work-life balance is a false choice

Everyone understands that being engaged in your work, life, family and self is key to a happy life. Nobody thinks that you’ll be perfectly fulfilled without a balance – everyone needs to be happy with their family, but you also need outside interests. Everyone needs to feel like they are a contributing member of both a family and a society. It’s not an easy balance for most of us.

I struggle with it – I make good money but I still have less free time during the week than I’d like. Bubelah struggles with it, too – she spends a lot of time devoted to child care now that we have two kids, although having my son in preschool has helped. This imbalance is something many single-income families face, because the roles end up being so sharply divided.

Yet at the same time most of us feel that we have to struggle with work/life balance. You will not gain financial independence quickly as an employee.  Employees are performing a straight-up swap of their time for money; the possibility to increase the money-to-time ratio is at the employer’s discretion, never the employee’s. If you want to be rich and therefore gain some measure of independence in your financial choices – and therefore in your life, you have to start a business or buy real estate or become a person who understands the market in its current sickly state. Alternative income is key to building wealth. But I am not just talking about figuring out a way to get rich.

Why is it that we view work/life balance as a struggle, a conflict to be resolved? I worry about it more than I worry about most things in my life – and I’m a worrier by nature – but I am trying increasingly to focus not so much on work/life balance but on how to move towards integrating work and life together in the future. I don’t think balance is truly possible. If you work a long commute away from home, most of your waking time is spent away from “life.” If you spend all of your time at home, it’s hard to develop your career or interests. Again, figuring out a way to get away from selling your time for money is key. The key is not to strive for balance, but to find work you enjoy and can integrate with your “life,” instead of working hard then retiring early, or thinking that working an eight-hour day with a three-hour commute and having a few hours at home is balance. Figuring out a way to do it in a blended way is better than trying to figure out a balanced way – because if you sell your time for money, there will never be balance.

Time-Tested Tips for Living a Balanced Life

1. Know What You Want
   Balance occurs when who you are, what you want to do in life, and what you value are aligned with your thoughts, activities and choices. To honor your true self, you must know yourself well. Identify your values, communicate your needs and respect your priorities. Pay attention to what's important to you and align your life with the desires of your heart. Formulate a crystal clear vision for your life and set goals to achieve this vision. Living a balanced life may require you to make changes in your life. If you are not satisfied with a particular area of your life, it means your choices and activities do not support your priorities. It's hard to feel balanced when you're not living your life in integrity with who you are.
2. Simplify Your Life
   The more activities and the more possessions you have to manage, the more unbalanced your life will feel. Too much of anything can lead to stress so learn to live with the basics. Fewer clothes make laundry much easier. Clean up is much faster with only a modest amount of toys. Avoid over committing. There is nothing worse than feeling like you are constantly on the go, rushing from one activity to the next. By simplifying your life, you can avoid the frenzied state so many of us live in.
3. Recognize and Manage your Internal Conflicts
   Our internal balance is disturbed when we are in conflict with ourselves. Whether it's guilt over making a mistake or worry about the uncertain economy, we must recognize and manage our internal conflicts so we can experience peace of mind. Tell the truth about who you really are and don't be afraid to be different than the norm. Keep an open mind to different perspectives, but choose which perspectives feel right to you. Internal conflict occurs when we aren't clear about who we are or when we are not living our life according to our core beliefs. So be crystal clear about what you believe and honor your beliefs.
4. Live in the Moment
   Worrying about the future and drudging up the past for the purpose of reliving pain will block your energy. To stay balanced, you need to keep the energy flowing in your body. Practice experiencing the moment and everything that it entails. Allow yourself to feel whatever emotions come up for you. If you feel angry, feel the anger. If joy is your primary emotion, embrace it wholeheartedly. Do not stuff your feelings or try to make negative feelings go away. Just be in the moment and you will naturally move through the feelings. Balance requires flexibility and the ability to roll with whatever life hands us. Fighting with life will disrupt the flow.
5. Make Choices that Move you Toward Balance
   For every YES you say in life, you are saying NO to something else. If you say yes to sleeping in, you may be saying no to working out or taking quiet time alone. If you say no to cleaning up your house, you might be saying yes to spending time with the children. Say yes to the tasks, activities, or situations that make you feel more alive and no to the ones that drain you. Pay attention to the choices you make and how they affect all areas of your life. You might choose to take on a promotion at work, but do it only after you've assessed whether or not it will affect the balance in your life. Make decisions in your life by weighing the effects these choices have on your entire life.
6. Nurture your Spirit and Embrace Love
   We all have an innate need to love and be loved. Through the ups and downs of life, we experience an array of unsettling emotions from sadness, anger and fear. Love is the emotion that balances it all. By connecting to and nurturing our spirit, we can experience peace and calm when the storms of life are raging all around us. Nurture your relationship with God - He will give you peace. Spend time in nature - it will ground you. Practice meditation or yoga. Do community service work that enables you to give love to the world. Keep your soul filled with positive and inspiring activities, and you will experience spiritual balance.

