Contrary to what we may think, striking a work-life balance doesn’t make us less effective. In fact, it only makes us better workers than those who burn themselves out by focussing on work at the cost of family, health and harmony. Many senior executives complain that they have too many demands, too many interruptions and distractions. They struggle to prioritise and end up firefighting despite their best efforts. For them, work-life balance is an aspiration, albeit an elusive one. They often feel that if they eke out time for their family and personal needs, they will fall behind in their careers.

All of us are blessed with the same 168 hours in a week. However, while a few achieve breakthroughs in life, the majority merely trudge along, wondering why they can never find time to do the things they want to. It is not just that harmony benefits your life—lack of harmony hurts it, in real tangible ways. The ability to concentrate and use your time well is important if you want to succeed in business or in other areas of your life, and a well-balanced life is the best tool for that. When you are spiritually, mentally, physically, socially and economically balanced, then you’re successful in the real sense.

The key is to look after your business, your balance [work, health, social circle and family] and your beyond [spirituality, giving, purpose]; and not prioritise one over the other. Paying equal attention to all three aspects will strengthen you as a person.

The World Health Organization estimates that stress costs American businesses $300 billion a year. The 2012 Workplace Survey released by the American Psychological Association suggests that many Americans report chronic work-related stress. Around 41 per cent said they “feel tense or stressed out during the workday,” an uptick from the previous year’s 36 per cent. In its annual wellness report, Employee Assistance Program provider ComPsych found that 38 per cent of employees can’t stop thinking about emotional, health, financial or job concerns.

Work-life balance not only results in happiness and personal success, it can even lead to business innovation. Richard Branson, founder of Virgin Group, has noted that some of his best ideas come when he engages his children in conversations about his work.

Melinda Gates sums it up well: “The only thing I care about on the day I die is that people think I was a great mom, family member, and friend.”

Challenge yourself with the following “How to” exercises to

• MAKE balance a personal priority and be clear what balance means to you. As Dr. Stephen Covey puts it, “first things first”: making sure that business, balance and beyond all play their parts.
• SPEND time with loved ones; also set aside time to improve your health and do things that matter to you, like pursuing a hobby. If you don’t spend quality time with yourself and your loved ones, someone or something less important will take up your time.
• PREPARE a “not to do” list, not a “to do” list. This will remove non-essentials from your life. How do you make it? List everything that must be done in your life; delegate as much as you can; next, eliminate what is not necessary, then prioritise and execute what is left.
• PRACTISE the Hour of Power: 20 minutes of exercise, 20 minutes of reading and 20 minutes of meditation each morning.
• OBSERVE the Power of the Hour: schedule an appointment with yourself midday to regroup, reflect and reprioritise. This will make your afternoons more productive.
• RECORD how your time is spent. When you do this, you become more aware and alert, thereby improving your focus and allocation of time.
• REMEMBER that slow is fast—when you slow down and spend more time with your family, you notice a lot more about them, and have time to actually hear them out. Consequently, your relationships get better as your attention and care create impact. Or, as another example, if you start eating slowly, you can enjoy your food better and feel full faster.
• FOCUS on the 20 per cent of things that give you 80 per cent of value.
• WRITE the top three goals you want to accomplish the next day before you go to bed, and work on them exclusively [at least till 2pm the next day]. Then you can take care of smaller tasks.
• SPEND quality time with business partners, colleagues, customers, spouse, children and parents.
• DEFINE what a successful day and week means to you. Then set about achieving it.
• DEVELOP the attitude that you will manage time, and not that time will manage you!

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Practising Yoga in your career

Would it be appropriate for a Yoga practitioner to be a hired overseas enforcer for an international corporation, a factory farmer, a casino manager or a lobbyist for a cut-throat pharmaceutical company? We think not. All these jobs involve unsavoury practices or goals that definitely compromise a Yoga practitioner’s moral integrity. We actually had a student who, attracted by a handsome salary, took on a job at a casino. Before very long, he found that the atmosphere in the casino was so disagreeable that at the end of the day he felt filthy and didn’t even want to continue with his practice of Yoga. In the end, he resigned and has never regretted his decision.

It is important for a Yoga practitioner to pursue a proper livelihood. That means earning one’s living in a decent and respectable way that does not violate any of Yoga’s many moral virtues

Your beliefs are not part-time

We cannot practise integrity part-time, or in one aspect of our life and not others. Integrity cannot be compartmentalised; it is an all-or-nothing matter. We regard integrity as an aspect of truthfulness, which is considered a major virtue in Patanjali’s Yoga and, of course, in other branches of Yoga as well. He tells us that when a practitioner is firmly established in truthfulness, whatever he or she affirms comes true. We personally would limit this ability to spiritual matters, because in worldly affairs a master often relies, like everyone else, primarily on information that may or may not be entirely correct. As a rule, however, a master does not indulge in chitchat or unconsidered opinions.

The splintering of Yoga

Regretfully, the contemporary Yoga movement in the West lacks integrity in several respects. The first is that many Yoga teachers give the wrong impression that Yoga is no more than a postural practice. This is unfair to traditional Yoga, which is obviously much more. It is also unfair to newcomers to Yoga, who don’t know any better, but should be given an opportunity to explore the spirituality of Yoga and the full range of its practices.

Most deplorable is the absence of traditional Yoga’s moral disciplines from many of the teachings offered at modern centres.

This is like offering a person a chair with only three legs to sit on, which is an accident in the making. What good, one may ask, will it do for a student to know the headstand if, when he or she has a car accident, they do not know how to manage life afterward? Or, of what advantage is mastering the Warrior III pose when the mind is worrying about death?

It is irresponsible for a Yoga teacher to tell his or her students that the moral disciplines are unimportant

Not only is modern Yoga by and large not grounded in the moral precepts, it is also shot through with the moral apathy and shallowness that characterises our mainstream culture.

Yoga is a way of life

It is irresponsible for a Yoga teacher to tell his or her students [as we have heard] that the moral disciplines are unimportant. In fact, without them there can be no attainment of mental health, never mind inner freedom. And it is negligent for a Yoga teacher to publicly dismiss the spiritual orientation of Yoga, because this is precisely what is missing from our troubled culture. Integrity, among other things, means to present and practise Yoga as the spiritual tradition that it is. Anything less is dishonest.

Excerpted from Yoga: A Beginner’s Guide by Georg and Brenda Feuerstein.
Published by Jaico. Used with permission.

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