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5 Tips for improved life balance
- slopez
- Oct 15, 2018
- 4 min read
For most of us, life can be pretty hectic. Even though we try our best to not let things affect us it can be hard to be completely immune to feeling stressed and overwhelmed at times.
Between “have to’s”, “shoulds” “would like to” and “, “must’s” it can be hard to find balance, energy, and inner peace.
Now, before we start let’s look at what life balance really is and maybe even more importantly what it isn’t.
Initially, I assumed that it was about having a perfect life where we are always calm, collected and living in a constant state of happiness, whooo! Ohh that sounds lovely I hear you say. Though I’m not contesting the fact I have come to learn that thinking that way will most likely set us up for failure. Not only is it an unrealistic idea to strive for but it is also highly unattainable.
Instead, I learned that a more realistic view of life balance is that it is an attitude, a belief, a continuous practice that we need to commit to every day to stay somewhat sane and centered
Here are some tips I found to be helpful in my quest to stay somewhat “sane”. Hope it will be useful for you too:)
1) Step back, gain perspective before reacting I’m guessing you are far too familiar with unexpected things that tend to pop up on a daily basis and throw us off balance by demanding our undivided time and attention. Hello kids, car breakdowns, family crises and that new report/presentation/(insert whatever, you get the point) that landed on our desk and that was due… hmm well yesterday!
Our body’s primitive, automatic, inborn response will most likely be to react with a fight or flight response. Both which will cause us unnecessary stress and yes you guessed it, to close down and go into PANIC MOOD! Been there, done that!
If we instead acknowledged what was going on and choose to distance ourselves from the perceived threat we would be able to gain a better perspective and see thing more clearly and from there choose how to react to it.
“We can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we react to it”
2) Don’t try to do it all at once
Also, instead of trying to devote equal time to all the things in our lives or to attempt to do them all at once (yeah that’s right, see you later multitasking), I believe balance is about understanding what we value and what it is that is important to us at that point in time. I say any “point in time” because our priorities will change and I think it is important that we change our focus with them.
3) Just breathe Are you breathing? No, it’s not a trick question. The reason I ask is that most of us pay very little attention to our breathing.
When we are taking short and so-called superficial breaths, we will feel more anxious, stressed and tired. When we take long, slow and deep breathe on the other hand we will feel more relaxed, energized and we will be able to think more clearly. Try it out for yourself!
Breathe in through your nose, counting to 4
Hold for a couple of seconds
Breathe out counting to 8
When you feeling stressed or anxious you can also visualize that you are letting go of negative energy on your out breath and letting in positivity, love, and goodness on your in the breath. To use the saying we are what we repeatedly do, there are few things we do as frequently as breathing (an average person breathes 20,000 times a day) so by taking long, deep, and slow breaths when we feel stressed or anxious has a significant impact on how we feel and are able to manage and tackle stress.
4) Finding your source of energy Are you an introvert or an extrovert? You might wonder what this has to do with life balance? While I believe most of us are a combination of the two depending on the situation we are in it’s important to understand what we are when it comes to sourcing energy. That is, do you feel energized and recovered by being social and surrounded by people or by having some alone time?
Knowing this will help you to take time out to do the things that energize you when you are feeling a bit low and run-down.
5) Decide that you are in a good mood While this may sound a bit ambitious and quite frankly impossible, please stay with me. While none of us have the power or ability to be happy every day we do have the power to decide the extent of how much we let things affect us. That’s not to say that we won’t get upset, angry or sad about things it just means that we won’t dwell on it and let it ruin our entire day.
” If you had $86,400 in your bank account and someone stole $20, would you throw away the remaining $86, 380? No didn’t think so. We all start with 86,400 seconds every day, don’t let somebody’s 20 sec of negativity ruin the remaining 86,380 seconds you have left.”-Unknown
By letting negativity get to us, we are only wasting our time. Remember though we can’t control what other people do or say we can control how long and how much we are going to let it affect us. So reclaim your power and move on, quick!