7 Tips to maintain emotional balance

1. Upon waking - stretch your arms above your head and declare:

• “I am happy to be me”
• “I welcome the world of infinite possibilities”
• “I can. I do. I will”
• “Victory to me… victory is mine”

2. Upon encountering difficulty - imagine in your hand the sword of fearlessness ... then walk boldly forward to meet your challenge.

3. When experiencing anxiety - gently wrap your left thumb with the fingers of your right hand. Hold for 1 minute… as you do, watch all worries melting away.

4. When desiring calmness - take a deep breath and utter the word “calm.” As you exhale, say “let go.” As you do, imagine your mind at the silent bottom of the sea without a ripple of thought to disturb its surface.

5. When desiring courage and strength - bring awareness to your belly, for this is the power center of your being. As you inhale, gather the earth’s energy and feed that powerful space.

6. When desiring change - forego the will its need to be. Engage, instead, the mind’s capacity to imagine and thus create that which you intend to be…

7. When encountering significant challenges - thank the world for the blessing of their opportunity.

Tips for a Healthy and Balanced Physical Body

1. Healthy diet and nutrition. Health care practitioners will tell you that you have to provide your physical body with high quality fuel if you want it to run properly. Eat a healthy, chemical-free diet high in vital nutrients. Take the herbal and vitamin supplements that will support you in your good health.
   
2. Get adequate rest. Get the appropriate amount of uninterrupted sleep you need to engage your REM patterns. REM sleep is your nervous system’s way of healing and refueling your body. Also, if you’re feeling overly sluggish, take a short nap or sit and rest. Chronic sleep and sluggishness problems should be reported to your health care provider.
   
3. Stay focused in the present moment. Feelings of regret or worry about a past event, or worry and anxiety about an upcoming future event are not only a waste of your precious life time. They also add stress to the body, which makes you more susceptible to disease. Stay present and focused on the beauty and gifts this moment is offering you!
   
4. Just do it! Exercise. Exercise is known to help you live a longer and healthier life. The body needs to stay in action and movement. Move it, or lose it!
   
5. Mental exercise and stimulation. A healthy physical body includes a sound and sharp mind. Keep challenging your mind to expand, grow, learn, experience, decipher, and explore. Use it, or lose it!
   
6. Meditate. Not only is meditation simple and fun, it also has been known to reduce your heart rate, reduce your stress level, help you become present in this moment, increase your feelings of peace, serenity, joy, and spiritual faith. This all does the body good!
   
7. Surround yourself with a great support system (family, friends).
   Keep yourself surrounded from every side with positive-minded, healthy people who are on YOUR team - People who will care for, support, love, respect, and appreciate you.
   
8. Laugh often. Recent studies are showing the significance of how laughter, fun, and mirth help keep people healthy, as well as heal sick bodies. Everyone really is a unique, hilarious person. Look for the hilarity in every situation and keep laughing.
   
