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Do your kids yell 'stranger danger' when you come home from work? How to juggle work-life balance
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If youve ever been concerned that youre working too hard at your job, then you probably need to revisit your life-work balance. Your family needs you. Here are 5 tips for realigning the daily demands that take up most of your time. - photo by Taylor Cotterell
Do you feel you need to introduce yourself to your children when you return home from a long day at work? Do they introduce you as Mrs. when other parents ask who is walking with them? This disconnect from your home life could be a sign your life has fallen off-balance.

If youve ever been concerned that youre working too hard at your job, then you probably need to revisit your life-work balance. Work-life balance is the elusive middle ground between working hard enough to maintain your standard of living and working so hard you dont have enough time to enjoy that standard of living.

In the dog-eat-dog world of American corporate culture, we often find ourselves driven to work harder, more efficiently and with more enthusiasm. When we work with such blind conviction, though, our productivity invariably suffers. In fact, an employee who works without regard for life-work balance develops a certain arrogance about them a contrast to confident people who understand their own limits and realize the importance of life-work balance.

How, then, can we wrestle control back from our own workaholic selves? Here are 5 essential tips for achieving and maintaining a healthy life-work balance:

1. Surround yourself with supportive people: Our ability to achieve a proper life-work balance is often influenced by those around us. The more we are able to draw inspiration from others, the more likely we are to maintain a healthy work life. We want to be with people who encourage us:

  1. to be productive at work and minimize time sucks like social media, surfing the web, and excessive water-cooler chatter.
  2. to stop doing work outside the office.
  3. reinforce to our colleagues and supervisors what makes up our personal life. (i.e., young children, aging parents, exercise regimens) and working with our peers to modify and optimize work so as to minimize disruptions to our personal life.
2. Serve a higher purpose outside of work: One of the most important ways to keep our work life in check is to develop a sense of purpose outside of work. When our life has higher meaning, we are less likely to let work consume it. For example, we might work toward making our world a better place by giving and serving others through volunteering, community activism, and philanthropy. Sometimes our higher purpose might simply be our own families. For example, we might commit to spending more time with child-rearing, or to more romance with a spouse. As you develop your higher purpose, an added benefit is that youll start to gain perspective on work a perspective that will help you to further balance work and life.

3. Stay physically and mentally active: When were not at work, the best way to maintain our efficiency and alertness at work (i.e., the type of discipline we need to keep our work from consuming us) is to stay physically and mentally active. Skipping a gym workout because were too busy with work is a rough road to travel. Similarly, we should aim to exercise our minds as well reading books, playing brain-teaser games, engaging in stimulating conversations and debates. The healthier we keep our minds and bodies, the better well perform as we get older and, yes, eventually retire and leave our work behind.

4. Cultivate hobbies and interests outside of work: If you cannot find time for hobbies and interests outside of work, youre almost certainly not maintaining a healthy life-work balance. Thats why its so important that we force ourselves to make time for hobbies and interests that arent work-related. And its equally important that we not allow our true hobbies and interests to become overshadowed by all of our non-work obligations, like cleaning the house, paying bills, or serving on our kids PTA. Yes, our obligations are important, but we still must find time for the things we truly enjoy, even if that means hiring a housekeeper or saying no to the PTA.

5. Enjoy the compensation for your work: There is no reason to work hard at your job if you arent able to reap the rewards from it. As we work to prepare for kids college, paying off your home and being generous with others, we ought to allow ourselves opportunities to use even a small portion of our paycheck for something fun and entertaining. If you dont want to buy something for yourself, you can always buy something for a loved one a gift that ideally will require your thought and personalization and time.

To be truly successful at achieving a proper life-work balance, the most important question you should be asking yourself at every step of the way is why youre doing something. Whether youre working 15 hours a day at your job or serving as a daily taxi service for your kids, you need to ask yourself why and critically examine whether its really helping you achieve the life-work balance you desire.

If you find yourself surrounded by people who arent encouraging nor promoting that balance, if you cant identify a higher purpose for your life outside of work, if youre compromising your physical and mental health for your job, or if youre struggling to maintain personal interests and manage your hard-earned money wisely, you want to revisit your life-work balance and figure out what you can do differently to readjust that balance. As you do this, youll be surprised at how easy it is to live a happier, healthier life while not compromising your productivity at work.

