This week a worker bee from Bloemfontein says that she constantly feels inadequate and overwhelmed in the workplace. Before she throws in the towel and searches for a sugar daddy, Gauteng clinical psychologist Kelebogile Mojanaga comes to her aid and unpacks the importance of finding work-life balance in this episode of Sisters Without Shame.
Work will often take precedence over everything else in our lives forcing us to focus on success and even neglect our mental health.
It does not matter how much you love what you do, at some point you will just have one of those bad days at work. And if you are having a bad day, it can be easy for that day to bring your whole mood down and even infringe on your personal time. Here is the thing though, it does not have to, says Mojanaga.
“Sometimes what tends to happen is when we are having a bad work day, we tend to think it has been a bad work year, it has been a bad week, it has been a bad month and everything is not going well,” she says.
“But you find that you are just having a bad day, so part of trying to manage getting through a bad day is about remembering it and de-escalating that.”
How to find harmony
Creating a harmonious work-life balance is critical to improving not only our physical, emotional, and mental wellbeing, but it is also essential for our careers.
“Although it is a cliché, accept that today is a bad day, but that you might have a better day tomorrow,” she says. “Sometimes you have all these deadlines in the workplace, and you end up working overtime and then feeling frustrated or feeling resentful that you are not being remunerated for these hours and it is affecting your mental health.”
Your personal time has value. “You cannot expect your employer to respect your working hours when you continue to blur the lines that are outside of your contractual agreement where you end up working overtime and, in the end, your mental health suffers.”
In this episode Mojanaga also talks:
- The importance of time management in the workplace and learning to stick to deadlines.
- Setting healthy boundaries in the workplace.
- Practical tips for resting.
Listen to the full interview on Sisters Without Shame
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