9. Keep your thoughts positive. What you put out does come back. So if you want to feel and look great, monitor your thoughts closely to ensure that you are thinking only positive, forwarding thoughts. If you catch yourself thinking a negative thought, simply turn it around into a positive thought.
10. Deal with your emotions. Do not stifle them. If you are avoiding dealing with any emotions that have cropped up in your life, what do you think you are doing to your poor body? It has to store this emotional energy somewhere. Face your feelings, express them healthfully, and whatever you do, stop stuffing them down in to an oozing, black hole of ill health!

Maintaining Your Identity in Changing Times

4 Powerful outside influences

1) Jobs and friends. If we get our identity from what we do, then the loss of a job can trigger a full-blown identity crisis. If your identity is based on who you know, the loss of a friend might cause you to question who you really are.

2) Advertisers. We would all like to think that we make up our own minds about most things.  In reality we are constantly being conditioned by our environment to link certain things with pain or pleasure.  Advertisers study human behavior in an effort to link their products to our emotions.  Their advertising campaigns are designed to create subconscious, emotional associations designed to influence the choices we make.

3) Associates. The attitude of our close associates also has a powerful influence on our personal paradigms.  Their opinions can actually precondition us to view things the way that they do.  We may value someone else’s opinion so much, that we subconsciously adopt their viewpoint without any personal experience.

4) Crowds. Groups can also shape our preferences.  In such cases, acceptance often hinges on our ability to conform to group opinion.

Internal verses external

Your life and its many pursuits should be an expression of your most cherished dreams and values.  Not the ones dictated to you by advertisers, friends, or group opinions.

Most people choose a life course that is based on external criteria.  They end up following a path that leads away from the expression of their true self. Consequently, with each step they actually distance themselves from the life they truly long for.

Know yourself

Circumstances and friends have a way of changing.  Sometimes they support our dreams and passions while at other times they provide a challenge.  The ability to keep your dreams alive in the face of challenging circumstances is one of the greatest attributes of a successful person.

To accomplish this requires that you actually know who you really are and what you really want. Once you are in touch with your true self, the changes around you become much less influential. Instead of your identity being anchored to external forces, it remains safe and secure no matter which way the winds of change decide to blow.

Balanced Living: How to Stay on Trac

1. Get better.

There are always new and different ways we can improve our way of living. Life is just one long progression, right? The key is to keep progressing positively.

Do some digging and research fresh ways to enhance your life. Bookmark or RSS all of your favorite sites, and make time each week to read the latest on living well.

A quick and easy change you can make right now is to focus on living moderately. Practice planning ahead in all areas of your day-to-day life. Pack a full water bottle before going out for three hours. Get better at pre-planning for future expenses.

When we avoid unnecessary extremes and learn to anticipate what the situation or our bodies will call for, that’s a huge part of balanced living.

2. Explore what makes you passionate.

If you’re reading this, chances are you have a passion, maybe many.

It’s easy to forget that lots and lots of people walk around without any sense of purpose or direction in their lives. And they probably believe that they just weren’t meant to find one.

The reality is that anything can be a passion. Pets. Gardening. Watching planes come in at the airport. Finding something that you love that feeds your true self can be incredibly freeing and refreshing.

If you’re just starting out, brainstorm. List everything and anything that interests you and then think about how you can develop one into a hobby. Even if it never turns into anything more than that, at least you have a new outlet to help you find balance when you’re off work.

3. Spread the word.

When you find ways to enrich or change your life, a natural extension of that is to share with others.

This was exactly my intention when starting my blog. I have yet to find anything more rewarding and motivating than knowing what I have to offer has helped someone. When you feel good about what you do, balance and fulfillment come so much more easily.

4. Go au-natural.

How can we feel balanced if we feel like crap?

Start to be mindful of the products you are putting in and on your body. You will be surprised how tolerant we become to harmful chemicals and ingredients, and even more surprised how much of an impact the constant accumulation of icky substances has on our well-being.

Start small, like avoiding foods with artificial sweeteners or replacing your face wash and body lotion with all-natural alternatives.

