159 Work-Life Balance: Why It Fails—and What Actually Works

Show Notes

We’ve all been told to chase “work-life balance.” Get the calendar right. Set better boundaries. Manage your time better. But what if balance has nothing to do with rearranging the outside?

In this episode, Barb Patterson explores why the traditional idea of work-life balance keeps us on a hamster wheel, and a fresh perspective on where to find what you’re looking for. She shares the simple but profound shift that allows you to meet deadlines, demands, and relationships with more clarity, presence, and ease.

You’ll hear stories, insights, and practical moves for:

• Seeing how your inner climate shapes every outer experience

• Letting go of the myth that circumstances dictate your state of mind

• Releasing the pressure of “equal time” and instead honoring the season you’re in

• Remembering that your worth has nothing to do with productivity

If you’ve ever felt behind, stretched thin, or caught between competing demands, this episode offers a fresh perspective, one that reveals balance is already available to you, right here, in any moment.

SHOW NOTES

• [00:00] – The Myth of Work-Life Balance
• [05:00] – Understanding Our Inner Climate
• [09:59] – The Power of Internal Balance
• [16:20] – Challenging Common Myths
• [28:41] – Practical Steps to Inner Balance

SHOW LINKS

• Subscribe to the podcast on YouTube 
• Follow Barb on Linkedin
• Follow Barb on Instagram

What is The Innerverse of Business & Life?

This podcast is a space to explore the profound connection between our inner world and our work in the world. We dive deep into the heart of what it means to live and work from a felt knowing of our essential selves – aligned, alive, and fully expressed. We’ll play at the intersection of business, spirituality, consciousness, and growth.

Through intimate conversations with thought leaders, change-makers, authors, and humans just like you and me, you’ll hear real stories of transformation and the internal shifts, “aha” moments, and wake-up calls that have helped them to access new dimensions of creativity, higher levels of intelligence, unlock dormant potentials and experience greater joy and fulfillment.

Barb Patterson (00:57)
I welcome back to the Innerverse of Business and Life podcast. This is Barb, and today I want to share about work-life balance or the myth of work-life balance. I was recently invited to give a talk to a group of women in leadership and association, and they asked me to talk about work-life balance, and I had to admit at the pre-planning that I

have a different perspective on this. And I think we're hearing more and more out there that work-life balance is a myth. But also, I think there's something to be considered that might be fresh. And so today, I want to talk about that. So I love this conversation because what I'm about to share with you has had a profound impact on my own ability to bring clarity.

presence and well-being to my work and my leadership and to my life. It might sound a little dramatic, but ⁓ it's not an exaggeration for me to say that literally it has been the most influential shift in my ability to find my bearings and to find my balance in any situation.

Years ago, when I was an executive leading the global talent management, leadership development, and all learning functions within an organization, if you had asked me if I'd like to take a stress management class, I would have said, no, no, thank you. I got that handled. I know how to handle. I do really, I tolerate stress really well. I'm good at that. And also stress and pressure just look like a given in business. So, you know, to me, it

It was a question of can you manage it? And I seemed to be doing okay with that. I was fairly optimistic. That said, I was under the influence of it. So I don't want to give you the impression that I didn't feel it. I absolutely did. But at the same time, if you had asked me if I wanted to do a class on well-being, I would have said, no, thanks, I'm good. ⁓ I'm optimistic, glass half full, girl, all that kind of thing.

But here's what I came to understand thankfully from a few mentors in my life when I started my own business about 14, 15 years ago. I was pretty clueless. I really had no idea the level of internal pressure and stress that was really going on. I mean, it had become a norm to me. I was like a fish to water. I didn't see it fully or feel it fully.

Of course I knew that I had a lot on my plate. My schedule was insane. I was traveling almost every week internationally. But again, it felt like the norm and what was expected and just par for the course of being in business. But what I didn't understand then that I do now is the degree.

to which I was living inside an extremely unhealthy norm. My internal state was on high idle all the time. You noticed it in my sleep, I didn't sleep very well. The hours I was working was insane and yet I was just kind of riding it, doing it. And so my tolerance being high,

I wasn't hearing all the warning signals. I wasn't seeing the red flags. I wasn't getting or paying attention or even noticing the nudges from within that were saying, hey girl, slow down. Hey, this can't last. But when I decided to leave that job, I didn't leave because of the pressure and stress. I left because I felt a call to go back and do my own thing.

But I also did realize I wanted to as much and as fulfilled I was in my career, I wanted to feel that same feeling in my personal life. And it looked to me like it had been a trade off, like all that love of my career, love of the job, the pressure, the stress, the high demands while I was up for it and doing it, it looked like the cost was a personal life. So I wanted to make that change.

