on improving the workforce wellbeing and, and teaching leaders the skills to really embody this. I had to come to myself and under and, and asking myself what it is I'm creating as an entrepreneur, what it is that I really want as a business owner, like how I want to live my life.
I have always been someone who has been very, very sure and clear over what it is I'm creating. I call this my life vision. What is the vision I have for my life? This is so crucial if you want to live an intentional life.
You have to know the ultimate vision for your life, not just your career. I mean your life. This includes what kind of family life do you want to have? What kind of community or friendship life do you want to have? What do you want your career life to look like? Where do you want to live? How do you want your days to be? How do you want to feel? What do you want to experience? What are you actually creating? Having this vision is going to be what carries you through in your day-to-day.
Knowing the vision is one part, but then also knowing that your life is happening right now. Yes, you're working towards the vision, you're having the vision. You're aiming at and working towards, diligently with this vision. But at the end of the day, the only thing that's real, the only thing that exists is your right now is today, right here, right now, in this very moment.
That is where your ultimate power is. Your power can only exist in the current moment. It doesn't exist in the past. It doesn't exist in the future. It can only exist right here and right now.
What I had to really come to terms with and really understand when I was really working very, hard towards building my my business is remembering this vision that I'm creating and remembering that the business is to support my life.
My life is not to support my business. I have a business, I have a career. I have a purpose that I am fulfilling through my career that supports my life. I actually have learned this from a lot of my mentors over the years. I think it's brilliant and I think it's so important. I think that this can actually really, truly change the world because I think so many people live to work.
So just ask yourself, am I living to work? Or is there a way that I can work to make sure that it's supporting the life that I want to live? This is beyond survival. I'm not saying work to live, meaning you just need to make enough so that you can barely get by.
This is about thriving. The only way that you can thrive and know what kind of work you need to support the life you want is to know the life that you want that needs to be supported in. So I challenge you to start thinking about this in that your career. Or your business, if you're a business owner, is is there to support your life because this is your life. And the beauty of the times that we're living in, in this day and age is that there are boundaries kind of being blurred in what is work and what is life.
Because everything is so interconnected with technology and how everything is really, like you can run your business from the tips of your fingers on your computer, on your phone. So you have to be extra diligent and extra intentional with this mindset.
It's something that you constantly need to check in with yourself on, and maintaining that balance if you're not having fun along the way and you're just pushing and pushing and pushing to get to an end, and then you hear this all the time. People get to the end, meaning retirement for example. And then they die a few years later because they didn't take the time to take care of themselves or enjoy their life up until that moment.
We have this opportunity to really shift the way that we work, shift the way that we live. So one way to do this is to, instead of calling it a work life balance, what if you call it a life work balance?
There's a lot of discussions, really powerful discussions out there talking about how we don't need to be quote on quote working as long as we think that we need to, meaning this like nine to five, eight hour day, Monday through Friday kind of thing.
In fact, there was a a big study that was done, it was conducted over in the UK I believe it was over six months. They were trying to find if people were more productive or less productive if they moved from a five day work week into a four day work week. This was completely removing eight hours from the week, not taking those eight hours and adding it to the Monday through Thursday, just maintaining eight hours Monday through Thursday and then not working on Friday.
What they found was that productivity stayed the same. It did not decrease. In fact, it may have increased just a little bit. And, you know, it did decrease. Were sick days, sick days decreased, and people's health increased as well as their happiness.
More and more organizations are starting to embrace this. Now, this does look a little uncomfortable for us, because it's like, well, what do you mean I could stop working an entire day and be just as productive? What is a saying about, myself and the way that we work it like challenges this core belief that that's the only way that it's done.
But really this nine to five work day began because of the industrial revolution. And we're not in those times anymore. We know research shows that we're actually only really productive, head down deep work for three to four hours a day.
If you are super intentional and are, and can get really, really good at being in real alignment when you do your work, you can get stuff done in a shorter amount of time and continue to live your life. So I'm sure you can think about someone who it's like, man, they don't like, quote unquote work very long each day, but how are they getting so much done? It's not the amount of time that you're working, it's the amount of intention and life that you're bringing to the time that you are working. And so when you are more fulfilled in your life.
As in that's first, as in how you take care of yourself, your body, your family, your home, your community your, your hobbies, the things that you love to do as you're fulfilled in that, then that will fill you up enough to do really, really great work in shorter amounts of time and still maintain the the beautiful good work that you, that you do.
So the other thing about this is, we have to remember that you are irreplaceable everywhere except for at home. Like for me, for example. I love the work that I do. I really, really enjoy it, and I know that it makes an impact and it makes a difference. But my clients could replace me in a heartbeat and find someone just as good if not better. I am replaceable. My business is replaceable, my work is replaceable.
