In Brief: Essential Insights for Post-Military Transition
5 Jun 2023 · 5 min
0:00
In this solo InBrief episode, host Jordana Megonigal – CEO of the Recon Network – challenges the conventional corporate mantra of “work‑life balance.” She argues that the phrase unfairly privileges work and collapses the many distinct facets of life—relationships, health, spirituality, personal growth—into a single, unrealistic equal‑time equation. Jordana proposes a broader, more fluid concept of balance: regularly reflecting on each life domain, identifying which areas are thriving or lagging, and deliberately reallocating time and energy to address gaps. She warns against seeking a permanent state of equilibrium, noting that life’s limited time and energy inevitably cause trade‑offs, and instead encourages embracing the natural ebb and flow, riding the waves, and making conscious “pit‑stop” adjustments. The episode concludes with a concrete challenge: listeners should inventory their life areas, boost any that feel “flat,” schedule a follow‑up check‑in, and recognize that fulfillment comes from navigating the journey rather than achieving perfect balance.
Chapters
This is InBrief. Let's get to it. Hello there, and welcome back to the InBrief podcast. I'm Jordana. I'm the CEO of the Recon Network. And each week we take just a few minutes here to dive into a new topic that hopefully gives you a new perspective or makes your post-military transition a little bit easier. This week, we're talking about balance. Now, the topic of balance comes up a lot in the corporate world, usually as part of the two-part mantra work-life balance. The idea is that you need to create a balance between your career and all the other things in your life so that you're not drowning in work constantly. But can I just say, I hate this wording? Like on a scale from zero to eating liver, this wording is like eating liver raw that got left out in a garden shed for a year. Okay, so that's gross, but you get it. I hate, hate this word. That's because when you say work-life balance, you're automatically giving work more of a proportion in your life than it deserves. And at the same time, you usually end up ignoring how multifaceted that your life is. So let me explain. In your life, there are things that are important. Having a job is absolutely one of them in that it often provides purpose and at least provides financial resources for you to actually live. But it's only one part of your life. You also have relationships with friends, with family, your partner, your kids. You have your spirituality. You have mental, physical, and emotional health. You have hobbies and personal growth, things that give you meaning and joy. But in this idea of work-life balance, all of those things are bundled together and are given equal footing on your job. You're supposed to balance out both of those things with time, energy, and resources, meaning that you're giving just as much time to all of the many facets of your life as you are to your career or your position within a company. Y'all, it's too much. Somewhere we've gotten this idea that not only work-life balance is a thing, but that it's achievable and that it'll make you happy if you find it. So let's toss the idea of work-life balance out the window. Instead, just look at balance. So my question, what does it mean to achieve balance in your life? Well, it means that you consistently reflect on all the different aspects of your life. All those things we mentioned earlier, and determine what areas are lacking right now and which are thriving. The ones that are thriving, we try to keep doing what we're doing, and the ones that are lacking, we decide to expend a little more energy or time in those areas to bring them into balance. That means if I've been spending a lot of time at work working on a huge project, my family may have been paying for it in the end. I'm out of balance. But if I can recognize that and focus on doing the things necessary to improve that area, I can be in better balance overall. But here's the thing. While striving for balance is great because it forces us to evaluate where we're spending our time and energy and where we might be overlooking something, it's a problem if we expect that we can maintain this balance in a constant state of equilibrium once we get it together. But spoiler alert, this is real life, not a fairy tale where everything falls perfectly into place. There's only so much time in your day, and there's only so much energy in your brain and body. So when you're expending extra in one area to bring it into balance, that surely means that something else is going to get skimmed over. So if you're not paying attention, you're sure to go flat in another area that might have been doing great before. So rather than chasing this elusive notion of balance, it's way more productive to embrace the ebb and flow of life and learn how to ride those waves. Sometimes you're going to have to embrace the suck and consciously decide to refocus on an area later on. Whatever you're doing, the key is to find harmony within chaos, to discover what truly matters to you and allocate your time and energy accordingly. So your challenge this week, take an inventory. What areas of your life feel a little flat and what can you do this week to give them a little boost? Then set a time on your schedule in a week or two and do another inventory. See if you've gotten better in that area and if anything else is falling by the wayside at the same time. But above all, remember, life isn't about achieving perfect balance at all times. That's impossible. Instead, life is about finding fulfillment and contentment in the journey that you're on and being able to realize when you might need to take a pit stop and repair a flat.