But today, what I want to share with you are some key distinctions and really misunderstandings that once I realized these, they have had the potential and have created shifts within. And if you listen today from an open mind and just take in what I'm saying, see what bubbles up for you, see what resonates.

I have a feeling you're gonna walk away with some new insights and that you may also realize that we have the power to create these internal shifts and that we can have a fresh perspective and a lighter relationship to the demands of life. So the first thing I wanna talk about is our inner climate shapes our outer experience. Take that in.

Our inner world, our inner landscape is shaping moment to moment our experience of life, the person in front of us, of ourselves, of our to-do list, whatever it might be. Our internal climate shapes everything. It shapes what we see, it shapes how we see it, and it shapes how we respond. Our internal climate and the quality of our minds is having way more influence than we might realize.

So I think we've all seen this and I'll give you some simple examples. If we're going on an interview or a date, the more self-conscious we feel, the more gripped we are, the more anxiety, we feel it. Like speaking feels more challenging or getting over our awkwardness feels more challenging. Or we talk about performance anxiety when we're thinking about we need to win or

what will people think of us or we're thinking about what's at stake if we don't win, we just don't do as well. And counter to that, when you hear athletes talk about flow and they begin to describe it and they have these amazing feats, right? What they say is the crowd got quiet, they were just in the moment,

They knew where the ball was gonna go. They knew where the person was. There was this feeling as they describe it of openness, awareness and presence inside themselves. So today I'd like to talk about what is that? How do we access more of that? How do we access more of that internal balance?

I want to share an example of an executive I was working with. her inner climate, her awareness of that was pretty low, like most of us. And she had gotten a survey, an engagement survey, and she was pretty surprised by the results because she had a lot of good intentions. She was a good leader, a really smart person. But she heard feedback that she wasn't available, that people couldn't really go to her.

And she said to me, but Barb, I tell them all the time my door is open. Well, when I started to do intake interviews with her team, I realized what was going on. She was saying my door is open, but she was walking around in this feeling of intense pressure and busyness. And so people would come to her door, but they'd feel like they were interrupting her.

She didn't say they were, right? But the feeling and the exchange was there. What people were responding to was her feeling, her inner climate. They were responding to that when they stopped her on the hall, it felt like they were hearing her say, hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry, get to the point, right? So like any of us, we just like, nevermind, I'll figure it out myself. But when she started to realize, there's a disconnect between what she ultimately wants and what...

her internal state is sending off, she started to build her awareness around where is her climate in any given moment. Now, here's the good news. We don't have to do this perfectly. It's the knowing where you are that has the leverage in it. Because once you see it, you are already more present than you were the moment before. And how do you know where your internal climate is? You're gonna feel it. Do you feel tense? Do you feel grip? Do you feel stressed? Do you feel...

down? Do you feel overloaded? Are you impatient? Are you interrupting people a lot? Are you, you know, taking action that five seconds later or five minutes, five hours later, you go, ⁓ I wish I hadn't done that. Those are all clues that there's a lack of awareness to what's going on inside of you and

If we can get aware of this, and I'm gonna talk about in a minute how to help ourselves in those moments more. But when we get aware of this, it's incredibly empowering. Because you see that in a more neutral, open, perspective internal state, we naturally have access to more mental and emotional bandwidth. We're more resilient, we're more resourceful, we have more clarity and wellbeing. We are more.

Balanced coming back to the topic for today. Inner balance is what we're really craving. And the misunderstanding is that I have to rearrange all the circumstances or get on the other side of the to-do list or the demands or that meeting or whatever it might be before we can find balance. And here's the good news. Not true. We can find balance.

When you look at where is balance coming from, it's coming from within, we can find that in any circumstance. And in a way, what I'm saying is there's a ⁓ phrase out there that all boats rise with the tide. What I love about this one speaking around balance is it used to look to me like I had a boat for health, I had a boat for career, a boat for family and friends, a boat for, you know, ⁓

all the other goals I had in life. And it looked like I had to tackle each boat to get them running smoothly and to get them going in the right direction. But when you consider inner climate as the tide, right? What you realize is, ⁓ if I just look at where I'm coming from, if I just look at my inner climate and I learn to become aware and lean more into presence and neutrality and openness and

find that from within, then all boats get affected. We naturally bring more perspective and wisdom and insight to everything that we have going on. All of those things get impacted. So let's talk about some of the common myths that I think get in the way or interfere with our ability to find balance. The first one is just to build on this idea of inner climate.

is that we think circumstances determine that internal state. This is a huge one. the mistake and the myth is I'll feel okay.

once I'm on the other side of the project, as I said earlier, or the other side of the to-do list. But again, the truth is our internal state isn't coming from that. Yes, circumstances are real, but our experience of them is always being generated moment to moment by our inner climate.

by thought and feeling in the moment. And you know this, you can see it. One day your to-do list is just something you're handling. The next day, you walk around all day feeling behind the eight ball. what's the difference between those two days? What I'm saying is the difference is your internal state and how you're holding it, your relationship to the to-do list or to the deadline.

