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Hi there, Mauriciana here, founder of the MindSight Academy, neurocoach to executives, leaders, managers, entrepreneurs, and I'm also a neuroleadership trainer using insights from neuroscience to help you flourish and exceed expectations. I'm so excited to have you back to another episode of Lead to Excel podcast. And I'm so thrilled about today because we're talking about work-life integration, which is commonly referred to as work-life balance. This came about because I recently gave a talk to the association for black and minority ethnic engineers on work-life balance. So grab a cup of coffee, put your feet up, and listen in. The pressure of an increasingly demanding work culture in this environment is perhaps the biggest and most pressing challenge to the mental health of the general population. And the cumulative effect of increasing working hours is having such an important effect on the lifestyle of so many people, which is now evidently proving to be damaging the mental well-being of so many. Maybe you're finding that pace is going too fast. Maybe you're treading sleep for work. Sometimes you might find that things are just getting too much, and sometimes it could be much more subtle. Gradual transition into a situation that's unsustainable. You might be finding it difficult to navigate your career with having a partner and then throwing children into the mix, and that can feel like something or someone has to give. For many years, it was traditionally women who would put their careers on the back burner. But as the predominating culture is changing both at work and at home, women and increasingly men are feeling more and more empowered to pursue a rewarding career while also supporting their partners and maintaining a healthy work-life balance. The question though is: is it actually possible to have a successful career and also have a fulfilling family life as well? Can you truly separate work from your life? If you lose your job, will it affect your life? And if you have a sick relative, would it affect your life? And in both cases, the answer will be yes. So back to the question of whether you can have a successful career and have a fulfilling family life balance. It can be done. But everyone's story is unique. So your story is unique to you. Let's look at some data. Research has shown that service professionals put in more than 50 hours a week at work. Also, 40.1% of our day is spent multitasking with communication tools like our phones, our laptops, and all the things that go with it. 74% of work done is usually done during normal working hours. That means that 26% of work is done at night or at weekends. It's also been shown that 81% of workers check their emails outside work hours, and 55% say that they look at their inboxes after 11 p.m. 75% say that not being able to strike a healthy balance between work and life is causing them a lot of stress. And finally, lack of sleep cost the US economy $400 billion each year. And this is not dissimilar from UK, Australia, and Canada and other parts of the world. So how can you then achieve a work-life balance with all these things going on? But first, let's look at some common misconceptions about work-life balance. The first is more work is better. A lot of people believe that the more work you do, the better it is for your career. So that is in the sense that you know you have to really work so hard to be able to achieve excellence or rise in your career. That's one of the main misconceptions that takes people away from achieving the work-life balance they desire. The other thing is the ideal worker. What is an ideal worker? In many organizations, the ideal worker is the one that comes in at 7:30 or 8 and works till about 8 p.m., 7 p.m. 8 p.m. You find that a lot of leaders are leaving work quite late, which then, in a lot of cases, unconsciously puts pressure on workers to then stay later as well. Because they don't want to be the one leaving early while their boss is still left at work. So there's that misconception that to be an ideal worker, you've got to really be there putting in all the hours to show that you're great. The next misconception is that the less hours you work, the happier you will be. So that's the other perspective now. That's work less and you feel happier. The other misconception now is that the perfect 50-50 split is possible between work and life. So now that we've kind of got those misconceptions out, I'm going to address quite a lot of them as I go along so you can see why I've called them misconceptions. Why do we need a work-life balance? I asked this question recently. A lot of things they said were well-being, cultivate better leaders, the ability to stay engaged for longer, being able to be profitable, happiness was another one, effective decision makers, positive relationships and collaboration, and then being able to be creative and innovative. So these are some of the reasons people give for wanting the work-life balance. And when you really look at all these things, what it actually comes down to is that a work-life balance helps reduce stress and pre- and also prevents burnout in the workplace. So now let's kind of look at stress. I've done a podcast on how to overcome anxiety and overwhelm at work. And we touched a lot, we touched quite a bit on stress there. Now, chronic stress can negatively impact mental health because it's linked to higher risk of depression, anxiety, and somnia. And also it leads to loss of productivity. Sometimes feeling a bit of stress and then having the feeling dissipate can also be a sign of a good work-life balance because a bit of stress, as we know now, can actually be a good motivator. The problem is that when your body is always in that hyper-aware state, or you feel that you can no longer cope, that's where there's a problem. That's what leads to the chronic stress that then creates a lot of the overwhelm and burnout. But how do you now draw the line? The fact is that it's about achieving the right mix of business and personal life that is right for you specifically. So it's not looking at what's right for everyone, it's knowing what's right for