Finding Balance in your Life

With so many responsibilities and distractions, and at today’s rapid rate of change, balanced living may feel like a distant dream, at times.

For many, we try really hard to manage the day-to-day demands that we face, such as dealing with difficult situations, managing uncontrollable circumstances, operating within rigid timescales, as well as trying to meet other’s high expectations and at times handle their inflexibility and unwillingness to support.

We do all of this, whilst trying to look after our loved ones and ourselves. It is no wonder that finding balance in our lives may be something left on a list of resolutions or intentions for a day that is yet to come!

This doesn’t mean that we don’t care or that we are less passionate about the things that will bring balance to our lives. In fact, there will be aspects of our lives that will be a model of excellence, even though we are fully aware that other areas of our lives require attention.

In fact, we may have already made attempts to achieve balance, with good intentions to cut back hours at work, exercise more, eat healthier, take time off, reconnect with friends and generally focus on ourselves, only to find that weeks or months or even years have passed by without change. Life continues out of balance and we simply carry on living in that way, still dissatisfied, still aware of what we need to do and still waiting to reach that element on the ‘to do list’.

Whilst working with a number of clients, I’ve noted that many have arrived at one of my coaching programmes resigned to living a life out of balance, as if that’s just the way life is, that it’s the “real world”. Yet, they all expressed a strong internal desire to achieve and maintain balance at two levels:

1. Their underlying quality of life and the day-to-to-day experience, where they are searching for a way to juggle all their precious priorities in life better; by finding ways to manage their activities and relationships to bring everything and everyone in line with their goals and vision.

2. Their need for more control of their lives so that they feel empowered and less at the mercy of circumstances and other people’s expectations and demands. Often, clients say that they want to feel that they are choosing their lives rather than reacting to it.

Balance is not about levelling everything in life out and it is not necessarily about reaching an ultimate equilibrium, where all areas of life to have the same weight. Ultimately, balance is about making choices; saying yes to some things and saying no to others. Understandably, this can be a challenge, as we naturally want to please other. However, each time we say yes, we have to make room in our life for it. Often and as, it feels natural, we tend to say yes to many things with little thought as to how we will fit everything in! Ultimately, this could lead to us feeling overwhelmed or even that our lives are out of control or out of balance.

It is also important to recognise and remember that life happens and life changes over time, because life is dynamic. With this in mind, balance has to be a fluid state, where we are constantly balancing. As life changes and evolves, how we balance our lives has to change and evolve too. If we stick too rigidly to our plans, we could equally find our lives out of control or out of balance, as our approach will become unsuitable.

Balance is about choice and how we choose to manage our lives to maintain the balance. That said there is no single Life Balance framework that is right for everyone. Nor is there a single Life Balance framework that will be right for one person throughout their life.

Working with a Life Purpose Coach will help to widen your perspective, which in turn will create more choices and an opportunity to focus fully on balance in your life as a whole. A Life Purpose Coach can help restore ‘flow’ and balance in your life, empowering you to take action today, whilst aligning life back to your vision and sense of fulfilment. A Life Purpose Coach will also transfer skills to you that will support you in developing a flexible approach to balance in your life.

If this article resonates with you and you are ready to restore balance back into your life, then do reach out and make contact.