{"id":35651,"date":"2025-10-18T13:51:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-18T13:51:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/the-best-advice-i-ever-got-about-work-life-balance-came-from-a-past-boyfriends-mom-its-shaped-my-life-for-2-decades\/"},"modified":"2025-10-18T13:51:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-18T13:51:56","slug":"the-best-advice-i-ever-got-about-work-life-balance-came-from-a-past-boyfriends-mom-its-shaped-my-life-for-2-decades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/the-best-advice-i-ever-got-about-work-life-balance-came-from-a-past-boyfriends-mom-its-shaped-my-life-for-2-decades\/","title":{"rendered":"The best advice I ever got about work-life balance came from a past boyfriend&#8217;s mom. It&#8217;s shaped my life for 2 decades."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68ecfa7e1c1f80efbec57242?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Ashley Archambault and her son\"\/><figcaption>The author (right) homeschooled her son (left).<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Ashley Archambault<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>I struggled to juggle jobs and college classes, but I thought I had to if I wanted a great career.<\/li>\n<li>My boyfriend&#039;s mother saw how stressed I was and told me I should work to live, not live to work. <\/li>\n<li>Her simple advice empowered me to change jobs over the years and reflect on how I was living. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In college, I was burning the candle at both ends, trying to balance part-time work and full-time classes.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn&#039;t eating or sleeping enough and felt like I was always busy and missing out on spending time with my family and friends. Still, I made time for my long-term relationship with a guy I&#039;d been seeing since high school. <\/p>\n<p>Over the years, I&#039;d spent a lot of time with his family, and I especially admired his mother and how she seemed to juggle so many responsibilities yet never appeared burned out.<\/p>\n<p>During one visit to her house, she told me she&#039;d noticed how busy I had been. I dismissed my feelings and explained away my schedule, saying, &quot;I know I&#039;m going to need to work hard if I want to achieve my career goals.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>She smiled gently and told me, &quot;You need to work to live, not live to work.&quot; The simple piece of advice may not have been revolutionary or unique to her, but it struck me to my core. <\/p>\n<h2>From that moment on, my perspective on work was different<\/h2>\n<p>I began to view work as something you did to finance your life, and it has affected my choices ever since. I realized how valuable my time was and started to think about the life I wanted to live rather than just the job I wanted to have.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of focusing on the work I&#039;d been doing, I was now even more aware of everything else I hadn&#039;t been doing enough of. <\/p>\n<p>I missed the slow Sundays I adored, when I would do nothing but sit and drink too much coffee. I missed going on long runs, reading next to my dog, and spending time with friends. <\/p>\n<p>Those things were what I really needed and wanted more of. A career didn&#039;t mean much if I wasn&#039;t enjoying my life in between shifts. <\/p>\n<p>I knew I wanted to be home with my family and pets as much as I could, and I started thinking of my job as part of my life, meaning I really didn&#039;t want to be miserable ever, including at work.<\/p>\n<p>Empowered to make changes, I left a part-time job that I disliked so much that I felt sick with dread before my shifts. I asked for a raise at my other part-time gig and also started cleaning houses and pet-sitting. <\/p>\n<p>I got a taste of being my own boss with multiple side gigs, and I liked it so much that I did it for the next 10 years.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>&#039;Working to live&#039; has been my career goal for 2 decades now<\/strong><\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/68ecfe8b1c1f80efbec572a4?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Author Ashley Archambault with her son in a park with dogs in Florida\"\/><figcaption>The author works multiple part-time jobs instead of one full-time job.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Ashley Archambault<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>After I adopted the &quot;work to live&quot; mindset, I only pursued jobs that I thought I&#039;d enjoy.<\/p>\n<p>At one point, I took a break from school to work in restaurants because I wanted to learn to cook from real-world experiences. I really loved the energy of it. <\/p>\n<p>However, when I had my son, I wanted a different schedule \u2014 one where I could be home as much as possible with him.<\/p>\n<p>With the concept of &quot;working to live&quot; on my mind, I returned to school and became a teacher. <\/p>\n<p>I liked the idea of having the same schedule as my son, but after six years, I found that the job was actually taking all of my energy. By the time I got home, I was too drained to do anything else. <\/p>\n<p>So I left the profession and started working from home, again finding a balance between work and life.<\/p>\n<p>Though I&#039;ve had many jobs over the years, they haven&#039;t been my focus \u2014 I&#039;ve given myself the freedom to change them once they no longer suited my life. <\/p>\n<p>That one piece of advice I got from my boyfriend&#039;s mom all those years ago ultimately gave me the gift of a life that I feel has been full of actual living.<\/p>\n<p>When I look back on my life after college, I see many cozy nights at home, time spent with loved ones, and priceless experiences. Those are the things I&#039;ve come to value as true wealth. <\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The author (right) homeschooled her son (left). Courtesy of Ashley Archambault I struggled to juggle jobs and college classes, but I thought I had to if I wanted a great career. My boyfriend&#039;s mother saw how stressed I was and told me I should work to live, not live to work. Her simple advice empowered [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-35651","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}