5. Find the balance that’s right for you.

Don’t try to be anyone else. Make a conscious decision each day to just be you, and to make no apologies for that.

Find comfort in the fact that it’s okay and even ideal to not fit into someone else’s idea of what’s right: the right work, the right work/life balance, the right feelings, the right way to live.

Focus your energy on determining what’s right for you. It can feel easy to simply go with the flow. But when you discover ways to live your life that fully align with what is in your heart, the reward of balance is unparalleled.

6. Create balance in your interactions with other people.

Do your part to maintain stable, positive relationships, instead of sweating the small stuff and creating drama.

Who wants to waste a day being irritated with something or someone? When you cast negativity onto the world, you will always feel bad inside.

If you aim to maintain balance around you, it will help you maintain balance within.

8 Steps To Actually Achieving Your Own Work-Life Balance

1. Planning

I plan the major things out in my life, so for example, at the beginning of each year, and then periodically, I decide what I am going to do with my business and with my family, in terms of where I am going to be taking them that year.

I also make smaller plans, for everything I am able to control at that time, such as blog posts for the next several months, newsletter schedules for the year, and anything else I can think of which I can get out of my head and into my diary, on my notepad, or mobile device.

2. Lists

I then make lists of tasks and actions to accomplish these plans. So for example, if we have decided to move to another country, I begin my list of things to do, research accommodation, travel arrangements etc… The key here again is to get everything, or as much as possible out of your head and written down somewhere, because this will help you deal with it better. By dealing with things efficiently, you will have less to do overall. Don’t sit there with your “tomorrow” head on – tomorrow rarely comes – make your lists now.

3. Prioritise

I categorise my lists, so I can see clearly what I need to do first.

List A: All essential items, and those that could provide the most short term profit.

List B: All the things that I would like to see accomplished, and those that could provide the most long term profit.

List C: All non-essential and non-profitable items.

I focus primarily on list A and B, and after those things are accomplished, I will then give consideration to C. Don’t touch C unless you have completed, or are near to completing A and B.

3. Outsource

From the lists (A and B) I then highlight everything I am able to outsource, or give to an assistant to help me with, whether they can complete the task entirely or only partially, I get this off my plate as soon as possible.

4. Schedule

Everything that is left to me, I schedule in for realistic deadlines, I try to stick to scheduling in no more that 8 hours of work a day, and I have to be honest, I do often end up doing more than that, but only because I am a workaholic, and like to get ahead. But think of it this way, because I only schedule in 8 hours, and I do more than that on a daily basis, then I am pretty much always way ahead of schedule, and the times that I am, I can easily take some time off, or choose to work less hours.

Please also note, that I never schedule any work in on the weekends, this is very important to me to spend these 2 days entirely with my family, and if I decide to work a bit in the evening then it’s always at my discretion.

5. Discipline

I have an enormous amount of self-discipline. At the end of the day, my VA business is responsible for funding the entire lives of myself and my family, so I always make sure that I am on top of everything, as much as I can be. I generally like to plough on through tasks and lists as soon as possible.

6. Relax

Earlier I said that I planned out all the major things in my life and business, because the minor insignificant things I have found, are not worth worrying about. If you have something weighing you down, and troubles on your mind -  right them down on paper. Then next to them, write everything down that you can do about them, and if there is nothing you can do about them, erase them from your mind and focus on the things you do have control of, and can do something about.

7. Getaway

One of the occupational hazards of working from home is that you can never really get away. I would suggest making sure you are able to shut the door on your workspace, and where possible – take your laptop, or mobile device and go out to work. A coffee shop, the park, even your back garden. If it’s a warm sunny day then you can still work and make the most of it. It makes working a pleasure when I can sit outside and watch my kids play ball in the garden, while I write articles, answer emails, do my social media – anything which is more of the mundane part of the business and doesn’t require total concentration.

