3 questions to investigate Balance in your life
Do you often feel like your schedule is too full?
Are your weekends so packed that you feel like you’re not rested for the workweek? Do you find it hard to say no?
By constantly pushing without awareness, you’re on your way to a crash or burnout.
What you need is balance.
Balance, equilibrium, or properly distributing energy in your life comes, in my opinion, from setting the right priorities.
I invite you to actively think and work on the following three aspects of your life to achieve a balanced life.
The first question you should ask yourself is: What is my goal? Think both long and short term. This will help you determine where to best focus in your daily, weekly, and yearly planning. Your goal can fall under the categories:
Personal development (physical and mental health, mindset, skills)
Me in relation to others (good leader, best mom, most loving partner, best teacher)
Purpose (serving a higher goal than yourself, which can be spiritual or simply ‘being a good person’)
Also, think about your ‘why.’ Why is your goal the goal? What is the underlying need?
The goal is the priority; here lies the focus, and the rest is secondary.
The second question is: What are my habits? Do they support me in achieving my goal or sabotage me?
Does your sleep pattern, eating habits, etc., help you to stand balanced in life? To be patient, alert, loving, a role model for your environment?
How you take care of yourself has a significant impact on how you feel physically and mentally. If there’s something that will make a difference in your mood, it’s optimizing your habits to write a success story.
This is the most important and the hardest. There are many social ‘obligations’ or ‘events’ that make it difficult to stick to our goals and healthy habits. After a party, you go to bed later; during a weekend getaway, you might drink a few extra glasses of alcohol or snack more... The ‘problem’ is that this often happens every weekend and sometimes during the week too. This is no longer ‘treat yourself’ or ‘balance’ but ‘do what you want.’
If you take a child to a toy store with an endless budget, they probably won’t be able to restrain themselves either. The best tool is the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule: 80% of the time you are strict with your habits, and 20% of the time there is room for exceptions.
Besides nutrition and sleep, also think about how you process your feelings or the events of the day. Do you keep everything inside, bottle it up, try to forget, or make space to write or talk about it with a therapist, coach, partner?
It can be useful to involve a third, neutral party to observe and discuss your feelings, thoughts, and behavior. You don’t have to dump everything on a friend or partner.
How do you evaluate your performance? Do you make sure you see progress or blockages? And when it’s time for relaxation, because that too is a habit, how do you fill that time? Do you escape reality with TV, gaming, etc., or do you make time for real relaxation through meditation, yoga, walking, etc.? Do you truly allow yourself to rest, or is there just more stimulation under the guise of relaxation?
The third question is: With whom do I surround myself?
There is a well-known saying that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Take time to think: do you want to be the average of the people you currently spend the most time with? Also, know that you often don’t see everything about a person. People who seem successful might also struggle with balancing emotions, physical health, social agendas, finances, their family.
Is there a balance of giving and taking in your relationships? Or do you only give and the other only takes? What you can receive are: inspiration, motivation, constructive feedback, rest, energy, understanding, etc. If you feel like you’re only giving, you might need to have a conversation with the person about boundaries and your feelings. The other party might be going through a difficult period in their life and therefore doesn’t have the mental space to give much. This is then a period and an exception. If you have a long-term relationship and you only feel like you give without receiving, you might need to distance yourself a bit from this relationship.
Let’s not just point fingers; do you communicate your boundaries well? You don’t have to say ‘yes’ to everything. Feel for yourself whether accepting an invitation or request comes from your heart, head, or FOMO... We often say that people who truly love you will always support you and your goals. This isn’t always true. I believe that family, friends, or a partner can feel real love but still resist your ideas or behavior. Don’t take this personally; not everyone has to think the same, feel the same, or 100% understand you. Know your boundaries and communicate them constructively.
If you have reviewed all this and have a plan of action, you are already much further ahead. It takes some work now, but it provides much more peace and balance later.
If you don’t want to explore this alone and feel stuck in your patterns, you can always book a coaching session with me.
Love, Steph
