When work life balance is a joke that’s not funny | #61
When work life balance is a joke that’s not funny | #61 Daily Dose of Dawn at dawn 🌞
For many people, work-life balance feels like a cruel joke—especially when exhaustion, chronic illness, or nonstop responsibilities leave no room to rest. In Daily Dose of Dawn at dawn #61, Dawn Super speaks candidly about living in survival mode and why waiting to “feel better” isn’t always an option. This post explores how balance isn’t something you achieve all at once, but something you invite into small moments when life feels overwhelming. You’ll learn how shifting your mindset, adding tiny sources of comfort, and choosing what nourishes you can help you create a life you don’t feel the need to escape from.
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When work life balance is a joke that’s not funny - #61 Daily Dose of Dawn at dawn (work life balance)
Most of my life, I felt like all I did was work and sleep. Narcolepsy is no joke. In fact, when I was a teenager, I would dream I was working all night long. I got no rest.
Whether you're living with chronic something, having to work third shift, having to pull three jobs, a lot of us just find there's no time for life in the work life balance. And the life that we're living is transactional. Eat, sleep, help kids with homework, go to the gym, if you even have the energy to do that.
And then let's add in some stress and not feeling good and not being able to eat properly. And you can really find yourself out of balance.
When life is chaotic and work is chaotic and home is chaotic and your mind is chaotic, the overwhelm is overwhelming. And we often can't do something about our health or about our job or about our relationships. And the only thing we can do something about is the imbalance in our thinking.
Once I was watching a movie and I winced from the pain in my shoulders and the person said,
"Oh, do you want to stop this?"
And I'm like, "What do you mean?"
And they’re like, "Well, do you want to watch it later?”
“Why would I want to watch it later?”
“When you feel better?"
And I laughed cuz like I'm never going to feel better… like ever. Like it's everything I'm dealing with is lifelong. And sometimes it's easier to manage than others, but better. Just… that's not even in the cards.
So, at that point you have two options. You can wrap your misery around you and sit in it or you can make your mind a playground so that when you come home from third shift and you forgot to get milk and you can't even eat the cereal that's left in the pantry cuz you don't have anything to have it with and you're exhausted and you're hungry and you feel like falling apart… that's when you bring the balance.
You invite every life helper you can think of. You eat the canned beans in the pantry to quiet your stomach. You put on a movie that's funny so that you can get some dopamine in your brain so that you'll be able to sleep without nightmares. You take a hot shower or a cold shower if you'd rather. You rub your own feet. You bring the balance into the tiny moments when you need them the most.
I really love the Jason Mraz lyric: You don't need a vacation when there's nothing to escape from. I really took that inside of me and asked myself every day, what does that look like? What does that look like for me to live a life I don't feel like I need to escape from?
And then I just started adding in the balance where I could. The badass music playlist that gets me shaking my booty every time. The Reddit that I follow, the subreddit that I follow that makes me laugh every time I go into it. The things that I look at and hear and listen to that are uplifting, full of awe and discovery and wonder.
If you only have 15 minutes, spend them doing something that's going to lift you up. You won't regret it.
Wanna go deeper? Check this one out:
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