Striking The Right Balance

Two and half years back I was bothered about something which somehow I have managed to understand to a greater extent. It was about striking the perfect balance between two different worlds around one’s own life. I was not sure how one could balance one’s personal and professional life.

Let me put it this way. I had been in a world of personal life for more than 20 years of my life. And suddenly when one gets into a completely different life altogether called professional life, it is obvious to perplex the best of the balanced minds. Considering myself not to be that balanced in my understanding of these two lives, I was surely a victim of this age old belief – One needs to keep his personal and professional life different. If ever you mix both of these then you end of screwing both big time. With confusion in mind I had tried my best to bring about the perfect balance. I would not say I succeeded to strike the right chord on the first shot. It wasn’t easy to bring about the changes in you to keep both these peculiar demons at bay across the thin line or better if I say this to be the silver lining.

One point that always bothered me was that how can someone keep his personal life away from his work place(better to say professional life) when he is present personally/physically at his work place for more than one third of the day? Worse if you are a workaholic and a bachelor! You’re bound to have your personal life revolve around you where ever you are. A ‘resource’ as they say in the industry is a human at the end of the day. He is bound to have emotions (like happiness, sorrow, pain, love, hatred, jealousy, anger, turbulence, expectations, relationships etc), friends and foes where he lives his life. And it would be unwise to say that you being a professional you shouldn’t let all these factors affect you. It definitely does affect but you need to bring your personal touch to bring about the right decision. Even in personal life we have these factors and we deal with them quite well. So why not deal the same way out here as well as well do in our personal life? And when I say the personal touch let me prove all those theories vague which pronounce to keep all personal things away while being a professional. Many say “He was quite professional in his approach and didn’t let his personal problems affect his performance.” Fine agreed but where did he bring about that professional approach from? One has to be personally connected to the whole thing.

As my experience goes, I am about three years old in the professional life. And I am proud to say that I have the perfect balance where I work. I always used to listen from people, at work there are no friends. And let me prove all of them wrong. I have my best pals where I work. When at office we still work together and resolve the conflicts quite easily which come up just because of the personal relations that we share. Had I kept my professional life away from my personal life then perhaps they would have never understood my behaviour or vice versa in a given situation. That goes true with my managers as well. Not always managers are demons. Not always they are wrong as it is mostly understood. There are times when one needs to go beyond and try having a look at the other side of it. And you seriously need to put yourself in other’s shoes to get the complete picture. But of course this is only possible if there exists a personal touch to it all. And finally you land up in creating a world where both the parties have acceptance level only due to your personal life being involved in it. And how do you achieve it all? By just letting yourself being You. Most people fail to understand this and in the pursuit of being the best professional they start becoming someone they are not. That is what I had landed up doing initially, and it is no worry when I accept that I screwed it big time.

I still find people around me who are being fooled by themselves. I hope to see them bringing about a change in their approach and understanding of these two different persons they want to be. Personating your work environment gives you a scope to judge the best thing you could do without bringing unnecessary complications into your life where you spend maximum of your time called Office.