Is Your World Spinning Out of Control?

3 Steps to Life Balance

When we lack life balance, we can often experience pain that impacts us in multiple areas of our lives.  Often there is low mental energy, which leads to loss of productivity and money.  We can have low emotional energy, which leads to unfulfilled relationships, strain in marriages, friendships and not enough time with our children.  And then, we long for personal time just to refresh ourselves.

So, what are we to do?

Know What We Want

One cause is not having a clear picture of what a balanced life looks like.  If you were to picture a perfectly balanced day in your life, what would it look like?  Not having a clear picture of what you want is like saying you want to go on vacation, but not having a defined destination.  You won’t get anywhere, but driving in a circle.  Sounds similar to a world spinning out of control, doesn’t it!

One helpful exercise I have used with clients is to write down the 24 hours of a day.  Then picture a balanced day and write out what would be happening in each hour of that day.

Know How to Get It

Once we know where we want to go, we need to know how to get there.  As we start to clarify our picture of a balanced life, certain themes and categories become clear.  Some categories might be career, family, social, physical, mental and spiritual.  I find that they often correspond to a “Life Wheels Assessment” that I use with clients.  The next step is to write goals for each of these categories.

It is important that the goals be something you want to do and are specific.  For example, one of my clients recently set a goal to walk 30 minutes at lunch.  His energy had been low in the afternoons, which had led to low productivity and loss of billable hours.  He had been neglecting his physical health, which offset the rest of his life.

Know Why We Want It

Often we stay in an unbalanced lifestyle because it is a habit.  Habits, even when they hurt us, can be comfortable.  So to change them, we have to want to change them.  Our strongest motivation comes intrinsically.  What values do you hold that would make you want your life in alignment with your life balance picture?  One of my clients identified a value of helping others.  A strong motivator for him became to spend time with his kids to invest in their lives.  He set a specific goal to help them do their homework every day.

Move from spinning in circles to a straight line of direction with a life aligned with balance.   I would be happy to provide you with a free copy of my “Life Wheels Assessment.”   Contact me and I will not only provide the assessment for free but also walk you through how to use it to asses your current life balance.