8. Gratitude

The final item on my list is gratitude, when I am rushed off my feet with work or the kids, I feel so grateful that I have my children, and that I have enough work to keep me busy, pay the bills and put food on the table. Maybe this is the answer in itself, be happy that your life is so unbalanced and hectic, as I am sure there are hundreds of people who would give their right arm for what you have…

Work-Life Balance

How to Balance Life & Work

1. Leave work on time – I know it’s easy to work five or ten minutes over. But try not to. Being home at the same time every evening means that you can plan family life accordingly. Kids thrive routine.
2. Think about introducing a 4-day work week – If you haven’t done it before-hand now is the perfect time to expand your weekend.
3. Have a ‘to do list’ at home to jot down ideas – When you have ideas simply add them to the list and action them on Monday morning.
4. Introduce an Adventure Day – Choose one day on the weekend and designate it ‘Adventure Day’. On this day no-one does any chores, cleaning or working. The only thing you can do on this day is hang out together and do something as a family. Whether it be going for a picnic, inviting some friends around or going to the farmers’ market.
5. Get up early – If you have to work try not to let it eat in to family time. Get up early and do your work before the rest of the family get up.
6. Have a second line installed or have a ‘work’ phone – it’s too easy to check your mail on your phone
7. Close the office door at night & weekends – temptation lurks within
8. Get into a new hobby which includes the kids – For example geocaching is great fun, uses technology (and the internet) and gets you out scamping around the countryside.
9. Don’t take your laptop (or phone) on holiday - Have at least one session of complete ‘downtime’ per year.

Be Happy: Find Balance and Inner Peace

Be Happy–this is the fun level, the one we’ve been waiting for and working towards! Thisis where you will get the highest return for your investment; this is the one that lasts for the rest of your life. There are so many ways you can explore your path to lasting happiness, and so many great resources and books. We will get to these in time, as this blog unfolds. For now, I would like to focus on three things that have greatly contributed to my happiness:

KNOW YOURSELF

I talk to people about this all the time. This is pretty much the key to everything; you have to know who you are and what you value. There are so many mixed messages and misguided expectations facing you every day. The best way to stand up to them and make it through intact is to know yourself well. Live with integrity, being true to what you value, and respecting others for being true to their beliefs.

This is the most important step, but sometimes it can be difficult for people to remove the distractions, calm the chaos, and look within. I didn’t find my personal truths by staring at a candle in deep meditation (although I hear that approach works too.) I discovered who I am and what I value when I started thinking about what I want to teach my son.

Imagine your child (or future child) asking you, “What is the most important thing? If I do nothing else in life, what would you want me to do?” The answer appeared so simply for me, and I tell him all the time: “Be loving, compassionate, and tolerant of those who are not like you.” I don’t know if this is THE truth, but it is MY truth; and it has served me well.

ACCEPT THE FACTS

In order to be happy, you will need to accept at least these two facts:

* You have limitations. Understand what they are. You can’t be all things to all people, you are not perfect, and you won’t be good at everything you try. It’s OK.

* You can’t make others change. It is interesting to note that an awful lot of people turn to self-help and personal development books in order to find ways to change OTHERS. “If only my (husband, wife, friend, child, co-worker, boss) were not so difficult, my life would be better.” That may be the case, but the only person you can change is yourself. You can teach or inspire by example, but you cannot force change on someone who is not interested in changing.

BE YOUR BEST SELF

Given your new understanding of who you are, and your limitations, make the most of it.Do something you are passionate about, contribute, solve problems, create, share, or help. Be flexible when things don’t go according to your plan; sometimes it is best to just go with the flow of life. You can’t force your way into happiness–you ease into it.

Once you find inner peace and lasting happiness, it doesn’t matter what happens; you will be OK. If one of the lower levels needs revisiting because your house burns down, you lose your job, or you have a health crisis, you will deal with it and get right back on track. Once you have experienced true happiness, it can never be taken away from you. It is always within your grasp, right under the superficial distraction

How to Find Balance in Life

Most people have enjoyed great successes in some parts of their lives. The problem is that most of us neglect some parts to succeed in others. Doing this corrodes your success and will over time start hurting your future chances.