Written by Taylor Cotterell of NaviTrust for HealthyLiving.care.
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How to avoid 'sharenting' and other paparazzi parenting habits
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A recent study revealed parents often spend up to two hours staging a single photo of his or her child to post online. - photo by Amy Iverson
Before having kids, some people just dont appreciate their friends baby posts. But after having a child of their own, three fourths of new parents jump right on the parental social media bandwagon. If you have become a member of this group, there are some rules to follow for posting responsibly.

Much of a parents worry is how to teach their children to use social media responsibly. We talk with our kids about privacy, oversharing, and setting restrictions on their devices to keep them safe. But parents themselves need to look in the digital mirror once in a while. Before having children, it doesnt take as much effort to think about what to post online. Its up to us to decide what we share about our own lives. But once you become a parent, there are many questions to think about regarding what is appropriate to post about your kids on social media.

In a recent survey, kids clothing subscription company Mac and Mia surveyed 2000 new parents to find out how they are documenting their kids lives on social media, and what concerns they may have.

First of all, people without children seem to feel a bit differently about the onslaught of baby pictures online than those who are parents. 18 percent of people say before they had kids, they were annoyed by their friends baby posts. But after having children of their own, 73 percent admit they post progress pictures of their little ones every single month.

Not only are new parents letting the world know each time their baby is a month older, but they are posting about their kids every few days or so. Men and women report they post 6-7 times per month about their baby.

And while 70 percent of new parents say the benefit of using social media is how easy it is to help family and friends feel involved, there are some downsides. Here are a few tips to avoid the pitfall of becoming paparazzi parents.

Dont miss the moment

In the Mac and Mia survey, some parents admitted to spending up to two hours to get the perfect shot of their baby. That seems a little extreme. New and old parents alike should be careful about spending so much time taking pictures and videos that they dont enjoy the moment. Years ago, I decided to never live an experience through my phone. A study by Linda Henkel, a psychology professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut, found that when people took pictures of objects in an art museum, they didnt remember the objects as well as if they simply observed them.

This photo-taking impairment effect can happen to parents as well. If we are so consumed by getting the perfect photo, we can miss out on the moment all together, and our memory of it will suffer.

Dont forget about privacy

60 percent of couples say they have discussed rules and boundaries for posting their babys photos, according to the Mac and Mia survey. Even so, men are 34 percent more likely to publish baby posts on public accounts. If parents are concerned about their childrens privacy, keeping photos off of public accounts is a given.

In the Washington Post, Stacey Steinberg, a legal skills professor at the University of Florida, and Bahareh Keith, a Portland pediatrician, wrote that sharing too much information about kids online puts them at risk. They write that all that sharenting can make it easier for data thieves to target out kids for identity theft. Check that your privacy settings are where they should be and never share identifying information like full names and birth dates.

Dont be paparazzi parents

36 percent of parents say they take issue when their childs photo is posted online by someone else. Responsible social media users will always ask permission before posting a photo of another child. But parents should also think about whether their own children will take issue with their own posted photos a few years down the road.

When parents are constantly snapping pictures and throwing them on social media, it can be easy to forget to pause and make sure the post is appropriate. I always use the billboard example with my kids. I ask them to picture whatever they are posting going up on a billboard in our neighborhood. If they are okay with that, then their post is probably fine. Parents should ask themselves this same question when posting about their children. But they should also ask themselves if their child would be OK with this post on a billboard in 15 years. If it would cause embarrassment or humiliation, it might be best to keep it private.

Once children reach an appropriate age, parents should include them in the process of deciding what pictures are OK to post. Researchers at the University of Michigan surveyed 10- to 17-year-olds and found children believe their parents should ask permission more than parents think they should. The kids in the survey said sharing happy family moments, or accomplishments in sports, school and hobbies is fine. But when the post is negative (like when a child is disciplined) or embarrassing (think naked baby pictures or messy hair), kids say to keep it off social media.
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