Family

Home & Career

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The balancing of home and career is the most common challenge working professionals face.  No matter which country you live in or where you are on the corporate ladder, the challenges of balancing home and career prevail.

Many feel compelled to make a choice between home and career. Life Balance will make that stark choice unnecessary.

Technology was supposed to increase leisure time, presumably freeing us to spend more time with our families and less on the job.  But technological progress seems to have brought us more things to do and less time in which to do them.

Flextime, which allows people the flexibility to schedule work time around family time, has been a major help in balancing family and work.  Flextime, for example, might enable an employee to work 90% of a normal week for 90% of the pay.

This could be enough to allow a parent to spend time with children after school.  Flextime could also mean taking every other Friday off or working from home one day a week.
Flextime is especially helpful for double-duty mothers or fathers who frequently are victims of role overload.   Life for them can be a daily grind of cooking and cleaning, supervising homework, driving children to school, looking after elderly parents, and running endless errands in addition to earning a living.

We’re living now in the age of burn-out, in which workaholics pursue frenetic lifestyles that hog their time, drain their resources, and leave them empty and unfulfilled.

Luckily more and more companies today are encouraging a healthy work-life balance amongst their employees because they understand that blance is not only important for the wellbeing of the employees but also positively impacts the bottom-line.

Companies like Google, Intuit and Salesforce have worked on paid 12-week maternity and paternity leave, compressed work weeks, and mandatory vacation times.

Yet many people engage in activity for activity’s sake, burying themselves in work or play to avoid facing real personal and spiritual needs.
Others are in love with money, and seek to express that love by spending all their waking hours pursuing their careers.

But truly successful people know that balance is essential to achievement, and they make room for quality time for family, friends, spiritual interests, and hobbies.

When you create balance in your life, you create a whole new life experience, one that has the power to take you to a whole new level of fulfillment and gratitude for life.

Unconditional Love!

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Today is Valentine’s Day and lots of love messages and roses are going to be exchanged.

One thing I leaned from my parents is the power of unconditional love! For them love was not based on conditions; it was based on acceptance! Their approach was: I love you the way you are, not the way I want you to be!

This approach is very difficult for modern parents. Therein lies the challenge. When you try to change people it can be a lifelong challenge. The fastest way to change people is to change the way you look at them. Dr. Wayne Dyer would say: “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change!”

So as we are celebrating Valentine’s Day and sharing roses and loving messages yet the one foundational trait we need to work on is to accept people the way they are. Once you do that you give them the permission to value their uniqueness.

Why not me?

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When you have aged parents who are having serious health challenges it can be quite taxing on you as you try to navigate your own responsibilities of parenting, profession, partnership, other.

You sometimes feel you have to pick and choose to cope and sometimes you ask the question why me?

However, when you take this responsibility as a blessing and remember what your parents did for you when you were young, not only does your perspective change but you find great joy and inner peace.

The reality is one day you will be old and the treatment you will get from your children is the treatment you are giving your elderly parents. Children don’t do what they are told, they do what they see.

So, when put to a challenge of looking after your aged parents instead of saying Why me? Say, Why not me?

Contribution!

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In your effort to make positive life contributions, think in terms of cooperation, not competition!

Contributing towards bringing about positive change creates significance, value, happiness, and balance. This value-added makes others want to be around you.

Every career offers opportunities to show genuine concern and compassion toward those you come into contact with.

Japan’s economic growth following World War II was a major 20th-century success story. The growth was not based on competition, but moreover, a fundamental element expressed in the Japanese word “Kyosei”, which means ‘a spirit of cooperation’.

So, imagine what successes could follow in not only our own lives but the greater good if we all were to follow the same sense of contributing by thinking in terms of cooperation, not competition?

One minute video from Azim

Genuine Understanding!

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If you take the time to understand others by listening with your eyes, ears, heart, undivided attention and without judgement, you will already be halfway there.

I did a presentation some time back for a cancer group. I started by saying: “If I say to you I know and understand your pain, I will be lying to you. The truth is I don’t. I do not have cancer and do not know how it feels to have cancer. So help me understand how you feel and what your biggest challenges are?”

The group responded by expressing thoughts like:

“Why me?”
“I feel a loss of control.”
“I’m angry.”
“I’m afraid.”

These are real issues with no quick-fix solutions. I did my best to respond to them, but the fact that I took to the time to ask and be attentive to the group’s feelings was important. The participants felt their feelings were valued, so they responded well to the presentation.

One minute video from Azim

Simple Ideas!

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Please take a moment to vote for Maziwa to win the Common Bond Award:

Children’s health in many developing economies is compromised because women are forced to join the workforce within months of giving birth which means children are deprived of their mother’s milk. Mothers’ milk is not only nature’s best food for babies, but also has a significant impact on their mental and physical development in adult life.

Often it’s the simple ideas that carry the most meaning and impact. My daughter, Sahar, is pitching the idea of an affordable breast pump for low-income markets that can have an exponential impact on maternal and newborn health. An idea like this could not only transform the lives of millions of children but also empower women to make better choices for their families. Empowered mothers mean empowered communities. This idea is one of 8 semi-finalists for the Common Bond Social Impact Award – the top 3 videos with the most votes will move into the finals to win a financial award towards developing the idea further. All votes need to be in before November 4th. I will be very grateful if you take 2 minutes to vote by clicking the button below or clicking on the following link: https://woobox.com/txa4m9/gallery/wMeAxQSHXL4

Where to begin?

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Everywhere you look you are confronted with so many issues human beings are facing. You want to help but find it overwhelming; you feel your help may only be just a drop in the ocean!

What to do and where to begin? There is no one answer, but one thing you don’t do is nothing!

You start by making a difference with your family, neighbourhood and your community. Perhaps you are already involved in some charity work where you can put more energy.

To impact the world we need to start first in our own backyards, beginning with our family and then extending our reach to causes we are involved within our neighbourhood and our communities.

One minute video from Azim