If you do not find balance and succeed in all 4 areas you will start to deteriorate in all.

The Four Major Areas of Your Life Are: 
Health
Family
Career
Finances

How they work together:

All aspects of your life work in tandem. Success in one area will spill over to another, but on the other hand neglect will destroy your success in any of the other areas of your life.

Some examples of problems that can arise if you don’t take care of all areas

Health –> Relationships –> Career –> Finance
If you let your health slide your energy levels deteriorate, when you don’t have sufficient energy keeping quality relationships becomes difficult which will make you depressed which effects your results at work causing problems in your career and thereby your finances.

Finance –> Health –> Relationships –> Career
One of the most common causes of stress is money issues. Stress hurts your health and reduces your energy levels which hurts your relationships and thereby your career.

Career –> Finances –> Health –> Relationships
Your career controls your finances, which in turn controls how well you can take care of yourself and an unhealthy person cannot be a good friend since they are too tired and irritable to be around.

Success in one doesn’t compensate for failure in another

Because of this balance it doesn’t matter if you success in one area if you do not spend time on and focus on the other areas of your life as well.

As long as you are mindful of all aspects you will start improving in them all and success in one will fuel success in all the other aspects of your life.

Set your goals

Set goals for all areas of your life and remember to set goals for all for areas.

Ask yourself;

“What is my goal career?”

“How do I want my financial situation to look in 4 years?”

“What shape do I want to be in? How is my health?”

“How is my family situation? My relationship to my friends in 1 year?”

How it has changed my life

Keeping this balanced life style has made enormous changes for me.

I am in the best shape of my life which keeps me loaded with energy, I have a great family life and lots of good friends which keeps career opportunities coming my way so that I do not have to be worried at all about my finances.

Try it for yourself and I promise you will start seeing a difference

How to Maintain a Healthy Balance in Your Life

Write it downThe simplest and most effective way of creating change in your life is to start by getting the details down in front of you. Begin by listing the parts of your life where you feel out of balance. Too much work, too little exercise? Too many friends, not enough quiet time? Love to spend and hate to save? Whatever aspects of your life could use a moderation fix will become more evident to you as you make a list for yourself.

UnplugJust as we know that “all work and no play” makes Jack a dull boy, too much of anything can make us not only one-dimensional, but unhealthy. The technology of information and entertainment is so easily accessible that we have to be the force that says “enough!” for ourselves. This means making the active decision to disengage from your phone, computer, social media and e-mail at a certain point in the day (or at least for a certain part of your day) to engage in other activities.

Avoid unhealthy stress-relieversWith so much going on in the wide, wired, and too-busy world, sometimes having countless ways to unwind can be more daunting than too few. Being human, we like to do what gives us comfort. Get stressed enough and you’ll find comfort in what’s close at hand: your favorite online store, food, or caffeine and alcohol. Unfortunately, all of these outlets lend themselves to excess when they are used to fill a need — that of finding balance. Your best bet is to maintain that balance in a way that won’t backfire on you.

Find a positive way to unwindWhether you choose yoga, running, biking, walking or kettlebells, integrating some form of exercise into your schedule for at least three days a week (five is better) can make a significant difference to your overall health and fitness by improving the condition of your heart, muscles and mental outlook. Now that you’ve taken that good hour or two to unplug completely in the morning or evening, you’ve freed up time to maintain balance. Be careful, though — even healthy practices like exercise can turn against you if you don’t practice moderation.

Try inner quietSometimes just being alone can be a means of achieving a healthy balance in your life. Whether you meditate with quiet music or fish in the great outdoors, regularly doing an activity that allows introspection and mental stillness can be peaceful and rejuvenating.

Moderation is simple to envision and more difficult to practice. With all that you do — work, sleep, play, eat, create — ask yourself if the balance of activities (or lack thereof) feels right to you. With a little bit of mindfulness, you can accomplish all that you want and maintain balance in your life, too.

