A toxic work-life balance reflects in relations with peers

Toxic Work-Life Balance: Today’s professional world is getting increasingly competitive. This is specially predominant as social media is playing a unique and crucial role in professional portfolios. LinkedIn and Twitter are now the informal resumes that many recruiters now treat as go-to information source while recruiting new hires. 

But as is true with social media, these profiles are not a true reflection of one’s personality and thus begins the vicious cycle of peer pressure and resultant anxiety. The dire need to get “virtual approval and praise” through our posts and getting flooded with likes and comments leads to added baggage of “pretentious expectations” of current and future employers. Work-life balance is impacted in this leading to a deranged system of professional and personal lives, one that looks unavoidable. 

This competition among peers though can certainly be a positive attribute to promote hard work and productivity, but it does carry with it certain setbacks. While looking at a colleague’s work, a natural and healthy response can be “That’s an interesting outlook.” But sometimes the pressure of matching the level of work and the methodology of a colleague’s work looks so inspiring to us that it soon changes into competitiveness. In this desperation to achieve the set milestone by us, we sometimes can lose our true self in between. 

This can very quickly transform as toxic relations with peers. The internal insecurity reflects in our relationships with peers. The way our motives to boost ourselves and push to do better morph into something negative is clear in our actions and reactions. 

This again stresses the importance of achieving a healthy work life balance. When we are at peace and happy, it reflects in our actions and everyday interactions with peers. Being happy with one’s accomplishments and achievements and also confident in own skills is important to make progress in right way in the right direction.