How To Achieve Work-Life Balance as a Father

No doubt that when you become a father, life gets a little more complicated.  You  were already trying to balance your work, relationship, and friends.  Now you have a child.  You may even have a couple of them. So how do you balance it all?  How do you make it all work.  Well in this video we are going over some tips to help you achieve work life balance.

This video is in partnership with Fatherly. They are an awesome resource for dads.  We’ll put a link to Fatherly in the description so be sure to check them out.

As a dad, you could have many roles
Your a father
Your a husband or boyfriend
You a son to your parents
You could be a brother
You are an employee or business owner
You are a friend
and the list goes on and on

You have all of these roles and you want to be great at all of them.  But here’s the reality check:  You can’t be great at all of them all the time.  You can’t, it’s impossible.

You might be a really good father one day, but you didn’t pay attention to your wife.  or you killed it at work that week, but you ended up not spending much time with your family.  You have been taking care of your aging parent, but your work has suffered. But I want to be great at all of these things, all the time. This is a problem called WANTITALL   I know this …..because I suffer from it. WANTITALL is a huge epidemic.  If you suffer from this, use hashtag #WANTITALL when sharing this video.

I do have a couple of tips I want to share with you to help you achieve work life balance.

#1:  Be very clear about what you want.  You have to have an honest conversation with yourself.  Where do you want to achieve “success”?  Do you want a really strong family? or Is your career your #1 priority?  It’s all ok and there is no judgement, you just have to be clear about it.

Once you are clear then we have the second tip:

#2 Match your actions with what you want.  For example, if your family really is your priority, are your actions matching that?  or do you tell yourself and everyone else that family is so important, yet you spend time doing a lot of things that don’t involve building the family relationship.

#3 – Reduce wasted time:  For anyone who says they don’t have time…are you watching television? do you spend time on social media?  You might be surprised how much time you can gain by dropping those activities.  But I have to watch my shows or play my games?  Well then you might have to go back to tip #1 again and start over.

#4 – Improve your scheduling – If you feel like you need to step up your game in an area of your life, put it on the calendar.  That could be a date with your wife, or some one on one time with your child.   We put appointments in our work calendar, we can do the same with our personal calendar,  It all depends on what your priorities are.

#5 – Change your perspective – Instead of calling it work life balance, let’s call it work life harmony. Balance feels like you have to give something up in order to get something else.  I think the word harmony is better because it means that everything has to work together. You can work hard and still make time for your family.  You can be a good son and take care of your parents, while also making some plans with your friends.  As I said in the beginning, you just can’t be perfect at all of them all the time. Cut yourself some slack and be careful of how much expectations you are putting on yourself.  Your WANTITALL problem is your issue and only you can fix it.

I’d love to hear from you.  Do you struggle with WANTITALL?  Leave your feedback in the comments section below.

Here are some important links:  

PARENTING PROGRAM: This is Jasons signature course to help you go from confused to confident father. If you are serious about becoming the best version of yourself as a father and taking action, book a call to speak with us: https://www.daduniversity.com/application/?=articlekjb 

FREE ONLINE PARENTING CLASS: Learn the secrets of being a better father. Jason has put together a free online parenting webinar class: 6 Proven Strategies to Be a Better Father. You can register for the class here: https://www.daduniversity.com/webinar/?=articlekjb   

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