You know, we often collapse the circumstance and the experience. We say things like, of course I'm overwhelmed. Look at my schedule. Of course I'm stressed. My client or boss has these demands that are unrealistic or really high. Or of course I'm worried. There's a lot at stake. And that's where I want to challenge you today to say, is it true? Is of course, in quotes, true.

Because if you look, what you'll start to see is there's no predetermined circumstance that, or let me say this one more time, there's no circumstance that predetermines what happens inside of me, that predetermines the kind of thinking or experience I'll have about it.

We have lots of examples where in high stress or high crisis situations, we're able to show up with clarity of perspective. And then we have examples where really small things go off the rails and we cannot hold ourselves together. This is showing that there's something going on, that circumstance isn't determining what's happening inside of me.

You can see this when, you know, in family, every family member will have a different internal experience of an event that took place. So this point is a really important one because when we realize circumstance isn't causing my internal experience, we flip the switch and we're no longer victims of the world, We are empowered. We realize that our greatest leverage is to look within.

And that the idea is not that we have to control every circumstance to feel okay. If it looks like we have to control every circumstance to feel okay, we're gonna suffer. We are not gonna feel balanced, right? If it looks like work has to be perfect and family has to be perfect, or it looks like I gotta get the schedule perfect before I can feel okay or know what to do.

It's a hamster wheel. It's a never ending. It has a shelf life. So again, this idea that no circumstance, no demand, no deadline, no boss, no client, no family member is determining my inner state. We have the freedom and the potential to have any thought, any feeling in any moment. So when we feel ourselves gripped by fear, judgment, anxiety,

upset, aggravation, really low disappointment, whatever it might be. The way to find relief and support for yourself is to go within, to go and look for that center, for the balance within.

The next myth I want to talk about is that balance means equal time, energy and focus, or that we have to compartmentalize our life to be able to find balance. And here's what I want to say is balance here is not about a 50-50 split. It's about what matters now in this moment. It's about being able to give our full presence to what's here. It's about what season am I in? And this idea of balance

and trying to compartmentalize, think, often creates a lot of extra friction for people. So at times, our career is an acceleration or there's a lot going on there. At other times, family has a lot going on. So we're able to kind of ride the waves of where we put our focus. Like for me, when I was the executive, I had the freedom and the time to go all in into my career.

But then when I started to say, how about your personal life? That strategy no longer felt fulfilling or like the right thing for me. So this idea of acknowledging the fullness of who we are, acknowledging the season we're in has been incredibly helpful in having me level set expectations in a healthy way.

So for instance, I was working with this one founder and he was looking at his work and he had a lot of things that needed to get done there to get the business where it needed to go, to accelerate, to move at the pace he really wanted. And yet he was also a brand new father.

and he wanted to be with his wife and his child and he was super excited all about that, but he felt conflicted like many of you can relate. When he was at home, he thought about work and then when he was at work and if he overworked at all, he felt guilty. So he was constantly living in this internal state of dissatisfaction and guilt. When we talked about, listen, you've got to look at everything from a whole self perspective.

you're now in a season of dad, of husband and dad. So your old expectations around your job and what you want to give to it have shifted. It's okay. That's okay. Like, let's honor it. Let's be honest. Let's be integral internally about it. And when you look at just work by itself, it looks like you're behind. When you look at life, it looks like you're not measuring up.

But when you factor it all in from freedom and ⁓ internal spaciousness, you realize, yeah, energy focused time is different now and you honor it, you will naturally level set. You'll create goals that align with that. You'll create a vision that aligns with all of who you are. And when we do that,

We suffer less, we feel less aggravated, less dissatisfaction, less guilt. So being willing to take an honest account of the season you're in, the values that matter to you at this time in your life, and realizing you can create that, it might mean something slows down somewhere, but slowing down is often a gift and not a problem. We just have to let go of the expectations we have around it.

And finally, the final myth I want to talk about is that our productivity does not equal worth. Let me say it again, productivity does not equal worth. We live in a culture that worships and values busy, and yet our worth is not tied to how productive we are. You know, there's a great quote and of course in this moment I'm going completely blank on who it's from. ⁓

but that don't measure your day by the amount how productive you were, but how present you were. And I just, I love that quote and presence allows us to actually do better. Presence allows us to step into whatever's in front of us with more authenticity, more energy, more grace, more sustainability. And when we realize that our worth is inherent,

who we are, what we have to offer is not tied to how much we get done or how productive we are. We quit building a life and strategies that end up exhausting us and have basically in the end no return. When we acknowledge that worth is not something we have to earn, value is inherent.

