Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced
life - learn some and think some and draw and paint
and sing and dance and play and work every day some. - Robert
Fulghum
Life Balance is
a topic which needs no introduction. All of us focus on balancing different
areas of our life - work, family,
personal, social etc. We desire
each of these life areas
to do well and sometimes we do a lot of juggling
to make this possible.
However, wouldn’t
it be great if we could remove the craziness, the rushing and struggling
and make the entire process
of life balance
effortless?
How To Balance Life Effortlessly
1. Be Clear Of Your Priorities
Like they say, no one ever wished to have spent more time in office on their death bed. Why
then do we keep doing such things (work ourselves to death)? What’s the point
of running after and achieving goals
which don’t mean anything later on? No matter how good we become at balancing life, we will not be happy if we are
moving in the wrong direction.
Being clear of
priorities means finding out what is important and in which order. Separate
the essentials from the non-essentials. The lesser things
you have on your plate,
the easier it will
be to balance them.
2. Strengthen The Common Base
One way of
balancing life is to pick each life area and work on it. The second way to balance is to work on the common base i.e.
work on those areas which will directly create a positive impact on all aspects of life. Achieve
maximum output while
providing minimum input by
working on -
·
Timeless Principles
We can only
imagine how utterly
confusing life would be if we
were to lie all the time or keep running away from truth. Where
would life balance be, if we are not true to our word? What would the purpose of life balance be if we cannot
come from love and be love to our
loved ones? We would spend far more time creating troubles and time pressing issues for ourselves rather
than make life better.
By aligning self
with timeless principles of truth, love, integrity etc we enable ourselves to take right decisions even if they are
difficult and stay true to them. These principles form an unwavering core within us, they give us the stability
required to balance ourselves and our lives.
Life, family,
work, society, friends … if all of these have one obvious thing in common, then that is you. And if you are to manage
and balance all of these well, shouldn’t you
be balanced and fit
as well? A weak
mind, body or spirit will not be able to do justice to either life areas.
By focusing on
growing, strengthening and balancing yourself, you enable yourself to give each area deserving work and attention. (This of course is not a reason to become self
centered and focus
only on self.)
Usually the topic of balancing life revolves around
proper time management which is fair enough
since there are only 24 hours in a day. We cannot create more time hence, we rather learn to manage it well.
Proper time
management includes creating a work-life boundary, creating family/personal time, increasing productivity by increased/decreased use of technology, forming better habits - being organized, reducing clutter etc.
2. Stand For Yourself
Whatever effort
you put in to balance
your life, know your priorities, understand and work on the timeless principles, yourself or your time management is going to be
useless if you do not stand for yourself. There are three essential skills which should
become second nature to
you if you wish to stand for yourself.
They are -
Learn to make
your own decisions and follow them through. Don’t allow anyone else to make decisions for you. No one understands
your priorities, principles and commitments better
than you. Taking
guidance from your mentors is another matter,
but the decision should
always be yours. If people are going to take decisions for you, then you will keep trying to balance the
outcomes of those decisions. To change the output, work on input.
Although saying
no forms an important part of time management and being decisive, it deserves a
special mention because without this skill, you will not be able to channel your life in the direction you want. If
you wish to separate the essentials and non-
essentials in your life, saying no will be required, if you wish to stay
true to your principles, saying no
will be required. ‘No’ is “the word” in your vocabulary which you should be
most comfortable using.
Everything that
has happened, is happening and will happen in your life is your responsibility. While external forces
do influence our lives in undesired ways, if we give away responsibility, we give away the
power to make a difference. Hence, no matter
what happens, whether your decisions have gone bad, or someone else’s,
whether someone else has created
havoc in your lives, cheated you or not stayed true to their word, take responsibility and keep the
power over your life with you. Without taking the responsibility to constantly work on balancing life no matter
what, a balanced life is not possible.
2. Myths About
Balancing
Myths usually
are trouble makers. They seem true to us and we naturally follow our truth. However, when things don’t go as
planned, we fail to identify these as the cause and keep repeating our mistakes. There are three
major myths about
balancing as well.
When people
begin thinking about balancing life and start working on it, these three myths create havoc and confusion.
Balance means
equal and hence, balancing life means distributing time equally between
all areas of life. This is a myth.
There will always be a time when one area of our life requires more attention than other. Balancing life means to listen to
and be aware of each area and its
requirements.
Balancing life means accessing
the wisdom within
us and allocating time and attention as required to each area.
·
Balancing Formula
Is Universal
Everyone seeks to balance
life. If one person has cracked the code
and found how to balance
life, it is ok to apply the same formula in our lives. Since we all are human beings,
the formula to balance life must
be universally applicable. This is a myth.
Even though all
of us are humans, we are unique individuals with unique life, priorities and needs. We can get inspired and pick and choose ideas to apply to our lives, we can learn from others success and failures;
but we cannot do a copy paste. A blind copy-
paste will not work.
You can say, to each, his own
formula.
·
Balance Is All About My
Life
We think
that when we learn
to manage our time, balance
our life, live life based on our priorities,
we have succeeded. We need to focus on balancing only our life. This is a myth.
While
predominantly balancing is about your life, an important aspect to balancing
life is balancing others lives as well. Since we
live in an inter-dependant world, lives tend to be inter-dependant and so does balance. For instance if life of
our spouse or sibling is not
balanced, sooner or later it will impact our life balance. Moreover, if their
life imbalance is because of us, then
it becomes our responsibility to make sensible
changes in our life so that
both lives can be balanced.
1. Random Tips & Ideas
Here are some random
tips and ideas on and about
balancing life.
·
Start small. Don’t
plan to transform your entire life one shot. Go slow and steady.
·
Pick up
what seems easy enough to implement first.
See positive results,
gain confidence and then dive into the
difficult ones.
·
Have patience. It takes time to put everything back in balance.
·
Stay aware of your life, stay alert so that you can
bring balance back as soon as imbalance creeps in.
·
Be present. A lot of imbalance in life
is created because
we are not truly
present in the moment.
·
Stay physically, emotionally and mentally in the same place.
·
Balance is not about ‘either/or’. Balance is about
‘and’. Be creative to find solutions to your problem.
Sometimes, you can have the cake and eat it too.
·
Balance is about holding on and letting
go. Key is in figuring
out what to hold onto and what to let go.
·
Balancing life is an
ongoing process. It never
ends.
· Enjoy the process. If you are not enjoying, then you are probably doing something wrong. Remember, the idea is to balance ‘effortlessly’.
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