you. Life balance is a perceived state. Only you know when your life is or is not in balance, and you find that it's when you feel out of control of your time that you then feel that your life is out of balance. But neuroscience has now shown that we can create our own work-life blend, and that's why I titled this podcast work-life integration as opposed to work-life balance. So balancing life and career is a highly personal challenge, and what works for you may not work for others, but generally there are some common themes. Now let's look at another important thing that actually creates this feeling of imbalance, and it's the generational differences that we find in the workplace. So we'll start first with the builders, the generation known as builders who were born between 1927 to 1947. Now, this group of people, for them, formality and rules are important, hierarchy, respect for authority, and being formally recognized in their ability or their status. Now, for this group of people, the belief for them is that they live to work and they value hard work, and you find company loyalty in this group of people. These are the age group that finish school, go into the workplace, and could stay in one job for the whole of their career or maximum two jobs. You know, we could say the common stereotype belief for this group is builders' believe promotions, raises, and recognition should come from job tenure. So the longer they stay in the job, the more they give into the job, then the more they should be able to rise. What you find in this age group is that belief that the longer they stay, then they should be honored for really length of stay or technically how much they've put in. Then you've got the baby boomers who were born between 1946 and 1964. And for this group, financial security is very important. Job security, baby boomers are very driven, and they also live to work. Baby boomers you find tend to be resistant to change, but you also find company loyalty amongst them. Baby boomers, technically, the belief here is that they are not tech savvy, and work ethic is measured in hours worked, very similar to the builders as well. Then the Generation X, who are born between 1965 and 1982, embraced change, informality. This generation were the first ones to come up with the whole concept of work-life balance. This group loves ongoing feedback, but the difference also here is that they work to live and not live to work. And they lack company loyalty. The Generation X questions formal authority and they also tend to reject rules. And then now we have the millennials who were born from 1983 to 2001, and these are the group who are now coming into the workforce now. And they are the ones that are that are born into the social media age. They're globally conscious, but for them, work has to be meaningful. This group, the millennials, are not driven so much by money, but it's work being actually meaningful, quick information access, and for them, also being able to have flexibility at work is important. And here you find that feeling connected, having relationships is important to this group of people. And you tend to find a lot of stereotypical thinking towards the millennials, being that millennials are lazy and feel self-entitled, and the millennials like to job hop. Now, in terms of millennials being lazy and self-titled, it's interesting because this belief is really from the baby boomers in particular, an older generation that feel the millennials are lazy because of the different views of work and the fact that they job hop a lot. But the fact is that the millennials in their own way actually work exceptionally hard. So looking at these four generations, in a lot of organizations, you will have these four generations working together, and that's why, in a lot of times, then you find the struggle of where is the balance. Now, for leaders and organizations, you need to be able to incorporate the mindset of these generations appropriately to enable you to get the best out of them. If not, you find that you're either leaving some of them behind or not taking them all along, and you end up not getting the best from them. So let's now look at some of the ways to achieve this balance. The first thing is the ability for you as a leader, as an individual, to rewire your brain. And how do you do that? Now, to learn more about how to rewire your brain, listen to my previous podcast on how to rewire your brain because I went into a lot of science there and I gave a lot of techniques as well. The key here is the ability to be able to rewire your brain to create awareness because it's this awareness that will give you momentum to be able to do what you need to do. Now, the awareness I'm speaking about here is in terms of you personally. What who are you? What is your passion? What is your purpose? Why are you doing what you're doing? What is it you want to get out of work? To have the balance you need, you've got to integrate work and life. Because the more you keep them separate, the more you will feel out of control or not be able to control one. It will constantly feel as if you're juggling things. And it's the juggling that creates that feeling of stress or imbalance. Now, rewiring your brain is identifying what your current belief is. What do you believe about work? What do you believe about life? What do you believe about the work you're doing? If you see the work you're doing as something you've got to do, something that is not pleasurable, something you don't enjoy. What you're doing in essence is putting yourself out of control of your work. So you're in essence separating yourself from it, and it's something that is being done to you. In a way, you're kind of making yourself a victim of work. And once you do that, that's exactly the information you're giving to your brain, and your brain will constantly see it as out of balance. So the first step now is to rewire your brain so that you change the way you view work and life as separate. Look at them as being integrated because at the end of the day, look at it, they're both you. So why separate them? Maureen goes to work, Maureen has a life outside work, it's still me, it's still one