Developing a Work-Life Balance Perspective

For your prosperity and happiness at both work and at home, one of the most beneficial things you can do is establish a good work-life balance for yourself. It’s also valuable to help your staff do the same thing. 

If that recommendation caused you to roll on the floor laughing, I really mean it! It is not only possible, it’s your best shot at running a successful practice. However, what achieving that balance entails might mean a little something different than what you’re thinking. We’ll get to that in a minute. 

First, let’s look at why it’s so important. 

You’re Setting an Example for Your Staff

As a Pediatric Private Practice Owner, you’re the most important single element that determines the mood of your practice. If you’re stressed and snapping at your staff, that’s going to negatively affect all the staff, the kiddos, parents and caregivers. 

When you can remain stable and in control of yourself and the practice, everyone will feel that stability. It will simply permeate the whole atmosphere and inspire greater calmness and confidence. 

There’s another benefit to knowing you’ve achieved this balance. When you take charge of your own happiness, you set an example to your staff that it’s possible to do so. After all, you have a lot more responsibility as CEO than they do, so if you can do it, they can do it. When you share your journey in appropriate ways, you’re also letting them know that it’s possible for them to achieve this balance too. 

What This Balance Really Comes Down To

Let’s get back to what achieving this balance really means. One of our Private Practice Owners shared her perspective during one of our online educational sessions. She learned to judge her own work-life balance not by counting how many hours were spent at home or at work, but by asking herself these questions:

• Are you making progress in your career? 
• Are you making progress in your personal goals?
• Is what you’re learning here and the relationships that you’re forming with your teammates giving you a sense of satisfaction?
• In your work, are you really able to help kiddos and families?
• If you have kids and a spouse or partner, are they also progressing and achieving their goals?

Think how you would (or do) feel when you can say “yes” to each of these questions. You’d probably feel like you were progressing both professionally and personally. And that would probably equate to a pretty good sensation of work-life balance. She then explained that a Private Practice Owner or employee who knows they are achieving both personal and professional goals will not be anxious about having a lot of time off. 

She was listening to other owners talking about compressing all the therapy into four-day weeks so their staff could get three days off in a row to work on their personal lives. That was when she realized that thinking of a balanced life as resulting from hours at work vs. hours at home will never succeed. 

In her practice, she noted, she never equates getting more time off with achieving a better balance because everyone is so completely different. So with her staff, she focuses on her staff’s professional and personal goals and how she can help them make better progress. Growth and improvement both at work and at home are what equal happiness and progress both for herself and her staff. It works. 

Five Steps to Rising Above a Challenge

Here’s a five-step process to help you when something comes up that could possibly cause you to freak out just a little (or more than a little). Not freaking out is another way of maintaining that balance between work and personal life and stability in your practice. 

1. Adopt a positive mindset. Realize that you’ve come this far and have overcome plenty of obstacles already. 
2. Make the decision that you’re going to do your best to deal with this emergency or problem.
3. Know that your positive mindset will enable you to accomplish a lot.
4. Know also that it’s going to be okay. 
5. Above all else, adopt an attitude of gratitude. Make a list of all you have to be thankful for. Your perspective will shift and you’ll see there are more things going right than wrong. Plus, you can’t be simultaneously anxious and grateful. 

Once you wrap your wits around these five points, you’re going to be in better shape to successfully address the issue in front of you. You also avoid a freakout that might shake the confidence of your staff.