4 Tips to Fostering a Healthy Work-Life Balance as a Business Owner

4 Tips to Fostering a Healthy Work-Life Balance as a Business Owner

Running a business is hard work. Lots of business owners struggle finding a good balance between their work and home life, as many tend to be “work-aholics”.

After all, that mindset and drive is likely what led them to owning and managing a business. But, at the same time, it can wreak havoc on quality of life outside work.

Plus, burnout can happen, and no one can operate a business effectively at their wit’s end.

If you’re looking to find a healthy work-life balance, below are 4 tips you should try.

Set Boundaries

Boundaries are important in many different facets of your life, but they are especially important in your work life.

Business owners and other entrepreneurs tend to work 24-7, foregoing evening and weekend activities in lieu of squeezing in a few extra hours of work. That’s no way to live.

When you stop to consider the longer term effects of working around the clock, you’ll realize that it’s simply not sustainable. Sooner or later, your body will break down and you’ll be forced to take a break, if not step away forever.

Setting strict work hours and times for people to contact you about work-related issues is a great start to fostering a healthy work-life balance.

Schedule Time to Do Things You Love

With your boundaries set, you’ll want to make the most of the time you have outside of work.

It’s super important to get involved in hobbies and doing things you enjoy to boost mood and even improve your work life, too.

No matter how small the activity, if you enjoy it, do more of it.

Like to go rock climbing but haven’t in a while? Schedule a trip.

Enjoy vaping on your breaks to take the edge off? Go buy the best ejuice you can find and get after it.

The key to a happier life is doing things you love, so it only makes sense that it would be critical in creating an effective work-life balance.

Hire Well and Delegate

If you try to do everything yourself, you’ll end up doing some things fairly well, but most things really poorly. Plus, you’ll work long hours and drive yourself crazy.

It’s important to know your limits and be able to determine tasks that are critical for you to perform, and those which can be handled by someone else.

In a small business of one, that means reaching outside your company for help from freelancers or virtual assistants. If you are lucky enough to have employees, then learn how to delegate appropriately.

Ask for Help

If you’ve done all of the above and you’re still drowning, then don’t be afraid to ask for help. Most people have at least one person they can turn to who would be more than glad to step in and give aid to a friend or family member in need.

Or, consider hiring a business mentor – someone who has been in your shoes before and has made it through successfully.

Asking for help isn’t considered a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of courage and intelligence.

Closing Thoughts

Work-life balance doesn’t just affect you, it affects everyone around you. Use the tips above to run your business effectively while maintaining a healthy personal life.

What is the American Dream Today?

What is the American Dream Today?

What is the American dream today? If you ask most people, they will answer something about a good career, a better home, or success in all things. What most of them really mean can be said much simpler and without pretense. The American dream is more money, but it didn’t used to be.

Money didn’t used to be the American dream, but it has become the facsimile of it. This is because our country has lost itself and few remember what we once believed in.

The truth is the American dream used to be happiness, now it is money. Even those who dream of fame or power, don’t really care about either without having money to back it up. This is all true, because American is not the greatest country in the world anymore.

America isn’t the greatest country today.

This is an assertion that is made regularly by the more progressive politically active person today. This is an opinion held by both liberal and conservative persons, by men and women, even an opinion by those that are anti-government radicals and anarchists. Most hold this opinion because something has left them disillusioned with the way American treats people, enforces laws, engages in foreign policy, or the way it fails to do each of these things. In any case, the American dream has slowly been eroded in the wake of the shifting of society into socially separate and economically stratified groups that feel their separation from true power to change the United States of America. That America is not the greatest country in the world and it isn’t nearly as rich, as it once was either.

American has become a divided nation.

The real problem with the American dream today is essentially that most intelligent people are guided in how they are focused on achieving it. We have a two party system that is supposed to be representative of equality and real world representation of public opinion. In reality, the two party system is set up in such a way, that if we do not choose one of the two sides, it is nearly impossible to even have an opinion. Anything that mildly deviates from the left or the right, those views are not likely to get enough support to be represented. Ask anyone from an extremist point of view, or someone holding very middle of the road political opinions. Both these equally valid positions, simply do not have enough representatives in the population to warrant either party worry about them. Except possibly in little percentages or swing votes, and only during the elections of major importance like the presidential, or elections for the Senate and House.

Americans think great things about the United States, but they have no reason or proof that they should feel that way about America. Almost as if there were two countries simultaneously existing on top of one another.

One being America, a land whose population is made up of common people and citizens, but nobody who actually can count on the government to protect them, or even share the same country with them. The other being the United States, it is a country whose population is made up of true believers in the body political or you might call them the United Statesians, like the Romans were the true believers in the military government overlooking the Roman Empire. Americans are free but not equal to the United Statesians. Both sides of American want freedom, but both do not believe in the same way of achieving it.

One thing is true, despite these basic conflicts.

Most Americans wane nostalgic for the past. A time before television, before technology, before the Internet, and before the country had become so jaded. When the country wasn’t so scared to be politically correct or socially incorrect. If the American dream still exits, it is a dream that is rooted in somehow returning to a place of innocence. Because happiness is still the real American dream in our hearts.

 

Jessica Kane is a professional blogger who writes for Faxage a leading company that provides Internet fax service for individuals and businesses.