person. So integrate both into one and look at them as you as your life and ask yourself those questions that put you back in control because once you make your work something you enjoy, or once you're working in something that you truly enjoy and it's purposeful, that puts you in control and activates your dopamine, which then gives you pleasure, that that sense of reward. One of the great ways to also push this further is to in everything you do have a plan, have a goal. So even if you're in a job you don't really enjoy, the question is why don't you enjoy it? Is it something you can change? Is this something that is in your capability to change, or do you need to just change your mindset to it towards what you're doing? Or it might be a case of, okay, I'm doing this, I'll do this for two years, get the experience I need, and then move on to something else, or move up in the organization. The whole concept of awareness is actually digging deep to actually understand where you're at, what needs to be changed for you to see things differently. The concept of imbalance is perceptive, it's how you view it. The second thing is relationship. A lot of times you hear people say, Oh, I don't have time for friends, I don't have time to socialize. Now, there's a Harvard study on longevity, which says that the key to longevity is relationship. We've got to build that social support network. Now, the brain is a social organ, and the brain creates relationship, creates that connection, and that's why now you're finding a lot of organizations are picking this up. And if you're not, as a leader as an organization, you've got to. A lot of people enjoy the relationship at work because they connect with people, those that don't have anyone to talk to, you find them constantly at work. So the brain, like I said, is a social organ and it needs to be able to connect with people. And research has now shown that people that have relationships, that have friends, that have family, that they tend to live longer than those, than people that are lonely. And in terms of being lonely, it's also how you perceive yourself because you could actually be surrounded by people but still be lonely as well. Having relationships or having people that you connect with is very important, and that will actually help you look at things differently, but also have a diverse life as opposed to just focusing on one thing or one area that is probably not going as well as you want it to. Now, neuroscience has shown us that there's a direct connection between stress, attitude, and the health of chromosomes. Now, chromosomes hold the genes that rebuild and repair our bodies, and they are capped by organic structures that are known as telomeres. Telomeres themselves are responsible for keeping our chromosomes healthy and helping them work properly. So they are similar to a tape that binds a frayed rope end together. And if these telomeres deteriorate, our chromosomes begin to rearrange themselves and produce abnormal cells that can cause cancer. Also, destroyed or shortened telomeres make healthy cells age faster, which then causes a host of age-related diseases that can shorten people's life span. Now, what causes telomeres to fray and shorten? And the answer in most cases is the production of stress hormones. Stress hormones shorten telomeres. So the length of telomer is directly related to the amount of stress that a person is under and also the number of years that you've endured stress. I don't know if you've ever come across someone who, you know, when you're told the person's age, they actually look 10 years, 20 years older than they actually are. Especially someone that has been going through a lot of chronic stress over a long period of time. And in most cases, this is the reason. Because the telomeres are affected by stress, they become shortened and kind of deteriorate, ends up causing these age related issues where people then actually age quicker. If you look through one of my previous blogs, you find that it affects longevity. Now we know from also. Previous podcasts that have done that neuroplasticity, which is the fact that neurons can be recreated, we now know that damaged telomeres can also be repaired. So basically, in a nutshell, changing the way you think about and relate to the world for just two or three months, is sufficient to actually generate a noticeable effect at the molecular level. So just changing the way you view your life and its integration with work is enough to actually change things at a molecular level, but also enable you to change your attitude. And the fact is that attitude is everything. It's not just a slogan on a motivational poster, it's a medical prescription for a better life. One of the ways to create healthy telomeres is building those relationships, is having good relationships. And also, you know, look at the kind of people that you're surrounding yourself with. Listen to what they are saying to you as well. That's really important. Who are you surrounding yourself with? What kind of things do they say? Are you surrounding yourself with people that are helping your people that are making you feel uh worse than you should be? The next thing that helps us to create a balance and helps our telemaries as well is sleep. You can achieve an increase of 34% in performance by napping for 26 minutes. So each 26 minutes of nap or sleep you get can actually improve your performance by 34%. Research has shown. Sleep deprivation reduces your emotional intelligence, it reduces your self-regard, assertiveness, and sense of independence, but also it reduces your ability to be empathetic towards others and also the quality of your interpersonal relationships. And you find that sleep deprivation will also reduce your ability to think positively and the ability to control your impulse. So sleep is so important to enable you to actually make the right decisions, and the recommended amount of sleep is actually seven hours. Having a good night's sleep will also enable you to make effective decisions. It still comes back to the whole concept. Don't tie yourself in a knot. Sometimes I go through a period of not getting seven hours sleep, either because