Integration, not compartmentalisation, is the key to work-life balance
It was my personal experience, some years ago now, that the joy I once found in my work became steadily eroded until I felt simply no longer at home in my place of work. Disillusionment, disaffection and disappointment with professional life can creep up on you, gradually draining you of enthusiasm for what was once your passion; a death by a thousand cuts. Our common reaction is to look to change our external circumstances in ways that might provide relief from what ails us. This gradual degradation of the quality of working life is however ultimately a personal experience and the means to change it, to transform it, do not lie in external circumstances but rather within us.
One great danger, one that we too easily slip into over time, is that of creating compartments within ourselves - compartments into which we place our many relationships inside and outside professional life. They accommodate the various and subtle roles that we play affecting our conduct, our reactions and responses to situations that arise. The two main compartments that commonly arise are those designed to separate professional working life from personal life.
These compartments are expected and accepted as normal; a way of justifying to ourselves if not to others how it is that we may behave in one way towards our colleagues and in another towards our friends and family. How often do we hear people say “I can keep my work separate from my home life” or “I never take my work home with me”? And how often are those comfortable answers to uncomfortable questions (and would their families and friends agree)? Acceptance of this fundamental division, of these compartments, is the beginning of a process that becomes ever more subtle, more complex and so more difficult to unravel.
If you take the view that your professional life is distinct from your personal life you give yourself and others permission to behave in ways that would not be either natural or acceptable in your personal life. One obvious rationale is that there is a natural hierarchy; an order of authority in which obedience, compliance and respect are demanded. This accepted hierarchy of authority can however also give rise to behaviours that create distance and separation, in some cases amounting to intimidation and bullying.
The truth is there is no real difference between personal life and professional life - it is all ‘life’. The variance between compartments gives rise to inner conflict producing a constant state of stress that can explode in bouts of rage whose true source is obscured simply because it is ever-present. It is one of our most endearing human traits that living contrary to our personal values is inherently stressful and so ultimately not sustainable; not in the name of ‘success’ or ‘security’ or ‘career’. Not being true to ourselves is inherently stressful. We can become mal-adapted to stress and compartmentalising is one of our most common coping mechanisms. Those who chose compartments however can find themselves creating compartments for proclivities that can become addictions that in turn mask the discomfort of misalignment with individual values.
To align our behaviours with our values is to achieve integration; integration gives rise to integrity in its most important sense, namely “the state of being whole and undivided”. When we live in accordance with our values we are living according to what is true for us. When we do not we are creating internal conflict that will inevitably manifest itself in external conflicts and may corrupt our most treasured relationships with family and friends. Achieving integration can be a testing process as we recognise what we come to realise what we truly seek and find the courage to live for it. Finding our individual meaning and purpose as a lawyer is, however, the only authentic way to shape and renew our vocation and so find true ‘work-life balance’.
© Peter Rouse 2006 |