And we start to move through our business and our lives, letting go of idealized images of who we are, right? We have these idealized images of what we're going to look like, how we're going to behave, what success is. And realize those are all figments of the imagination and often set us up to feel behind and to feel like we're not measuring up or living up to whatever that standard is.

So I really want to encourage everyone that value inherent, worth inherent, whole, complete, already done. And what we ultimately value is when people show up, human, connected, present. This is profound. This is what creates leaders that people want to follow. This is what creates healthy families and healthy cultures. This is what creates

healthy internal climate to know that we aren't having to earn any of that. We move from center, we move from whole, we move from worth already inherent. And then in that, we are way more productive because we aren't gripped by the hamster wheel and letting stress run us.

How do we get there? I want to just speak to a moment about a few things that might help us. How do we find that inner balance? How do we find presence and get more connected? Okay, I'm going to give you really three simple things here. The first is pause and reset. I know, I know, know, I know, but really we do not need an hour long meditation. We don't even have to go for a run.

Although I think those things are great. And if you have the time and space, go for it. But what I want to talk about today is we can pause and reset in a moment. And during a conversation, we can do it when we're talking. We can do it when we're listening. We can do it when we're in the midst of a challenging situation or our full schedules. We just take a pause. We take a deep breath. We take our attention away from our mind.

and focus on our bodies, bring it into our hearts, whatever that might be, just take a few deep breaths and you will notice instantly your climate shifting. And remember, this is the tide, this changes everything. This is your most leveraged act. Now you may feel the pull between the mind and slowing down, that's fine, just accept. You're not trying to force anything here.

You're just seeing that when we naturally drop in and take a beat and a pause and take our attention away from the mind, what the mind is doing and drop in, it's happening already, done. The second thing I wanna encourage is to build on that. Your presence is way more powerful than your thinking.

So if you can start to sense, am I giving attention to where my mind is taking me to the inner chatter or am I present here in the moment? Again, the distinction between where is my attention, that is a powerful orientation for you because you'll see it. Like we all do it, we get distracted in conversation. We get distracted when we're trying to read or do something or Zoom meetings for sure, right?

So as soon as we notice we're distracted, all we do is come back to the present. I think about it like watching a TV show or a movie. You you can be watching it and you get distracted, your mind wanders and you come back and you realize, I don't even know what's going on. So you come back to the moment and you just start paying attention. You don't berate yourself, I hope not anyway, not of the fact that your mind wandered. You come back and that's all we're doing.

All it takes is awareness of where am I placing my attention? Have I gone down the rabbit hole? Am I following my upset? Am I following the story I'm telling myself? Or am I in the here and now? And in the here and now, in a more present open mind, we naturally get more helpful thinking. We tap into our resourcefulness and our okayness naturally. We don't have to go hunting for it. It's there. It's always right there.

That distinction of where you're placing your attention just allows you to feel it, to raise your consciousness around it, which is incredibly helpful. And the final thing I want to leave you with today is to appreciate the season you're in. Appreciate what matters to you. Don't rule it out. Don't say home doesn't count at work and work doesn't count at home. What I want to create at work is

goes against what I want to create at home. No, those are all misunderstandings. Just come back to you. What season are you in? Life has seasons, work has seasons, careers have seasons. What season are you in? What really matters to you? Factor that in and I promise you don't, it's not an either or. I promise if it looks like either or or lose lose, you're in an internal gripped mind.

You are in a level of distortion, not clarity. And when you just come in and you realize this is the season I'm in, this is what matters to me, and you stay open and present, you're gonna get ideas on how to shift. You're gonna get ideas on where to shift internally around expectations. You're gonna get ideas about how you could bring more of this season into your work and into your life, I promise you that.

So thank you as always for listening and I want to encourage you for today, just take a few minutes today, maybe even this moment right now. Where is one place, a relationship, a project, your calendar, where a small shift could create spaciousness or energy? Where does it look like you're at the mercy of a circumstance and you could experiment with finding your balance within?

What happens when you right now just put your attention in your inner climate and you just take a breath or a pause? So work-life balance, life balance, it's not about the outside, it's about the balance within. And the good news is beneath the current noise and experience and circumstances, it's already there. It's already available to you.

Take a moment now and touch it, tap into it. A little goes a really long way. As always, thank you so much for listening. I'm so glad you're here. If you know anyone that would benefit from this conversation, please share this with them. Thank you. I look forward to the next time.