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Between Aspiration and Mindfulness: The Art of Balancing Work and Family
In the ever-changing and increasingly complex working world, many people face the challenge of balancing family and career while also meeting their own - often very high - expectations. Wanting to do everything right can be a positive character trait that leads to excellent results, but it can also have a downside and negatively impact both work and private life.
Imagine you have completed an important project and are proudly presenting your result. But instead of receiving recognition, you focus only on the supposed mistakes and imperfections. Perfectionism makes you doubt whether you are good enough, while your family and friends congratulate you and admire your performance.
We want to explore the two sides of perfectionism and show you how to get the best of both worlds. Learn more about the role of internal drivers and how they affect our behavior. We highlight personal resources and resilience as important tools for dealing with everyday challenges.
You will also receive practical tips on how to transform perfectionism into a positive force and find a balanced path between success and well-being. Discover how you can find your own balance between self-expectation and joy of life.
Effects of High Expectations on One's Own Performance
Constant high demands and readiness to perform in work and private life can have significant impacts on a person's mental and physical health. The constant pursuit of the optimum and perfect results can lead to a variety of negative consequences:
1. Exhaustion: Trying to meet these demands creates internal pressure. Sometimes very noticeable, sometimes more subtle, but persistent. Emotional, mental, and physical exhaustion, reduced performance, or an increasing feeling of being overwhelmed up to the point of burnout can occur.
2. Self-doubt: The constant worry of not meeting expectations can lead to a strong inner restlessness and impair self-esteem. Self-esteem is the subjective assessment of one's own worth, abilities, and significance as an individual, independent of external influences and achievements. It significantly influences a person's self-confidence, self-acceptance, and emotional well-being.
3. Family and social life suffers: People with a tendency to accept only the optimum tend to withdraw and reduce social activities in order to accomplish all the other things necessary for their high standards. Family and friends often have to take a back seat. The high demands can lead to a significant reduction of time and energy for the family. As a result, family relationships often suffer, and the balance between work and personal life can be disrupted. This can additionally lead to social isolation and impair personal well-being.
4. Self-care suffers: One's own needs tend to be put on the back burner, while internal resources and reserves are often overestimated. Persistent stress and pressure also have physical effects, such as sleep disorders, headaches, gastrointestinal issues, and a weakened immune system. The reason for this is the constant mental and emotional strain, along with the sustained performance mode, which prevents relaxation and regeneration as necessary counterparts.
5. Fears and Worries: The development of chronic fears and worries can be encouraged by an excessive personal expectation. Many people try to optimize every action precisely by overthinking or grappling with involuntary ruminations and brooding, even at night. Some people find it important to safeguard themselves, others delay decisions because they don't want to make mistakes, while still others fear failure.
In short: Perfectionist thinking and behavior can provide situational relief, but in the long term, it can exacerbate problems.
Do you recognize any of these symptoms?
The Role of Internal Drivers
A look at the so-called inner drivers can be helpful and contribute to moving towards a fulfilled and satisfied life.
Inner drivers are deeply rooted beliefs and motivations that shape a person's behavior. They often develop early in life and affect how someone perceives themselves and the world around them. Our own pursuit of perfection and high standards is often closely linked to the inner drivers, which can drive us on one hand, but also become burdensome on the other. The drivers can manifest in the form of thoughts and beliefs, such as:
First work, then pleasure!
I always want to do everything perfectly, otherwise I'm not good enough.
Trust is good, but control is better!
If I don't do it, then nobody else will/can!
If I don't work overtime, I will get a bad rating/lose my job.
I always want to be strong and independent, even when I'm feeling down.
Thoughts like these or similar ones can lead to constant dissatisfaction because the goals set in this way are not achievable in the long run without a certain kind of self-exploitation. Inner drivers have typically sneaked into our lives without asking for permission. These beliefs have usually been part of our mental inventory for so long that we hardly notice them, let alone question them. By becoming aware of the inner drivers, we can regularly examine their reality and their contribution to our health. Instead of letting them control us, we can learn to use them constructively and set realistic goals with personal resources and strengths.
Being aware of the potential psychological and physical effects can help find enough motivation to counteract them in time. This can be achieved through self-reflection, self-care, and developing a realistic perspective on oneself and one's goals.
Resilience as a Resource for Overcoming Excessive (Self-)Demands
An important resource is our personal resilience. Resilience is a set of abilities that allow us to handle challenges and setbacks in a way that we do not suffer harm and remain healthy. The skills we need for this, and which make it possible, are now well researched and can be summarized as follows:
- Optimism & a positive self-image
- Improvisation & Willingness to Learn
- Acceptance & connection to reality
- Solution Orientation & Creativity
- Self-regulation, effective stress management & self-care
- Self-confidence & Creativity
- Appreciative Relationships, Social Skills & Cooperation
- Shaping the Future & Vision Development
Are you in the mood for a little test? Go through the individual aspects again and spontaneously write a number between 0 and 10 behind them, indicating how strongly you assess yourself in each case. Don't worry, no one has a perfect score! However, such scales can help to gain a first impression of where we stand, what we are really good at, and where we could support ourselves even better. In everyday life, sufficient resilience skills help us enormously to cope with high pressure while maintaining balance for our own well-being. The great thing about it is: We can specifically develop and train these skills.
Practical Tips Against Perfectionism and Inner Drivers to Get Started
- Setting realistic goals: Instead of pursuing utopian goals, you should set achievable milestones and praise yourself for progress.
- Plan breaks and relaxation It is important to take regular breaks and consciously schedule relaxation times. Set a timer every few hours to remind yourself to take a short break. Use this time to breathe deeply, move around, or take a short walk. Relaxation techniques such as yoga, meditation, or breathing exercises can help reduce stress and regain inner peace.
- Delegating and asking for help: Sometimes we have to accept that we can't do everything on our own. It's okay to delegate tasks or ask for support, whether in a professional or family setting.
- Setting Healthy Boundaries: Define clear boundaries between work and family and try to adhere to them. Deliberately allow yourself time for the family and create a space where professional demands do not dominate.
- Viewing mistakes as opportunities: Reflect regularly on your own thinking and actions. Accept that no one is perfect, and allow yourself to make mistakes. Permit yourself to be human. Instead of letting mistakes discourage you, we should see them as an opportunity to learn and grow.
- Mindfulness and self-reflection: Through meditation or journaling (daily note-taking), you can learn to better understand your own feelings and reactions and to recognize negative thought patterns.
Did you notice it? Those thoughts you had while reading these tips? That either question the feasibility or the deeper benefit of these tips? Or led you to just skim or even skip these tips?
The thing is, there is a catch: To do all that, we would have to take ourselves and our own needs seriously. Taking seriously means: We act throughout the day, every week, every month in such a way that we ACTually sufficiently fulfill our core needs. We know many of the tips described – but we still organize our days differently. Or rather: our inner drivers shape our days. And here our power begins. Because even if we are (still) at the mercy of our inner drivers here and there and "just can't help it" but "just quickly..." do this or that, we can get to know ourselves better so that we can see more clearly what drives us and why we are working so hard. It's normal that it's not always easy to accomplish this. But luckily, you don't have to. Support has many facets and options, whether friends or coaching, books, podcasts, webinars, or workshops – find what suits you. We are definitely here for you.