It is, but where am I not replaceable? I'm irreplaceable at home in my home as my daughter's mom that can't be replaced, right? As a wife, that can't be replaced as a daughter, as the mother and woman of my home, creating the home for my family. That's a place that I'm not replaceable in. And so that to me is life.
All work that I'm doing, that you're doing, that we're all doing, yes, it is to help others and it's to serve and it's to fulfill your purpose, but it's also to fulfill the ultimate purpose, which is the home, which is the family, which is your togetherness with the light that you are creating with your loved ones and whatever that means and looks like to you.
That's the ultimate. So remembering that when you are doing your work will help you to maintain this beautiful life work balance and help you to bring more life into what it is that you're doing, because the work that you do and how you work that impacts your personal life and your home and vice versa, how fulfilled or unfulfilled you are at home impacts your work. Everything is so interconnected and related.
We have to take a really, really good look at ourselves and ask ourselves what it is that we are doing when we're pouring ourselves into work and completely neglecting our life or even when we're doing it not completely neglecting it, but that's the priority? I think that the best way to overcome this is again, that life vision. What are you ultimately doing?
What are your values? What is the most important thing for you? Then looking at how fulfilled you are in your life and your home, and seeing if that is helping you to pour into the work that you're doing with the time that you're doing it in. Now, I will say too, that there are different seasons of times when this isn't perfectly equal. I don't think it's ever like equal where 50% work, 50% home.
That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying we have to know what that percentage is for us and to really get real over what it is that we're actually doing and actually creating and what our day-to-day life feels and looks like for ourselves. Knowing that there'll be different seasons.
So for me usually every year around January through March, like the first coup December through March those are like a slower time of year where I cocoon I on purpose, slow down. Part of this, actually, probably a big part of it is like the cyclical nature of the year, of nature, of winter, of like tuning in, reflecting, like slowing down. That's more heavy on life side and a little bit less on work. Spring. I, and at the time we were recording this, it's spring 2023, in fact, the spring equinox was this week.
There's a new moon and Aries, which is also a very beautiful like new beginning energy. So this is a time where I typically put a little bit more into work. So that it supports my life more throughout the year because I'm looking ahead, I'm looking ahead at the year at where I'm going, what I'm planning, how I want to feel, where what I'm doing with my family, what do I want my life to feel and look like, and kind of navigating and moving my work around to support that.
So just remember at the end of the day that your life is right now. It's not when you reach a goal, it's not when you hit retirement. It's not on the weekends, it's not when you're on vacation. It is right now in this very moment.
If you're having a hard time really thinking about how your work can support your life, then I want you to try this exercise. I give this exercise to my clients, actually. It's called the perfect day exercise. And you list out what your perfect day is from the minute you wake up to the minute you go to sleep, including how long you sleep for, and put in all the details, all of the things in that perfect day.
This will help you to cultivate a little bit more of what's important to you, what that looks like, what you're actually, you know creating. Then looking at within that perfect day, what are the things in your life that you're doing that are fulfilling you, that are really, truly fulfilling your heart and fulfilling your soul. Because the more you can tap into your soul, the more you're tapping into the secret of life, and the more we can tap into the secret of life, we can implement that into our work.
This is how you make massive impact and success and change when your heart is what's leading the way. So I'd love to hear from you guys. What was your biggest takeaway from today's episode? What is the mindset shift that you're gonna use to help you cultivate a better life work balance as we move into a new energy, a new season just a really lot of new beginnings.
You can really plant these seeds of change for yourself of what this looks like for you, what your life vision is for you, and how your work is helping you to support and create the life that you desire and the life that you deserve, and the life that is completely and totally available for you in your day today. So thank y'all so much for joining me.
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Come over and connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm at Alisha Leytem, or my company page is Alisha Leytem Well-being Consulting. You can check us out over there for more inspiration and education and insights on improving wellbeing in the workforce and for yourself as a leader.
I also wanna mention that I have a an upcoming retreat that I'm doing with my husband Michael, from Catching Leadership. And you can check that out. We'll have the link for that in the show notes. It's gonna be in the Driftless in Wisconsin, Iowa, in June, this coming June.
Michael and I are co-facilitating that together, which is a retreat to help you really just unplug, ditch your phone, ditch your stress, and really reconnect with the power of nature, using and experiencing mindfulness tools to help you become a better leader for yourself, for your team, for your life, for your family.
So you're gonna leave there feeling really inspired and a lot of seeds of transformation planted for you, for your growth. So you can check that out in the show notes. And I wish you all a very beautiful rest of your day, wherever you are tuning in from. I'll see you next time. Namaste.