10 Tips To Professional-Personal Life Balance

• Separate Your Personal & Professional Life:
  
  Edit yourself personally and professionally. Let go of the things that are not critical. Don't be a member of a committee where you can't give your all to. Lower your obligation so that you are free for the most important ones.
• Prioritize:
  Consider what you want to get out of your work and your personal life. Prioritize and eliminate the less important ones.

Work-Personal Life Balance

• Develop a Support System:
  
  We are all human beings and there will be times when we would need help. Identify and befriend people who can pitch in at times, like family, neighbours, friends, and colleagues.
• Know Your Employer's Policy:
  
  Many companies have set policies on flexibility. Often people don't know the options available to them about commuting and the workday that can make their lives easier.
• Communicate:
  
  Communicate effectively with your colleagues and boss. If you won't be available for certain hours during the day or weekend clearly communicate with your manager and make sure he agrees.
• Work From Home:
  
  Work from home but only when it is realistic and possible. Work from home saves chunk of time as it saves time of commuting, getting dressed, office chit-chat and time wasting meetings.
• Make Life Easier With Technology:
  
  Proper and optimum use of latest technology will help you achieve the work life balance. But don't let it rule your life. Make certain times like dinner, technology free for you and your family.
• Find A Mentor Who Will Help You Balance Your Life:
  
  Identify someone who is really good at achieving work life balance and ask for any tips.
• Set A Time Limit:
  
  Balancing your work and personal life is not a ninety days wonder. It will take time. So lay out your responsibility and set small goals and try to complete them in the specified time frame.
• Don't Hesitate To Ask:
  
  Don't hesitate to talk with your manager if you want to telecommute or work in flexible hours at least for a temporary period. You never know what you can get, unless you ask.

Work-life balance: Tips to reclaim control

• Track your time. Track everything you do for one week, including work-related and personal activities. Decide what's necessary and what satisfies you the most. Cut or delegate activities you don't enjoy or can't handle — or share your concerns and possible solutions with your employer or others.
• Take advantage of your options. Ask your employer about flex hours, a compressed workweek, job sharing, telecommuting or other scheduling flexibility. The more control you have over your hours, the less stressed you're likely to be.
• Learn to say no. Whether it's a co-worker asking you to spearhead an extra project or your child's teacher asking you to manage the class play, remember that it's OK to respectfully say no. When you quit doing the things you do only out of guilt or a false sense of obligation, you'll make more room in your life for the activities that are meaningful to you and bring you joy.
• Leave work at work. With the technology to connect to anyone at any time from virtually anywhere, there may be no boundary between work and home — unless you create it. Make a conscious decision to separate work time from personal time. When you're with your family, for instance, turn off your cell phone and put away your laptop computer.
• Manage your time. Organize household tasks efficiently, such as running errands in batches or doing a load of laundry every day, rather than saving it all for your day off. Put family events on a weekly family calendar and keep a daily to-do list. Do what needs to be done and let the rest go. Limit time-consuming misunderstandings by communicating clearly and listening carefully. Take notes if necessary.
• Bolster your support system. At work, join forces with co-workers who can cover for you — and vice versa — when family conflicts arise. At home, enlist trusted friends and loved ones to pitch in with child care or household responsibilities when you need to work overtime or travel.
• Nurture yourself. Eat healthy foods, include physical activity in your daily routine and get enough sleep. Set aside time each day for an activity that you enjoy, such as practicing yoga or reading. Better yet, discover activities you can do with your partner, family or friends — such as hiking, dancing or taking cooking classes.

How To Achieve Life Balance

Pick Areas of Your Life That Matter

Life balance is all about focusing on areas of your life that matter to you and having an adequate amount of time to be able to work on them. After-all, if certain things didn’t matter to you then you wouldn’t care if you got round to working on them or not.

Some aspects of life that you find important and require some of your attention may include:

• Health
• Relationships
• Personality
• Happiness
• Parenting
• Family Activities
• Finances
• Hobbies / Interests…

…the list goes on. Working on your finances could mean that you want to work on getting out of debt by budgeting or even be that you’re looking for ways to increase your income. Hobbies and interests could include building your skills at a certain sport or even something more practical like learning a new language.

