“The wise rest at least as hard as they work.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
The central premise of my book on balanced living is about balancing the different areas of your life to experience more positive emotions and improved emotional health.
Spending the right amount of time on your work – what you do for a living – is one domain that requires much reflection and awareness.
The trick is to find the right amount of time to spend on your job so that your work does not consume you but that you experience the psychological benefits of your work at the same time. It’s about reflecting on whether your work is building or breaking your attempt at a balanced life.
For instance, when you feel good about your work, it provides you with feelings of accomplishment, achievement, and an overall feeling of fulfillment and satisfaction. A healthy workplace can also enrich your life by giving you a sense of teamwork and camaraderie.
Some Governments Minimize the Importance of Balanced Living
But one of the discoveries I came across in doing research for my book is that the idea of living a balanced life – a life that includes physical health, hobbies, relationships, and meaningful work – is influenced by the culture one grew up in.
And in some cultures, the message from their political leaders is that a person’s work should be the priority in one’s life, even at the expense of familial relationships and good health.
Take South Korea, for example. South Korea is one of the countries in the world (at least until earlier this year) where the 52-hour work week was the norm. But due to an aging population and a dwindling birth rate, the government wanted to extend the work week to 69 hours.
However, the younger generation of workers — millennials and Generation Z – forced the government to change their laws and abandon the idea of a 69-hour work week.
Many kids in South Korea have grown up with parents whose physical health and overall quality of life were compromised because of their culture’s emphasis on productivity and longer workweeks.
For instance, “grawosa” or “death by overwork” is a significant problem in South Korea. Many workers experience heart attacks and are often sleep deprived, leading to more accidents on the road and in the workplace.
Another consequence related to the pressure associated with overworking is that South Korea has the highest suicide rate of all developed countries.
Psychologically, overworking also impacts the entire family unit since overworked parents find it difficult to be emotionally available to their children – a reality that has likely inspired the young adults of South Korea to remind their leaders of the importance of having a more balanced life, one that values life outside of work more than life at work.
Everything is About Making Balanced Choices
In this post, I wanted to point out that while work can provide a person with positive feelings of achievement, accomplishment, and purpose, working too much can also lead to problems in other areas of your life.
The key, then, is to find a balance between life at work and life outside of work, and an essential strategy for finding this balance is to reflect on emotional well-being constantly.
Are you feeling irritable, stressed, or unhappy? Chances are you’re spending too much time in one (or several) domains of your life and not enough on the other areas. If that’s the case, ask yourself what a young person might suggest you pay more attention to. In South Korea, it’s the younger generations who are inspiring change toward a more balanced life.