Work Life Balance What's That? Part 3 Boundaries

Filed in archive Entrepreneurship on October 26, 2006

Creating balance between business and home will prevent stress, tension, and regret as your family pressures you to 'spend more time at home'. The key is to create healthy boundaries between home and the business.

For the average small business owner 'boundaries' can take many forms. Setting boundaries require mental discipline and determination. Strategies can include not taking work home, turning off the cell phone, blackberry/pager, and not spending time in front of the computer.

For the small, small business owner (solo-entrepreneur) owning a business is a lifestyle choice and the lines between work and home get blurred since these businesses are often home-based. My personal experience having done this for the past 16 years is that you have to be clear about your values and use your values to guide you in making decisions.

Part of creating a healthy balance between home and business is paying attention to your mood. Circumstances in your business can change dramatically until you get a solid foundation built. You can help yourself by maintaining perspective by observing the general 'tone of your mood'. Are you thinking about possibilities or do you tend to think more about survival or what I call 'necessity thinking'. For example:

Move From Necessity Thinking: One discipline they do not teach in business school is how to maintain perspective when the going gets tough. The natural human tendency is to withdraw and pull back but the risk in that behavior is that you begin to think more about surviving instead of thriving.

Survival or necessity thinking alters your sense of perspective and impairs decision making at a time when you need to be thinking about what is possible.

Cultivate Possibility Thinking: This is much more than just maintaining a positive attitude because considering what is possible allows you to remain open to alternatives or notice a new course of action or solution. Whereas, necessity thinking limits your observational skills and affects your attitude.

I am not suggesting that you ignore the feedback you may be getting (drop in sales, inability to retain employees, working longer hours etc.) but I am suggesting that you maintain a firm grasp on reality. Keep your eye on the prize by thinking in terms of possibilities versus limiting yourself to the goal of simply surviving.

When you think about it what other option do you have other than shutting down or trying to avoid your problems by pretending that they do not exist? For a committed entrepreneur, that is simply not an option because you as soon as you begin to shut down or ignore your problems you are quitting on yourself. Via How to Avoid the Pain of Regret

By simply noticing the tone of your thought life will allow you to make adjustments to improve your outlook. What do you do to keep your mood positive?