How to Create Work-Life Balance? Jim Rohn , Jeff Bezos - YouTube

Psychologists have found two major things that we as human beings

get the most happiness and satisfaction from.

Two things. Number one, our work.

Our contribution to society,

our continued progress toward reaching our goals.

Our activity that generates our lifestyle influence, power.

And number two, love.

The love we receive from our spouse, our children, our parents, our families, our friends,

knowing that one person or several people care about us, want to spend time with us.

The professional goals that you've outlined for yourself take a lot of work.

Your ambition takes a lot of work, discipline, skills,

constant learning to improve yourself

and develop yourself and improve your skills and develop your skills.

You don't expect that your achievements will come to you on a silver platter.

You know that your goals require constant attention and discipline every day.

Or they'll what? They'll never come to you at all.

You can't just come home at night after work after a long day and expect

that your family life is growing just fine all by itself.

You can't just expect that your personal life will grow and flourish without attention,

without taking time to feed and water

and weed out the bad stuff, the negative stuff that happens while you're away.

No, creating the perfect personal life, family life

takes just as much attention as creating the perfect professional life.

It takes love and nurturing and kindness

and sincerity and caring.

It takes all those things.

And that's one of the biggest mistakes that happens today.

People spend all their time focus all their energy,

give everything they've got,

they give it all to the job.

It can't work that way.

Your family requires more than that.

The investment we make in our personal relationships before they're put on paper

is the investment we must continue to make.

The more we give, the more we get.

If you stop giving, guess what, you'll probably stop receiving, too.

So keep your investment in relationships and family active.

That's part of the good life.

What good is a mansion on the hill, if you've got no one to share it with?

It's no good.

What good is an investment portfolio worth millions, if you've got no one to share it with?

It's no good.

What good is working so hard day after day, month after month, year after

year, working, working, working until you accumulate everything you want and in the meantime,

your family left you? It's no good.

It all loses its value.

Balancing your personal life with your professional life is key,

making sure that what you're going for in your career complements your home life,

making sure that what goes on at home complements your career.

One won't work well if the other doesn't.

Lady gets into work early in the morning, is the last one to leave every night.

This keeps going on week after week, month after month.

Doesn't seem like she gets that much more accomplished than everyone else. Matter of fact,

it seems like she's using the office to escape from home.

Something's wrong here. Better fix it.

Chances are that whatever's bothering her at home is affecting her work anyway.

A guy's always late for work, always takes off during the middle of the day to go home.

There always seems to be some sort of emergency to tend to at home.

He takes long breaks, leaves early to go home.

He's not getting his work done in record time.

He's not getting anything done at all.

Chances are he's using the emergencies at home

as an excuse to stay away from the job.

If something's wrong at work, fix it if you can

or look for your solution elsewhere.

If something's wrong at home, fix it.

If what's going on at home is the result of neglect,

admit it and fix it.

Pay greater attention.

If you need to go to counseling, go to counseling,

talk with your minister, talk with a trusted friend.

But remember that whatever the problem is at home,

it probably didn't happen overnight.

So make sure to give it some time and the healing. Be patient.

Now there's a balance between work time and home time.

Professional time and personal time.

They both have to be working well in order to maximize your ambition and maximize your potential.

Problems at home, affect work.

Problems at work, affect home.

Even when things are going well in both areas, sometimes

special circumstances call for the work time to take away from the home time.

And if that's the case, make sure everybody at home knows

when to expect the light at the end of the tunnel.

And if that extra project is really taking away from the family,

make sure your family knows that their time will be paid back with interest.

Life has to be balanced. Work hard, play hard.

Work six days, take one day off.

Work three months, take one week off.

Life has to be balanced or your lifestyle will suffer.

Life without balance can cost your relationships.

Life without balance can cost your health.

Life without balance can cost your spirituality.

Life without balance can cost your wealth.

Work on a balanced life.

Work on balanced ambitions.

It's all about balance in life.

If you're giving too much at work, pay it back to your family with interest.

Balance, it's important.

If you don't have balance, you have what?

You'll end up paying too high a price,

sacrificing your family for your work.

Being careful with your clients and careless with your children.

Without balance, there's a price to pay.

And we must all pay the price.

And sometimes the price is just too high.

So evaluate the price before you begin. What must I give up to achieve this goal

What must I become? Evaluate it all.

How do you go about establishing that work life balance that everybody

you know, talks about and thinks about? You've got I mean, you live a big life, right?

And how do you balance this? I get this question alot.

I get it. I teach senior executive

kind of leadership classes at Amazon for most senior execs.

And I also teach, not teach, but I also speak to interns. So kind of all across the spectrum.

And I get this question about work life balance all the time from both ends of the spectrum.

And my view is I don't even like the phrase 'work life balance'. I think it's misleading.

I like the phrase 'work life harmony'

because I know that if I am energized at work, happy at work,

feeling like I'm adding value, part of a team, whatever energizes you,

that makes me better at home.

It makes me a better husband, a better father.

And likewise, if I'm happy at home, it makes me a better employee, a better boss.

All the things. It's not about, it's not primarily about.

There might be crunch periods where it's about the number of hours in the week.

But that's not the real thing.

Usually it's about do you have energy?

And is this, is your work depriving you of energy or is your work generating energy for you?

And, you know, there are people everybody in this room knows people who fall into these two camps.

You're in a meeting and the person comes in the room.

Some people come into the meeting and they add energy to the meeting.

Other people come into the meeting and the whole meeting just deflates.

And these people just, they drain energy from the meeting.

And you have to decide which is those kinds of people you're gonna be.

Are you gonna add energy?

And the same thing at home? And the same thing at home.

And so it's a wheel. It's a cycle. It's a flywheel, it's a circle. It's not a balance.

Because a balance. That's why that metaphor is so dangerous, because it implies there's a strict tradeoff.

And you could be out of work, have all the time for your family in the world,

but really depressed and demoralized about your work situation.

And your family wouldn't wanna be anywhere near you.

They would wish you would take a vacation from them.

I've never had a problem.

And I think it's because both sides of my life give me energy.

And that's what I would recommend. Hence, what I do recommend to interns and execs.

I think if you're starting to get to the point where you are worried about

work life balance, I would challenge you to think

it's just something out of whack.

It's probably not the hours. Look, you could, if you're working a hundred and twenty hours a week,

you're also doing something wrong. That's too much.

It's not sustainable. Maybe you can do that for a week or two, but that's it.

But if you're working, you know, sixty hours a week,

that's completely sustainable for most people.

And the question, if you're burned out by it, it's not the number of hours.

It's that you're doing something wrong.

You need to figure out what it is because you're gonna take that home

and then your home life is gonna be stressful

and then you'll bring that back into the office. So it's gonna be a negative spiral.

And that spiral will also be a positive one as soon as you turn it around.

If you're happy at work, if you're finding meaning in your work,

if you are, it can be hard. They call it work for a reason.

It's not gonna be fun all the time. That's a pipe dream.

None of us enjoys every minute of every day.

And to have that kind of idea would just be naive.

But there should be fun at work.

You should be laughing. There should be moments of joy.

And if you're getting energy from work instead of your work draining your energy,

then you're gonna come home and you're gonna be a better mother,

a better father, a better wife, a better husband, all of those things.