Is Your Life in Balance?

When our lives are out of balance, we feel like we have to do both what we HAVE to do and what we WANT to do. Finding balance allows us to appreciate the here and now – what we are doing and not what we should be doing. If we feel at peace with what we are actively doing, we are less likely to feel guilty or blame others for what we are not doing. There is much more fun in crossing a bridge with evenly spaced, sturdy boards than one with jagged edges and gaps.

The Best Way to Find Balance in Your Life

What does it mean to lead a well-balanced life? Why does balance feel like an elusive concept? The paradox of balance is that the more we pursue it, the more things seem to fall apart. Our worries make us worry more. The word “balance” is both a noun and a verb. No wonder we struggle to find it! Balance is an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady. When we see ‘balance’ as a noun, we believe it will bring stability to our lives. Balance is bringing things into harmony. It’s not something that you can get, but something that you continually do. Life is a game in which you are continually juggling many balls in the air.

Albert Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”

Life is a balancing act, and everything is in constant motion. Things will never go your way. Unexpected events will always show up uninvited. Your boss will add a new meeting to your busy schedule. A friend will call you last minute to cancel dinner plans. Learn to adapt to the moment rather than rigidly sticking to plans.

Take work and life balance, for example. Most people try to keep them separate — they build walls that make them feel worse. Instead, approach life as a whole; you cannot organize your activities into separate compartments. Integrate everything you do — let each aspect of life feed off each other. Leading a well-balanced life requires you to let go of control.

Research shows that suppressing our emotions both harms our memory and increases stress. Studies by the University of Southern California showed that people high in grit were more likely to persist in using failing strategies to complete a task. Also, individuals who are highly self-disciplined and who rely on logical analysis and willpower to achieve their goals suffer the most when facing failure.

An imbalanced life feels like a constant battle. You are trying to protect your ‘me-time’ against everyone else’s priorities. You want to prevent your work from stealing your family time away. You wish you wouldn’t get distracted by the speed and uncertainty of modern life.

When the world around you is out of balance, you feel imbalanced too. It creates a battle between what you want and what you have to do.

Balance is less about how we allocate our time and more about enjoying what we are doing in the here and now. What’s the point of taking a day off if you are worried about what’s going on at work? Your mind must be where your body is. When you enjoy what you are doing, you won’t feel guilty or blame others for what you are not doing. Allow things to fall into place, rather than forcing them to fit into a predefined structure. Balance is an inherent human condition — it lies within yourself.

5 Ways to Find Balance

1. 1. Integrate all aspects of your life: Stop seeing work, personal time, and social time as separate compartments. Rather than competing against each other, they should collaborate. Removing this imaginary wall will release a lot of tension. Integrate all aspects by applying learnings across them all.
   2. Lose balance to find balance: Letting go of control is key to letting things fall into place on their own. Sometimes you have to lose balance to find it. Be open to taking risks. Try something different. If you have to stay at work after hours, take some time off another day. Seek balance in the long term, not every instance in life.
   3. Prioritize your activities: Knowing what matters is the first step. Finding balance requires saying no to something else so you can do what you want. Most of the time, we blame others, but we are the ones that are not making a choice. Let go of unnecessary tasks, ask for help, and be open to adjusting your goals and priorities.
   4. Develop a balanced mindset: Balance is not something external. It lies within you! When something is bothering you, ask yourself “Why?” An out-of-balance context can affect you. Training your mind can neutralize part of the noise. Balance is a state of mind, not a productivity hack.
   5. Practice journaling: Set some time to reflect. Track how you spend your time — identify the tensions and make the necessary adjustments. Journaling is also a great way to capture everything good that happens in life. Acknowledging all the positive things that occurred throughout your day will make you feel grateful rather than stressing out.

Balancing The Scales

Remember when we took the Personality Test? If the test says you are a perfectionist or you know you are, then balance will be critical to understanding the right balance. It might just be that you have to be imperfect at work to feel better or be closer to your family. Identify the next steps you need to take. If the test results conclude that you are an all-or-nothing personality, understanding balance can show you where all the work needs to be done to be balanced. A person who is all or nothing wears blinders and can only focus on one thing. The best action plan is to focus on all things, the holistic self. Find out where you are lacking in balance by taking the balance exercise.

What is the Right Balance?

You were likely thinking about your own life, specifically how much time and effort you put into the different areas. If you were, good. We are going to do an exercise to see what life balance means to you. If you were not, that is okay. This exercise will help to make that clear to you.

Using the chart below, we are going to look at where you are right now, and then address where you want to be. First, write down the percentage of time you currently spend on the different areas in your life. Be honest. After you are done with that, I want you to pretend that you only have one hour in your day. How would you divide that hour’s time among each of the life areas? Make sure it equals 100%.