#MondayMotivation: 4 thoughtforms to help you develop a healthier “work-life” balance.

#MondayMotivation: 4 thoughtforms to help you develop a healthy ‘work-life’ balance

I am feeling motivated to share with you some revelations that came to me over the weekend. 

I hope they will help you to create an improved and and more fulfilling work-life balance.

Okay, so I was looking at me on the video below which I put out to advertise a program of incense making workshops that I’m rolling out as modules from autumn equinox , through mid-winter to Spring Equinox. It’s not easy to watch this video because I’m looking first at one camera and then the other. 

And as you’re watching it…well it’s just a little weird right? 

I was practising presenting to different cameras because I had held an online meditation previously where only one person had signed up through Eventbrite ticketing, and I was accessing zoom through my iPad; but two others and were watching live on WhatsApp and I was engaging them through mobile phones.  I was filming on different devices to try and catch my engagements with displaced audiences. I was hoping to use the video as social media content. but it was so awful; I ditched the recording. 

The short footage below: the advert for my winter program was a second attempt to talk to more than one camera (as if I was engaging more than one of you at the same time)

I thought I’d set up two cameras and edit it and that it would make me look more professional. Despite using more tec. and allocating more time to editing. The result actually just makes me looks more weird. 

I don’t mind that, that’s my trademark. Even my accountant of many, many, years said to me the other day “when I first met you Lilly I thought you were a little bit weird”. I’ve heard that all my life and I’m learning to embrace it. It’s kinda becoming my hallmark. I’ve learnt to embrace all aspects of myself.

But that’s not why the clip doesn’t really work for you. it’s because the focus my attention is all over the place and that makes it difficult for you to focus on what I’m saying because I’m not focusing on you. And that makes it really difficult to relate to what I’m saying. 

Focussing our energy is how we create.

Now let’s talk about energy being pulled in different directions, because it’s a very good analogy for modern life, right? 

There are times in life where our priorities are split often times we shelve our own priorities to give time to others; and that’s not a bad thing. But sometimes, driven by ego, we run around from fear like the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland: “I’m late. I’m late for a very important date”… I don’t have time for you Alice 

because I’m being pulled somewhere away from what is in front of me, here, now. My focus is being pulled elsewhere by internal beliefs developed by external narratives. So, what was it that was more important for the White Rabbit? How was that more important than what was directly in front of him in his ‘here’ and ‘now’? Was that ‘important’ thing supporting his life? Was that thing which is distracting his attention making him feel good?  

It was important that if he didn’t go because the queen might drop off his head …. so yeah… existential  risk of bodily extinction…quite important. No wonder he was anxious. His intrinsic motivation was fear and fear was coming from external environmental factors.

Sometimes our priorities are driven by internal beliefs created by external narratives. 

Anxiety is on the increase, and for example panic attacks are increasing in society especially for younger people.

We feel the need to be dividing our energy, splitting ourselves between one thing and another; often-times running around to please other people in order to fulfil a need for external validation. 

And that behaviour just depletes us. It’s not supporting us. And this narrative of “I must do this, I must do that” can be overwhelming. No wonder that there is an increase in diagnoses like bipolar depression & ADHD; adrenal exhaustion & chronic fatigue.

We have been conditioned to give lip-service to our needs of ‘work, rest and play’.

Let’s look at that: so, there are 168 hours in every week. If we balance our life - we should sleep for at least 56 of them; and then we should rest, and that includes time to digest your meals. It also includes deeper rest like meditation and modalities such as yoga for example; and every day TLC… ( going to the hairdresser or barbers, relaxing in a bath) 

A full-time working contract is around 37.5 or 40 hours a week. That should leave 50 hours for play. In reality a lot of that time is actually eaten up stressfully in commuting to work. Even if we are fortunate enough to work from home 50 hours of play?  How many of you have fun for 50 hours a week?

How does work life balance rollout in your life? Do you work- Sleep- Work- sleep- play football on a Sunday morning for a couple of hours, then work-sleep? No wonder you might feel yourself becoming depleted, tired, depressed anxious.

I’d like you to take a moment remember your past 7 days and think about how many hours you devoted to ‘work’, how many to sleep (and other resting activities) and how many hours do you give yourself to have some fun?

One of the corporate ‘values’ of my Lotus Companies, a KPI fit for monitoring, is: ‘does this project/workstream/or task allow time for happiness, joy, fun or play?

Even children in our society are not getting enough time to play.

Most of us have become conditioned, living a life pulling our attention back and forth between hourly paid work and the rest of our lives. 

That is not a Work-Life balance my friend

Employers use rhetoric around wellness and offer ‘flexibility’, which usually means you are expected to flex (like bend over backward for them). 

My last line manager  basically told me off as if I were a child for going to the hospital for an MRI and CAT scans without asking her permission. I didn’t go during work hours, she didn’t fact check when my appointment was. She just launched into that I was expected to ask her permission. 

Is your manager trying to control your life. Is your employer expecting you to bend over backwards, giving up evening & weekend time, but then rigidly disciplining you and not flexing back? It makes a joke of policies, or posters with wellbeing phrases on. Doesn’t it?

I have learnt from that bitter experience the impact on physical and mental wellbeing of that Draconian way of working. 

I know from positive experience that we manifest better outcomes more filling, more supportive outcomes from a place of compassionate, calm & stillness. 

I look back at my life when I was a single mother, predominantly not calm and still… and boy was that a mess!!

