Stress Relief at Work, Ways to Relieve Stress at Work Taking Charge of What Matters. As I am writing this, I am working on a Sunday afternoon instead of hanging out with my husband and daughter. Rather than being a poster child for work-life balance issues, my choice of work and work hours allows my husband and me to create a life that makes sense to us. We are living our values - creating a quality life by devoting quantity time to those who mean most to us. Read more about finding stress relief at work and about work-life balance strategies.

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Taking Charge of What Matters

Part I of a 2-part series by Susan Cramm

As I am writing this, I am working on a Sunday afternoon instead of hanging out with my husband and daughter. Rather than being a poster child for work-life balance issues, my choice of work and work hours allows my husband and me to create a life that makes sense to us. We are living our values — creating a quality life by devoting quantity time to those who mean most to us. My husband and I serve a number of roles — spouses, parents, professionals, Sunday school teachers, volunteers, tennis partners, and elder care providers. Our lives are busy and we find that we have very little "free" time. But unlike many people, we don't feel overwhelmed. We feel lucky. We discovered — something simple, yet profound — that work-life balance isn't about having more free time; it's about devoting your life, and the hours within it, consistent with your values and passions.

It wasn't always so. I used to travel four days a week and my life consisted of two activities — work and sleep. I spent most of my time with people who meant the least to me, doing work that didn't talk to my heart. I helped create work-life balance issues for others — by being one of the corporate leaders striving for productivity by creating jobs that employ "half as many people paid twice as well, and producing three times as much," as Charles Handy put it in his book, "The Age of Paradox." I fell victim to one of these very "full jobs" and, like many, hired others do to the personal work I no longer had time to do, and found that I used consumption as a pitiful replacement to living a meaningful life.

It's no wonder that about 50 percent of us believe that we aren't living a balanced life. U.S. work hours are increasing and now top those worked by all other industrialized nations. Longer work hours logged by men and women, with women comprising over 50 percent of the workforce, along with the demands of parenting and caring for aging parents, present a challenge that stymies even the best and the brightest. A senior executive and mother of two wrote to me, "I'm having a heck of a time figuring out the career thing now that I have two (children) running around. It's much more complex and difficult than I anticipated."