I'm really busy doing things, but that's okay. Because what I tell myself is okay, I've got this maybe one week of where I'm going to really just put in as many hours as I can to achieve what I need to achieve. But after that, I'm back to normal, and that's okay. So it comes down to exactly what you're telling yourself. But if you start telling yourself, oh my gosh, there's too much work, I've got to do this, I've got to do this, oh, I'm just this is causing me so much stress. That's exactly what you're getting. Oh, I've got too much to do at work, I'm not able to go to my children's parents' evening, I'm not able to pick my child from school, I'm not able to take a holiday, I'm not able to, you know, all the not, not, not, not, not. That's what creates the feeling of imbalance. But start looking at your life and what can you change, what can you adjust? If there's a short period that you need to put in a lot, then that's okay. And then after that, like I said, return back to normal. The next thing to give yourself that good work-life integration is having a loan time. Prioritize your time. That's important. What are you doing with your time? Just make a journal of how you're spending your time. Are you spending your time more reading emails and responding to emails than doing the work you're meant to do? Checking exactly what you're doing with your time will make a difference. We've looked at the statistics or data that says that a lot of people do a lot of work outside home, and you find people that say that I can't do much work at work because I keep get I keep getting interrupted. So I do most of it when I get back home. No, when you are at work, that's the time to then look at what is it that is taking most of your time? Is it people interrupting you? Is it you interrupting yourself by emails? Are emails coming and then you leave what you're meant to do and go and read emails? Then just create time and say, okay, when I get into work at nine o'clock, I'm going to read emails, and then at 9:30, I'll get onto the work and at um 2 p.m. I'll look at emails again. Just create a plan for yourself of what you're going to do. So look for those things that are wasting your time and then do something about it. Are there meetings you have to go to that you find that you're going to one meeting to discuss another meeting? Then maybe it's time to cut down on the meetings. And if it's something you can't do yourself, or you've got to speak to either someone above you, then have that conversation with the person. I find that attending this meeting is not really beneficial for me. There are things you know I could be doing that will be more beneficial. Can you have a look at it and say, okay, maybe I can send someone to attend this meeting while I carry on and do some other that are priority? Just have those conversations, but also have time alone for yourself. Make out time. You know, for me personally, I love going to the spa, and it's something that I treasure. For up for you, it might be playing golf. I love reading. For me, reading as well is a loan time. It could be just going to have your nails done, it could be going to the barber to have your hair cut or even exercising. Whatever it is, have that time, have time with friends, but also importantly, have time for yourself. Time you can just stay and think and just appreciate yourself. So alone time is the key to restoring balance in your life, and that time for yourself is so vital. Another important point is having boundaries. Be comfortable saying no. You don't have to take on things. A lot of people can't say no either because they don't want people to think they are mean or they are not kind. Be empathetic towards people, be caring towards people, but you can't let what other people think about you control your life. Always say, ask people that I coach, whose life are you living? Are you living your own life or are you living somebody else's life? Are you living a life of what people expect you to do or what somebody expects you to do? And we adults, especially parents, you know, there's something I heard recently which really resonated with me. And I went, This is so true. As an adult, we can't go backwards, we should only go forwards. So don't drag your children to the past, to where you are at, or to your past. Move ahead with your children, find out what the future is and move up with move forward with your children, but stop dragging them backwards to your own past. Oh, in my time, this is what we did, so this is what you've got to do. Don't do that. Having worked in education for a few years, I find it so interesting where a parent comes with a child and you find the teachers trying to explain to the parent that this path would be great for the child. And the parents are so adamant. No, they've got to study engineering, they've got to study law. That is what my parents expected of us. So this is what you've got to do now. No, stop dragging them into your past. Move out, move into the future with the children to actually help them. So be able to say no when you have to say no. Don't take on everything so that you're superman or superwoman or so that you'll be liked by everyone. Because that's what creates the feeling of imbalance that then creates the stress. And the last point I'm going to give is flexibility at work is so vital. It's so important. Now, there's a research that was done with an organization, and what they did is that the team came together and decided they're going to do four-day weeks, and but within that time, they spread it out so that everyone puts down what time they're going to work to make sure that at every point in time you had all the skills needed in the workplace. And it worked absolutely perfectly. When they then went back to look at the data, they found that performance increased, customer service increased, customers actually said that the staff were actually more caring and listened better to them. Profits also increased. So be flexible. Sometimes it might mean letting your staff work from home, it might mean letting people do less time in the office. Whatever it is, give people the flexibility. People that come to work also have a life