Life imBalance

From our Motiv8ing Ideas Archive

"Work-life balance" is receiving a lot of press and attention these days. What is it that we are trying to achieve? A perfectly-balanced life and lifestyle? I doubt it!
The reality is that the "Life Balance" that we all strive so hard to achieve WILL have a healthy vein of imbalance to it. We need that imbalance to motivate and energise us to live bigger (see archive topic) and to feed us with the satisfaction of achievement.

This healthy imbalance is quite different from being out-of-balance, which is likely to generate unhealthy stress.

So how do we achieve this healthy imbalance?

Our terminology needs to change for a start.
"Work-life balance" implies that work is not part of life! That thinking creates unhelpful tension, and we're far better looking at "life" as the whole, with a variety of components (such as work, family, social, leisure, community, spiritual, etc.) that are to be 'balanced' within the whole.

Then we need to check out our mindset.
Have we really taken on board that it's our life and therefore our personal life-role to fit in and 'balance' our life according to our own circumstances? It will always be really difficult to improve life-balance if we view ourselves as 'victims' of the pressures of our work, our employer, our boss, our diary, etc.

Most importantly we need to confront ourselves with what current tensions we have between what we actually do in our life and what we want to do in our life, and then do something about reducing these tensions!
We can detect some of these things by way of our language and thoughts..."I should be..." "I ought to..." "I wish I..." "If only..." are typical indicators of an unhelpful state of tension.

What really helps is to sit down and examine various aspects of our current life, and identify those areas that do not meet our desired state. It helps to do a health-check on things like values, motivators, skills, assets, goals, priorities, time, energy and attention.
Our LifeDesign resources are designed to help take a fresh look at our life priorities, goals, balances and imbalances. The resources really facilitate the process of planning for the future. In addition, they generate the confidence and commitment to make these plans a reality!
Check out our LifeDesign resources.

"The essential conditions of everything you do
must be choice, love, and passion"
Nadia Boulanger

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"If you're on a road with no obstacles,
it's going nowhere"
Sam Torrance (Great Britain & Europe Ryder Cup captain)