Recently I viewed a great post by Superintendent Joe Sanfelippo about self-care for educators. For those of us who are engineered to serve others and identify with that purpose, sometimes it’s easy to forget that we have needs as well. For those of us whose professional pursuits sometimes border on obsessive, I think it important to reflect on what our purpose is as individuals and evaluate whether or not we are serving that purpose best in the present moment by running ourselves ragged or neglecting our families.
LEADERS!!! It’s hard to take care of people when you don’t take care of yourself. EAT…REST…LAUGH.
— Joe Sanfelippo (@Joe_Sanfelippo) August 29, 2020
We’re all in this thing together. Let’s go. #LeadFromWhereYouAre #1minwalk2work #ImpactTheNarrative #HackingLeadership pic.twitter.com/ZbxcVp8OYj
Inevitably, discussion along these lines will lead us to the topic of “work-life balance.” A very insightful post by James Clear on the Four Burner Theory of work-life balance is a good starting point for a discussion on whether or not you really can “have it all.” The four-burner theory supposes that we all have four aspects of our life that we can turn out attention to health, work, family, and friends. The theory goes that “in order to be successful you have to cut off one of your burners. And in order to be really successful, you have to cut off two.”
In the post, Clear suggests “outsourcing” one or more of those burners as well as other a few other ideas of how to manage that work-life balance. Some may refer to coming to a work-life “fit,” where rather than trying to make one’s professional and personal life balance, coming to some resting point that one is comfortable with seems to be the way to go.
As I have reflected on my own struggles in finding balance personally and professionally, I have found that when I am both challenged enough to feel I am being stretched but still be able to appreciate what I have and where I am, I feel very much in a place of balance. For lack of a better term, I like characterizing this feeling as equanimity.
I have written in the past about my experience as a coach following a district championship performance by my team several years back. Despite the fact that we were extremely successful and had done so for the first time in that school is history in over 10 years, we were completely and totally unsatisfied and unhappy with our performance. It took a long time for me to realize that the mental framework I was approaching coaching this team that team was unhealthy and unhelpful.
Ironically, I think stepping away from coaching and into the role of an athletic director and assistant principal has allowed me to understand the importance of equanimity in my personal and professional life. By creating some distance between myself and what was an obsession for most of my career, I can see that many of the things I told myself I had to do in order to be competitive were not necessarily true. I also think that by shifting into the role of an athletic director I have realized through necessity that so much of what determines the outcome of a contest or season is out of my control.
Many coaches think to themselves, “If I don’t break down this film or run this workout or have this meeting, we will lose an edge.” A lot of our, “embrace the grind” philosophy comes from the fact that really, we don’t know where to draw the line. It’s not really about what is optimal but rather what is within our capacity at that point.
If you’ve ever tried to balance a teeter-totter or any other device with a zero point of gravity, you know that it is very difficult to do. This means that you must constantly be monitoring and adjusting where you need to place your attention. There are always times when work will need more attention, and likewise when we will need to spend more time with friends and family. This all requires introspection and reflection on where we are in our professional and personal lives.
