How To Reconcile Work And Family Life?

There are so many things to do in a single day that sometimes we neglect certain important aspects. Often, balancing the routine between family and work is not easy, especially if we take into account the pending list of demands with which we carry on our shoulders. How to reconcile family life with work life? 

This is a matter that seems complicated. Sometimes, the working hours are longer than they should, the vacation periods are not long enough or, even, you have to resort to more than one job to have adequate financial solvency.

The workplace demands of us, the family demands of us … we find ourselves immersed in that no man’s land without knowing what to do to combine our family life with our work life. However, it is possible to do so. Here’s how to do it.

Reconcile work and family life in the present

According to the Royal Academy of the Spanish Language (RAE), conciliar means ‘to make compatible with each other’. In this case, it will try to reconcile work and family. Now how?

To begin, it is important to seize the present moment. It is about not getting stuck in the past when considering things, because that leads us to feel overwhelmed by feeding negative thoughts such as ” What if I had done …?” , “ Why didn’t I…? “, etc.

And of course, it is also about not anchoring ourselves to expectations, that is, to avoid thinking about everything that may happen later. Otherwise, we can create the right setting for anxiety and frustration to come on the scene. Best of all, we don’t really know what’s going to happen, so why bother?

Living in the present moment is living the “here and now”, it is taking advantage of what happens in every moment, second by second. It is to enjoy our children if we are with them, our partner or the family outing, but also the obligations of work in our working hours.

Now, thinking about work while we play with our children is past or future, but not present. It is stealing time from our family life for work issues that at that time we can hardly solve. Thus, living in the present moment helps us to combine family life with work.

Learn to delegate

Sometimes, we think we are omnipotent and we carry everything on our shoulders and back. Without realizing it, we impose our own condemnation and as time goes by, we feel overwhelmed because we cannot cope with everything. The problem is that the frustration grows and sometimes we explode on an emotional level.

We can prevent this situation. To do this, we must learn to delegate, to assign tasks to others to make life easier for us. Now, it is not about taking all responsibilities off of us, but about not putting on more than we can bear.

At first this process may seem complex, but once you start it seems easier. Some indications that may be helpful are:

• Adjust responsibilities.
• Ask for help if we think it’s necessary.
• Get to know the work team to know what responsibilities to grant each person. The same with the family.

• Give a vote of confidence to the people who have been delegated responsibilities.
• Distribute tasks and activities realistically.

An important aspect is that to know how to delegate you have to work on yourself. Knowing ourselves means knowing where our limits are. 

Create routines

Routines may seem boring to set up, but they all have something nice about them: they help us organize our time! Thanks to this, it will be easier to reconcile work and family life.

On the other hand, prioritizing can also be helpful. To do this, it is advisable to ask yourself what it is necessary to do and eliminate what consumes a lot of energy and does not make us happy, as long as it is possible.

Also, it is important to consider  schedules based on reality. Sometimes, we are unrealistic and believe that we will be able to do everything and we set ourselves unattainable goals. Calm!

Manage emotions

Managing our emotions is vital to make work and family life compatible. Not getting carried away by our impulses and identifying how we feel is key to our relationships. Because, often, it is not how we feel that determines our well-being, but what we do with our emotions, how we respond to what happens to us.

In fact, James Gross, the director of the Standorf University psychophysiology laboratory, claims that managing our emotions can prevent illnesses such as depression or borderline personality disorder.

Thus, to manage emotions the following indications can help us.

• Release tension through physical exercise or some artistic activity.
• Practice active listening.
• Use breathing techniques.
• Seek professional help. 
• Regulate our concerns to a single moment of the day.
• Reflect and ask ourselves about what can happen if our fear happens and add a solution.

As we can see, managing the emotional sphere can be a good ally against stress, frustration and nervousness.

Other ways of combining family and work life can be changing jobs, moving closer to the place where we work so as not to waste so much time, investigating labor laws to find out if we have the right to other types of days or situations …

Chilean psychologists Andrés Jiménez Figueroa and Emilio Moyano Días highlight the balance between family and work life as a measure to guarantee a higher quality of life. Now, when it is not in our hands, what can we do? The answer is simple: look for alternatives.

Consolidating family life is not impossible. Identifying priorities, taking time, getting to know each other, taking advantage of every moment, organizing time with routines and, above all, taking care of others and taking care of ourselves is essential.