Emotional Balance

Tonight on PBS there is a 3 part documentary about happiness called This Emotional Life. In the media promotion of the material the concept of emotional balance is discussed, a concept that I feel is an integral part of achieving overall balance between work and the rest of your life.

As Brain Rules author John J. Medina puts it, “You have one brain. The same brain you have at home is the same brain you have at work or school. The stress you are experiencing at home will affect your performance at work, and vice versa.” So it makes absolute sense that your emotional brain impacts every area of your life in the same way a stressed brain does, because it is the same brain.

Sounds so simple, yet you’d be surprised the resistance in the workshops sometimes to this notion. Some people want to believe they are superhuman (or nonhuman) and that they don’t take work home or home to work and they believe they can compartmentalize their feelings and emotions and not have cross-over – like removing a tie of taking of the heels results a magic emotional metamorphosis.

Perhaps work life balance is more an issue of emotion and stress balancing and really isn’t much about working at all. Rather work life balance is about how you interact with the people and events in your life, of which work is a part of. And how you interact with your own emotions and manage stress in and out of work largely determines the level of balance you feel.

I look forward to watching the series to learn more