Balancing work and family is harder than it ever has been before and many families are struggling to figure out how to claim their life back. It's not easy to watch other people raise your children. It's just as difficult to spend so little time with your partner that you start to realize that you hardly even know what is going on in his or her life. We get busy developing our careers, and family often takes a back seat so we can get ahead. The good news is that you can have career goals, family goals, and work balancing at the same time.

1. Spend a little time discovering your core values and beliefs. Values often determine our behavior while beliefs determine how we feel about our behavior. A good work ethic can be a well grounded and even admirable value. Believing that you have to trade your family time for a good work ethic can make you feel isolated, lonely, and perhaps even angry. Balancing work and family starts with reconciling the values and beliefs that we carry that prevent us from really living all aspects of our life with complete fullness. If you believe that you can take better care of your family by working harder rather than by spending more time with them your road toward work balancing is going to be a long one. Family time, even when kids reach their teens, is a vital part of life for all families and those who go without definitely feel the sting.
   
   
2. When you start to redevelop your life goals and aim toward balancing work and family you will get there faster and with more satisfaction if you approach the task with a sense of realism. If you typically work a 60 to 70 hour work week and you suddenly decide to drop down to 40 hours a week all at once you are likely to get a lot of static from your superiors. Rather, scale down a little bit at a time and set a time frame for your ultimate work balancing goal.
   
   
3. Time management, prioritizing goals and agendas, and work balancing are all interconnected. Trimming the fat off of the time you devote to certain activities can literally save up several hours in a week, or even sometimes within a day. If you want to spend more time with your kids and your partner then you don't want to spend several evening hours at home interfacing with the office, zoning out in front of an electronic device, or hanging at your favorite water hole with your friends. Priorities are necessary to help direct us toward the behaviors that will help us toward the ultimate goal of balancing work and family.
   
   
4. Finally, remember that you can only directly influence so much in life. You can stay organized in order to develop work balancing skills but you can't control a now storm that prevents you from getting home on time for family game night. Your job while working toward your goals is to remain flexible enough to amend the goals when necessary but organized enough to carry them out. If you throw in a good sense of humor your trip toward balancing work and family will be much more pleasant for everyone whenever stressful situations arise.