outside work and acknowledge that they might need to take a sick um relative to the hospital. Give them that time, and you'll find that because they're so grateful for you caring, they will actually put in more time. But importantly, they will feel appreciated. When a mother wants to go to the child's play or even a father, and you support them in doing it, they don't feel that sense of imbalance, which then takes up a lot of their conscious brain from doing what they need the work they need to do and to be able to do it effectively. So giving them that time frees them up to bring in their best into the workplace. And then other ways that might be helpful is sharing responsibilities at home, having external help with childcare if you need to, but but it comes down in most cases in the workplace to having a supportive boss and organization. In most cases, it just comes down to having an honest dialogue between yourself and your boss or your partner about your life and your career priorities and the compromises that everyone is willing to make, together with a good dose of flexibility to give you that work-life integration that you need. The bottom line here is this to change the conversation, you've got to change the language. Let's not talk about work-life balance anymore. Let's now talk about work-life integration. Let's talk about work-life blending as opposed to balance. Because the more you look at it as work-life balance, it's like they're two separate things. It's one person, so it's an integration as opposed to a balance. When we looked at the generational differences, one of the things that came up with the millennials is meaningfulness. Meaningfulness in at work, and that's so important. Meaningfulness and peace is what creates happiness. When your work is meaningful to you, it gives you peace, and that's what creates the happiness. I'll just touch on multitasking briefly because it's something I've talked about before. Multitasking is bad. You find a lot of people going, Oh, I can do how many things? Five things at the same time. No, you can't. Yes, you're doing them, but you're not doing them effectively. And that's what would then create that feeling of imbalance because you're juggling so much at the same time and not actually doing any properly. Be intentional in what you're doing. And what you're doing, do well. The fact is that the conscious brain cannot multitask. If you're multitasking, it means you're doing a lot subconsciously as well. But to be able to use your conscious brain to do what you're doing, it needs a lot of energy, it needs a lot of oxygen, it needs the energy to function effectively. So look at what you're doing, prioritize what you're doing, take out time. You can make a list, but don't make a list that will even create more pressure to you. Create reasonable short list to give you order as opposed to putting everything on the list that is not realistic. So schedule time for what really matters to you. So the question is what now? And I think I'll leave you with this refrain from using that word busy. I'm busy because it kind of takes you out of being in control of what you're doing, be in control of your choices, and also rethink your time. So refrain from all the negative things that you're saying that is creating that feeling of imbalance. And look at yourself and say, you know what? I've got a full life, and I am in control of my own story. So what I want you to do now is write down one thing that you are going to do differently from today. It could be having that seven hour sleep, it could be exercising in the morning, get up, and you know that before you go to work, you're going to do 30 minutes of exercise. Whatever it is, just decide what it is you're going to do. What are you going to do to give you your own time? Or is it being able to say no? Write down what you're going to do. Know what you're passionate about and pursue your values. Pursue fulfillment and not balance. And persevere in everything you're doing and stay connected with people. Finding the ideal work-life balance may be an ongoing journey, but knowing how your body and mind should feel is key and not how people expect you to feel. So refraining from using that balance and now using the word integration. I have a work-life integration as opposed to balance. Why I've said that it's an ongoing journey is because what is right now might be different tomorrow. That's why you need to refrain from using that balance and kind of say, okay, you know what? This is my life, and I'm going to adjust as I need to. What I have is a work-life blend and knowing how to work with both. But the important thing is that in anything I'm doing, it's meaningful to me, and I'm in control. Because all this is what will give you the empowerment to actually take that control back of your life. So you're living purposefully as opposed to living completely out of control. So work-life integration is your belief that your personal and work-life are properly balanced, and it's spending enough time achieving your goals and devoting time to the people and activities that you love. Thank you once again for tuning in. Remember that the human cost of unmanaged work-related stress is extremely far-reaching. The key way to protect your mental health against the potential detrimental effects of stress and anxiety is to ensure you have a healthy work-life integration. If you want further help on maintaining this balance and getting the integration, contact me at info at morinciana.com. I've put the link in the description section. You can also visit our online academy at the mindsiteacademy.com to look at further online courses that you can take at your own pace. So, three things before we finish today. Remember to subscribe to this podcast. If you haven't, make sure that you click that subscribe button wherever you listen to this podcast so that you don't miss out on any episode. But also when I release bonus episodes, you get the notification as well. Please remember to leave a review or comment or even a question. Finally, remember to tune back in next week to hear another exciting episode. So look forward to seeing you next week and um have a fantastic week.