Wandering without focus or purpose, the child moves quickly between the various attractions, their attention captured by the brightest objects in their line of sight.

Without realizing it, their limited budget is exhausted and they have run out of time to get to the main attraction that brought them to the fair in the first place.

Balancing the demands of multiple roles associated with career, family, relationships, active living and community involvement can feel equally daunting.

The continual pull of competing priorities can cause high levels of stress and drain limited resources (i.e., time, energy and money). However, if approached in a strategic manner, multiple roles can energize, invigorate and produce a high level of personal satisfaction.

The aim of this article is to shift thinking surrounding work-life balance, create awareness of stress signals and warning signs indicating that support may be needed, and present strategies on how to renew and restore energy in order to manage the demands of multiple roles.

What is balance?

Work-life balance became a familiar term in the 1980s when stress was on the rise and becoming a costly issue for organizations. It has been viewed as the balance between an individual’s work and non-work life. Most of the research has focused on the issue of conflict, suggesting that a negative rivalry exists between work and family roles, causing individuals to become stressed and depleted.

However, little attention has been given to the individual benefits and life enrichment that can result from maintaining multiple roles. Having a day where you achieved your performance targets, received positive feedback from a customer and exercised at lunch can produce energy and have a positive influence on other life domains.

In order for positive outcomes to be achieved, researchers recommend a holistic approach be taken where all demands are effectively managed whether they are required or preferred. In order to become “balanced,” there needs to be effective personal resource allocation across all life pursuits.

In essence, this means being deliberate about how, when and where you are spending your resources by prioritizing what matters most and establishing a plan that will allow you to dedicate time and energy towards those things.

There needs to be a shift in thinking from trying to do it all in order to maintain that elusive ideal of balance, to focusing on what is most important and directing your resources towards those things. Like the child at the fair, if not strategic about where you put your time, energy and money, you are going to miss out on the main attraction.

Stress signals

Stress occurs when perceived demands exceed the perceived resources for coping with those demands. Stress isn’t always a negative thing, as it can motivate, energize and produce optimal conditions for performance. However, if you are constantly overextended and running in emergency mode, this can have costly implications for your mind and body.

Recognizing signs and symptoms of stress can help you take action before damaging effects occur. Stress manifests itself in four different ways, which include physical reactions, thoughts, behaviours and emotions. Based on the symptoms listed in each category below, can you recognize your stress signals?

Stress signs and symptoms:

• Physical: Fatigue, headaches, muscle tension, upset stomach, high blood pressure, frequent colds
  
  
• Thoughts: Confusion, mind racing, poor concentration, memory problems, difficulty making decisions
  
  
• Behaviours: Increase in substance use, eating more or less, isolation from others, avoidance or procrastination, sleep problems, short temper
  
  
• Emotions – moodiness, irritability, agitation, feeling overwhelmed, loss of self-esteem, depression

Warning signs
Stress is a normal response to situations where you feel threatened or out of balance. The body initiates an automatic process, the fight/flight/freeze response, to protect itself from perceived danger, be it real or imagined. However, stress signals are often ignored while trying to complete deadlines and respond to demands.

For some, being in a constantly overwhelmed state has become the new normal. Unfortunately, chronic activation of our nervous system with little reprieve from stress hormones can produce serious problems with health, relationships, work performance and well-being.

Once stress has become a long-standing issue, professional help may be needed. Warning signs that outside support may be required include symptoms that are persistent or outside “the norm” in relation to performance, health, relationships and general well-being. The following are a list of questions that you can use to monitor impacts of stress:

• Are you consistently feeling fatigued and run down?
• Has your sleep quantity and quality been poor?
• Have you had persistent colds/sickness or aches/pains?
• Do you feel consistently overwhelmed and irritable?
• Have you been having difficulties with work performance?
• Have you been having more difficulties with relationships than usual?
• Are you choosing unhealthy behaviours to cope with stress (i.e., excessive drinking)?

If you answered yes to most of these questions, support may be needed.

Energy renewal

Time and money are finite resources, but energy can be renewed through meaningful experiences and recovery activities. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz wrote an article on sustained high performance when faced with multiple demands.

A key premise of this article was that the enemy of high performance is not stress but rather lack of discipline and intermittent recovery practices. Loehr and Schwartz suggest that effective energy management has two key components:

1. Balance – There needs to a rhythmic movement between energy expenditure (stress) and energy renewal (recovery) activities. Chronic stress without recovery will deplete energy reserves and lead to larger issues.

2. Rituals – Recovery needs to be approached strategically by creating daily habits that renew energy.

Energy comes from four main sources in human beings including the body (physical), mind, emotions and human spirit. In each area, energy can be expanded and regularly renewed by establishing specific rituals such as:

• Physical – Provides you with the endurance needed to sustain the effort. Getting exercise, sleep and proper nutrition can help produce energy needed to manage the demands of multiple roles.
  
  Creating daily habits such as parking the car 20 minutes away and walking to and from work can be a simple ritual that promotes fitness development.
  
  
• Emotional – Creates the internal climate impacting performance and stress levels. Having methods to process emotions, being mindful and letting go of things outside of your control can produce positive emotions and energy.
  
  Having a daily habit of taking two five-minute breaks out of your day to practice mindful breathing can calm the fight/flight system.
  
  
• Mental – Aims to enhance cognitive capacities such as focus and critical thinking skills. Developing the daily habit of taking a 10-minute break to disengage from work in the morning and afternoon can result in higher and more sustainable focus and productivity.
  
  
• Spiritual – Connecting to deeper values and sense of purpose can serve as a powerful source of motivation, focus, determination and resilience.
  
  Establishing a ritual around what is most important, like family connection, and having daily dinner together can provide healthy perspective and renew energy.

Strategic approach

Like a child who has just entered the county fair being pulled in multiple directions, it is important to have a strategic approach to managing the different draws on your attention. To become more “balanced” and manage multiple roles effectively, consider the following:

• Shift your thinking from trying to have it all to having what matters the most. Take personal responsibility for achieving balance and make deliberate choices of how, when and where you are going to spend your resources.
  
  
• Be actively aware of stress signals and develop a systematic approach to monitor, and respond to, warning signs.
  
  
• Establish daily habits to expand and renew energy so you can sustain the effort needed to manage the demands of multiple roles.

As Nigel Marsh said in his TED talk on balance, “With the smallest investment in the right places, you can radically transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life.”  PD

Karen MacNeill, Ph.D., R.Psyc., is a psychologist at Copeman Healthcare Center.

References omitted due to space but are available upon request. Click here to email an editor.