Work-life balance is a concept promoted in the workplace and embraced by employees and is about improving workers’ satisfaction and productivity at work and preventing burnout. It’s accomplished when a person feels satisfied about their personal life and their work.

I think that adding the money part to the equation makes it a more holistic concept of balance. It is not just about balancing your work and your life, but about balancing your work and life with your intentions and goals and what it is all for, and money is a large part of that equation, because it allows us to live, and have the life that we want, both materially and experientially.

Yet money remains a rather mysterious entity for most of us when we consider the role it plays (how much our need for money drives us, for example) in our day-to-day lives. Unraveling this mystery can be complicated. Just like our relationship to work and our relationships to our family and friends is the key to our work-life balance, improving our relationship to money is key to achieving work-life-money balance.

I think of work-life-money balance as being about achieving a kind of personal flow where your intentions, your goals, your beliefs, and actions are all aligned with one another.

For me, what being in full harmony has come to mean is that I juggle all my loves – the things that are important to me and my happiness - in a skillful way.

But I’ve had to work on this juggling act. A lot. Here were my three biggest struggles – they continue to be things that challenge me, but a little less so than before. My first struggle was trouble letting go of my work when I was supposed to be in my “life” mode – being distracted, wanting to check email, wanting to be “productive,” feeling stymied by others’ demands on me, in short - frustrated. Certainly not living in the moment or fully present. But rather living a lot in the future. My second struggle was having a vague sense of dissatisfaction always - It was really easy to see what I still needed – still needed to have, still needed to do, still needed to be. It was not easy to feel satisfied or appreciative for what I did have. The part about how to be happy and satisfied never seemed as intuitive! My third struggle was not being clear about what I should be doing or what I really wanted. I’d feel pulled along by obligations and demands and ought-to’s without really knowing what was really right for me.

I think that for me, this whole topic boils down to the question of how to be in harmony in your life. And this is a big wide open, not as obvious as it might at first seem, question.

Our society is pretty money-focused. Notice the fancier and fancier grills people feel obligated to own. It used to be that a $29.99 grill did the job. Now people seem to need $3000 models. How about lawnmowers? Even I remember the ones you pushed by hand. Now people need $5000 ride-ons that turn on a dime! We all want more and want to better our neighbors and as a society, we seem to never be satisfied. One of the most popular TV shows in China is a “survivor” type reality show for entrepreneurs vying for venture capital. Everyone wants to get rich. "Our culture has become a society that celebrates extremes. In business, the billionaire jetsetters who run four or five global conglomerates are held up as the ideal, rather than the neighborhood (business owner). In family life, it has become the norm to set our children up to be overachievers, even at the risk of overburdening them with advanced-placement classes and piano and tap and ballet and soccer and French lessons -- all in the name of being 'well-rounded.'

Yes, it has the good aspect of causing our economy to be strong. But it has the downside of keeping us exhausted! We've all seen (perhaps in the mirror) the negative results when one aspect of our lives forces all others to take a back seat for too long. Physical, mental and even emotional health can start to suffer. Distress, disconnection from yourself and others, less intimacy.

In recent years, economists and psychologists have turned their attention to "happiness research." -- and the results are a little disturbing if your life's goals are a bigger paycheck and a fatter nest egg. Money alone, it seems, just doesn't buy a whole lot of happiness. A case in point is Japan, which was a very poor country in 1960. Between then and the late 1980s, its per capita income rose almost fourfold, placing it among the highest in the industrialized world. Yet the average happiness level reported by the Japanese was no higher in 1987 than in 1960. They had many more washing machines, cars, cameras, and other things than they used to, but they did not register significant gains on the happiness scale.

We want to make more money, but then we often are pressed for time and the work-life-money juggling act can feel crazy. As a financial planner coach, I work with clients on their work-life-money balance issues – and the issue comes up in a lot of different and interesting ways. One client was so focused on making money that he completely forgot to exercise or take care of his body. One client with a very good stable job spent every cent of his pay check each month and had no house or savings at 55! One client was so anxious about money that she couldn’t make any reasonable investment decisions. I work with clients that are overengaged with money, underengaged with money, or just out of balance with money. Some are unbalanced because they lack clarity about their intentions and goals, are not in alignment with their vision of what they want to attract and therefore can’t see how they can move beyond the situation they are in.

What I do is help clients step back, decide what their priorities are, and realize that they control their own destiny and their own ultimate happiness. So based on my work as a financial planner and life coach, and also based on a lot of the research on happiness, I want to offer you a four-step strategy for achieving greater work-life-money balance.

1) Acknowledge that the balancing act is not easy or natural – it takes work. Happiness takes work. Being with friends, family, having more leisure time and less commuting time, exercising, sleeping, and challenging yourself, tend to raise happiness. Being fully present and really being in alignment with your intentions raises satisfaction levels. Being appreciative of what you have is critical. Though perhaps not automatic or easy.

2) Recognize what your natural inclinations are. Are you constantly anxious about money? Obsessing about money? Ignoring money? Being irresponsible about money? Those are all ways that you could be out of balance with money. Your natural inclinations will point you in the direction of the type of imbalance that probably exists for you.

3) By assessing the nature of your imbalance, you will begin to unlock the key to your personal path toward greater balance. If you are ignoring money, for example, then you will most likely have to develop some capacities to be more engaged. It might have to do with speaking up or it might have to do with becoming more in touch with your instincts and gut reactions. It might have to do with becoming more courageous. Or if you are obsessing about money, then you most likely will have to get to a better understanding first about what is really driving you to obsess about money. Perhaps it is because you need validation. Or because you need security. Or because you need control. Whatever it is, you need to get to the bottom of it so you can make some different choices.

4) The key to your own personal path toward greater balance will most likely require you to move out of your comfort zone and practice doing some things that are not so natural at first. By taking this path of challenge, by becoming clearer about your intentions and your goals and being in alignment with what you want to attract to yourself and starting to understand better how you are limiting yourself, you will be able to transcend your typical habits. But this will require some degree of moving out of your comfort zone and accepting the constancy of change. Here are some ways to put some structures into place to manage the ebb-flow more effectively.
i. Place some deliberate time intentions around nurturing each aspect of your life – work, self, relationships, money. “Quality time”
ii. Ask for support
iii. Have some clearly define goals outlined with time frames and indicating the support that will help you to achieve these goals. Set priorities. Make time for yourself. Practice daily.

Remember what is precious to you and the rest will fall into place behind those priorities.

You will feel lighter, more spacious, courageous and yes, happy. By having a more effective relationship with money, greater clarity about your intentions and goals and values, you will have a greater ability to experience satisfaction and contentment, and better, more meaningful relationships with other people. Happiness, after all, is the goal of this work-life-money balance challenge. Tell yourself everyday that you control your own destiny and you can make it the greatest day ever or the worst day ever. Ultimately you set the tone every morning!