Welcome back, it’s so great to have you read our post today again on a work-life balance case scenario and we are starting off by shedding more light on the two quotes from our last post. Robert Frost says that by working faithfully a good portion of our lives for eight hours, we would get to a point where will become the boss and start to work four hours more. The work world is a constant chase, you are investing so much of yourself to climb up the work ladder only to get to the top and find out that there’s much more waiting for you up the ladder.
So you work some more to get to the next level but we have seen that the work cycle never ends, it is a constant struggle and while we may not be able to rule it out, we can figure out a way together to reduce the negative impact that it has on our lives and how much room it takes up or how much of us it consumes, robbing us of all other important relationships, experiences and investments.
In our second quote by Brain Dyson in his landmark speech some years ago, he says that work is essentially a rubber ball (it can be worked, thrown around, tossed aside, picked up again and it only bounces back). The same cannot be said for other aspects of our lives; health, family, friends and spirituality.
These other areas are made of glass, once dropped, manhandled or roughly treated, they fall and are shattered. I haven’t really come across a situation in which a person successfully glued glass back together. He encourages us to understand these facts and as a result of our understanding, strive to keep these areas of our lives intact and nourished.
Work-Life balance is a major problem for the 21st-century career or work person. Today, we share a case scenario with you about how our dear friend gradually climbed up the work ladder and down the life ladder, what he did wrong and how we think you can do better by not making the same mistakes he made.
In our case scenario, we would begin sharing the story of Kunle, a 35-year-old executive in an IT firm here in Ibadan, who after working judiciously for 8 years finds himself rich, divorced, unhappy, battling panic disorder and greatly dissatisfied with life and even work.
Following his graduation from one of the top private universities top of his class in 2010. Kunle could not have been any more proud of himself, he was so optimistic about life as the employment offers were rolling in, his high school sweetheart (Adunni) and love of his life was in her final year at that time and he could see a life together with her in the nearest future.
After several interviews, Kunle settled for a job in a tech firm considering the fact that Ibadan was a rather cool city to settle down and raise a family. Kunle started as a top-level executive; he had the brains, qualification and experience, he was being paid in dollars and began making plans to visit Adunni’s parents to get the marriage talks well underway. His life was moving fast and he had to keep up.
One year into the job, things changed drastically, the company was making large losses and how to do a merger to save the company and all executive heads were held responsible and bore the burden of work, which got really heavy. Kunle soon found himself spending 12 straight hours in the office, forgetting to eat, having to drag himself home very late at night to an already sleeping wife. Adunni was 2 months pregnant at this time and constantly complained about being left alone by her husband. Kunle’s friends had stopped calling as they had gotten tired of the incessant excuses made each time they offered to spend time with him. Initially, they had made jokes about he being too much of a workaholic, then they had advised him to go slow, stating that there was more to life than just work before they finally stopped trying.
Kunle’s parents were more than worried, he didn’t even make it to the delivery of his first child and had to leave the naming ceremony early to attend to a pressing matter at the office.
His parents noticed the wrinkles from constant worrying in their son’s face, he wasn’t even putting on weight and still yet he ate so little. They tried to make him go slow but Kunle was too busy building a career to pay them any attention. Then came the time when Kunle began to go to work on weekends, this went on for three years, around which time Adunni had her first miscarriage, Kunle didn’t get to the hospital till she was discharged. By the fifth year, she had had enough troubles in the marriage especially with Kunle being an absentee husband and father. They barely talked anymore – the children didn’t know him and he couldn’t seem to help it. He was always travelling, meeting a client, or working on a proposal. She left him in August of 2017 and his first panic attack happened weeks after.
He was in the middle of a meeting when suddenly he felt a strong forceful hold around his chest, in a few seconds he was drenched in sweat and struggling to breathe before finally collapsing into blackness.
This began the journey to the end for Kunle until a colleague encouraged him to see a therapist. Very much like Kunle at that time, he paid no heed to his colleague about seeing a therapist, it took Kunle another one year before he finally rushed to see a therapist, broken and exhausted. He had had six more heart attacks since the first one in 2017, he had been admitted to the hospital twice, diagnosed with a stomach ulcer and put on mandatory 3 months leave at his workplace.
What began for Kunle as a simple pursuit of excellence and a better life, let him down a path that took everything from him. He never set out to lead himself into a very unbalanced work-life existence but he soon found himself there anyway.
While Kunle waited till the very end to make amends, you do not have to, you can do better and we would show you how over the next few weeks.
As always, we leave you with two quotes yet again to ponder on until our next post.
You do not have to make yourself miserable to be successful
Andrew Wilkinson
You cannot have everything you want but you can have the things that really matter to you.
Marissa Mayer
Join us in our next post as we give you 10 tips on balancing work and life. We would like to hear from you and love for you to follow us on our social media platforms.
Like this post, share and drop your question, comments and views and do well to share your stories of balancing with us today in the comment section. Till next time, remember, the balance begins with you!