Recently, I caught myself doubting again and falling into that dichotomy of 

“Need to do this” (work activity) to “earn a living“ & feed my body. “Need to do that” (the meditation and spiritual healing), for my own growth, and to help others.

I could do a whole #MondayMotivation just about the words we use in relation to our beliefs about “work”, which reveal our conditioned narrative that “work” is something we have to do that we don’t enjoy ( like a disciplinary life sentence). Phrases like “Earn a living”. You don’t have to “earn” a living as if it is an award, or level you have to reach. You have the right to ‘live’. It’s your birthright. In the society we have set up we have to go to work in exchange for monetary compensation. I’ve spoken about that narrative before. 

Today I want to look at the dichotomy of us focussing one way and then running the other. The damage that is being done, when we don’t value ourselves in the ‘here’ and ‘now’: damage to our mental and physical wellbeing because we are being pulled in different directions. 

No wonder so many people can’t manifest the lives they want. 

You manifest where you focus.

You manifest most easily from a place of calm-stillness; 

You manifest most effectively, with the most impact, from a position of joy.

Over the past couple of weeks, I feel like my  focus is being pulled in two different directions:

That’s because I have a property consultancy company, Lotus Property Consultancy; and a natural healing company, Lotus Natural Healing.

I earned a good living from Lotus Property before I shelved it for a while to devote my life energy to create value within another organisation, where I was not valued and my life was not honoured or respected: an environment that made me sick. 

Then there’s my healing work that’s been re-emerging, with deepening faith, cycling over thirty years. The esoteric and spiritual disrupting the “have to ‘earn’ a living”, “have to give my time & energy” (my life), to create value for other people as a priority over myself. In other words slandering myself. 

Then there’s the “have to have a’proper job’” narrative. 

The narrative which devalues natural health, and healing work, as “not a proper job”, treating it like a voluntary outreach, or a ‘hobby’. Or that it’s just something I do periodically to heal myself (to recover from the damage of toxic work environments) and help others do the same.

It’s a calling that reminds me periodically, whenever I forget, of the eternal truth: that my life will be supported not because I’m ‘worthy’ or ‘unworthy’, but because: to support life IS the only function of life itself. 

So, I was in this place of doubt, being pulled between two very different companies. Having a split focus, looking this way, and then the other way… achieving what felt like very little. The feeling of being pulled in two different directions was leaving me feeling unbalanced, out of kilter, stressed, ontologically afraid, and feeling like had to choose one or the other. 

On one side Lotus Property Network Auctions. I am learning to use a new software, actually built to identify investment opportunities, which by the way I think is a brilliant tool, it’s called Property filter, big shout out to you guys. 

And yes I do still feel excited when I’m supporting new lead generators, to earn liveable or monthly incomes streams while developing agency & autonomy (work-life balance) in their lives. 

In the past, auction lead generation had felt difficult because we are predominantly dealing with distressed properties and/or distressed people. But yes, I do still feel the excitement & motivation of offering value: problem-solving for people, offering solutions, supporting them through periods of external stress. 

Last week I realised actually the auction lead generation ‘work’ has the same intrinsic motivators that drive my Lotus 🪷 natural healing  at the green Lotus 🪷 lounge. The fire in my belly for the healing and natural therapies is a developing a deep calm and stillness, perfect for creative manifestation. And, because of this, Lotus 🪷 Property feels a lot less frenetic and more focussed. Which is helpful because wherever we focus our energy is where we manifest most easily. 

Lotus Property/Network auctions requires a more yang energy; and relaxing into the calm stillness to channel healing energy is a more yin position. And keeping them going side by side helps to balance my week in terms of Yin and Yang, rather than artificially allocating timed segmentations. And the result is I am happier & healthier & wealthier & more balanced; and I can help & support more people. 

So how can my revelations help you?

1. The first thing I want you to do is become aware of words and phrases you use around ‘work-life’ balance. Change the words you use, changes the narratives. I’m inviting you to be aware of how you think and how that makes you feel. 

• Embed the changes into your behaviour. Don’t leave them hanging like a HR poster in a staff room that nobody uses. 

2. Then I realised that we’ve been trained to accept a subordination, that doesn’t feel’ good; that is just something we have to accept just to survive. And I also caught myself understanding how deeply we have been conditioned to accept that work doesn’t have to ‘feel good’.  

•    Does your work life leave you feeling resentful? Does it leave you feeling exhausted and ‘begrudging’ your existence? Please don’t fall down that pit, it doesn’t end well. 

Please believe me when I say that ‘Work’  can function as a focussed activity, in time and place, through which you can create value for society and develop an inner state of happiness for yourself.

3. I invite you to reframe ‘work-life’ balance through a different lens. It’s a whole lot healthier through the framework of Yin & Yang. Because it allows us an equilibrium of balance in our energy while maintaining momentum needed to achieve things; have greater impact, and have energy reserves to deal with unexpected stressors.

4. Rather than applying old-fashioned notions of time-management (apportioning a pre-set number of hours to segments of our life; and accepting restrictive, externally forced timetables which pull our focus one way and then another; disrupting the positive flow of our innate transformational & creative energy) we might needed to manifest easily. The old way of thinking, of being, and of doing, actually blocks conscious intended creation and manifests quite different results in our lives. Remember, it shouldn’t be work.v. The rest-of-your-life, in unequal proportions.

So my #MondayMotivation has intended to help you think about your current work-life balance; and re-frame possibilities of thought and focus into creating for yourself improved, and more fulfilling work-life balance.