The Surprising 'Sway' To Achieve Balance

Look, it happens to the best of us: the late night birthday party that ends a little too close to early-morning coffee with your boss, the last-minute project that keeps you at work well into dinner plans with your squad.

- Ashley Fetters

Sometimes (all the times?), it feels impossible to achieve that much-hyped but ever elusive goal: work-life balance. That’s because it is. Giving a hundred percent on and off the job every day just isn’t realistic or even feasible. Yet women in particular are sold the idea that they need to find this professional-personal nirvana, says Shawn Burn, PhD, a psychology professor at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. “These too high standards mean you’ll be doing a lot of ‘shoulding.’” As in: I should perform perfectly at work. I should be the perfect best friend. I should exercise every day. Sound familiar? The truth is that very few people can “have it all” in this way. For everyone else, it’s time to stop stressing and start swaying.

The term means shifting your priorities in a new, not-always-even way—swinging back and forth between your work and nonwork lives over longer periods of time rather than trying to bring them into daily harmony, says Jeanne Thompson, head of workplace solutions thought leadership at Fidelity Investments.