Life is demanding, and it’s very easy to feel that life is out of control. But you have a choice. You can bring balance to your life if you make it a priority. It’s easy to spend all day chasing objectives, only to feel that you’ve accomplished nothing at the end of the day. Rebalancing your life is possible.
A busy life can be meaningful, interesting, and invigorating.
Try these effective strategies to create balance in your life:
1. Learn to be more patient. Your life might be more balanced than you realize, but it’s hard to see it if you’re impatient. A lack of patience makes every situation more challenging. A little patience makes many challenging situations manageable.
- Impatience is one way you agitate yourself. You also make yourself less capable in the moment. For me, sometimes even just taking a few seconds to just breathe gives me a new outlook on the current situation.
2. Simplify. It’s very easy in today’s world to buy more things than you need and take on more responsibilities than you can manage. Every extra item and responsibility in your life can create an imbalance. Eliminate the superfluous and bring more harmony into your life.
- Saying no has been super hard for me personally because I am a people pleaser and a natural caregiver. I rarely put my needs before those of my family and often even friends, but I’m getting better at saying no when I know that it’s just going to cause me stress.
3. Give your health a priority. When life gets hectic, our first response is to sacrifice ourselves for everyone and everything else. This is a mistake. Without good health, life becomes very unbalanced.
- If you don’t give your health the priority it deserves, your resulting bad health will eventually get your full attention. For me, this includes budgeting for and not skipping my daily supplements.
4. Create a schedule that includes downtime. Downtime isn’t just the time that’s leftover after your responsibilities are completed. Downtime is something you do on purpose. Plan for it. Make time for it. Knowing you have a break scheduled in the near future will motivate you to spend your time more effectively.
5. Have a purpose each day. It’s challenging to start the day and common to procrastinate. Time is such a valuable resource. It’s possible to increase your wealth or to receive more love, but we’re all limited to 24 hours. Once you fall behind, the entire day is out of balance.
- Get started on your day with a purpose and the rest will fall into place.
6. Spend time on the activities that mean the most to you. Your family is likely a priority, but what else do you find meaningful? Hiking? Playing the violin? Reading? Working isn’t the only priority in life. The more time you’re able to spend on enjoyable activities, the more you’ll enjoy your life.
7. Spend time on your relationships. This includes, but isn’t limited to, your romantic relationships. Keep up with your friends and extended family too. It takes time, but you’re probably wasting time on something less meaningful, like television.
8. Get enough sleep. Do you sleep less than seven hours each night? Even if you’re highly successful, you could be doing even better. Studies have shown that performance increases for many tasks, both physical and mental, when subjects receive at least seven hours of sleep.
- If you don’t have time for seven hours, it’s time to reexamine your priorities. That being said, some have sleep issues outside of time management including myself. Making my health a priority and finding ways to sleep better has helped a lot in my productivity each day.
9. Make yourself your biggest priority. When you take good care of yourself, you can take better care of others. When you’re at your best, your performance at work is at its highest. It might seem selfish to prioritize your own needs and happiness, but everyone in your life will benefit from this mindset.
- As I mentioned above, this has been super hard for me. I’ve spent a lot of time working on making myself just as important as those I care for each day.
Define what having a “balanced life” means to you.
Balancing your life will be impossible until you clarify what balance means to you. How much time would you spend at work? How much time would you spend at home? How many leisure hours do you need each week? How would you spend those hours? Create a well-balanced life by choosing your priorities wisely.
The biggest thing for me has been the point you made about simplifying.
I try to set everyday up with an idea of the minimum I need to do to feel good about my day.
Before, I used to make schedules based on trying to get the most done everyday. Then I became overwhelmed and overworked and still not happy or satisfied.
Now that I make my schedule based on the minimum, somehow I feel like I’ve maximized my life and I feel more accomplished.
Most of the time anyway. It’s a work in progress.
This is one of the things I appreciate most about working from home for me. We can adjust and tweak as we go along as needed. I’ve realized there’s not really a forever balance. It’s more about adjusting to balancing as needed along the way.
Great suggestions!