It is important that you now take the time to identify areas of your life that really matter to you. I find that I’m far better at tasks like this when I use a pen and paper rather than a word processor on my computer.

The items in bold are the areas that I had chosen to work on for my schedule but everyone’s answers will be different. Once you have your list together, you’re ready for the next part.

Add Details to Each on How You Can Improve

It is quite ironic but it is often the case that we stress and worry about areas of our lives and let them consume our thoughts. Then, when our situation isn’t improving by its own accord we get even more stressful and anxious. Instead, wouldn’t it be much easier if we just set out a plan on how to improve each area of our life and then started taking action?

Now that you have a list of life areas that matter to you, jot down some points on how you think you could improve them or fit them into your schedule. For example, an area of my life that is important to me is my health and I knew I wanted to work on improving that. So, I would write down a few bullet points on how I can do just that:

• Go to the Gym 3x per week
• Take 2 Protein Shakes per day (I’m on a bulk)
• Try to eat healthy, regularly

That’s it; don’t make things complicated if they don’t need to be. If you want to work on a new language then write down how much time you would need to set aside to get to the level you want to reach. If you want to improve your relationship then list things you would like to do to work on that whether it is going out for a meal or setting aside time with your partner to discuss your issues.

Not every item is going to have some guaranteed time frame or task you need to do in order to solve it and not every item is going to have a recurring task. For instance, if you need to get out of debt, simply put down that you need to set aside time to work out where you could lower your spending and research increasing your income.

Fit Items into a Flexible Schedule

Depending on who you are and what matters to you in life you may have in front of you a huge list of items or a rather short list. There are 24 hours in a day and of course 7 days in a week, so this is the time frame that you are going to be working in. I think it is far better to work on a weekly schedule rather than a monthly schedule, and then add in extra items that aren’t recurring tasks or ideas afterwords.

Take my workouts for example; I work out three times per week and I know each session takes around one hour – therefore this must go into a weekly schedule of mine. I don’t work a regular job so I’m quite fortunate that I can literally do this any time of day. However, if you work 9-5 then you must set- aside time to do this either before you go to work (wake up sooner) or after work (get home later).

If this already sounds daunting to you then consider how much you really want to get your life in order and work on the things that matter to you.

Add all of the items on your list which have some kind of recurring task whether it is going to the gym or spending 2 hours learning French into a flexible schedule.

Put all my items into a schedule and my weekly plan would look something like this:

• Monday: Workout arms
• Tuesday:
• Wednesday: Workout legs, Public speaking club
• Thursday:
• Friday: Workout chest
• Saturday: Spend time with my family
• Sunday: Plan my week ahead, Check website stats

Note how basic and simple this all seems right now. The parts where I haven’t scheduled my time is where I will be working which is basically non-negotiable, it’s how I survive. So even if I have a 9-5 job Monday to Friday, I know that on Monday, Wednesday and Friday I need to work out. I also know not to make plans for a Wednesday night because I go to a public speaking club.

Don’t feel like you need to put the obvious tasks in there like eat breakfast, go to work, wash the dishes and that kind of thing. Instead, make sure the items on your list are extras; or in other words, the things you would not normally do.

The reason it is important to keep this schedule flexible is because life will never be the same week after week. If something comes up on a Monday or I sleep in and miss my workout, then I can push all workout days back one day and catch up that way. If you find that your list has tons of items with lots of details and you can’t fit it all in, it’s probably time to prioritize.

If you are looking for something more serious and scheduled with exact details then I recommending checking out ToDoist which I use daily and would probably struggle without.

Come Up with ‘Mini-ideas’ for Other Areas of Your Life

Some of the things we would like to work on don’t necessarily need scheduled or recurring tasks to keep them in order. For example, if you like gardening, it’s not like you will have to do the same thing week after week to keep your garden looking nice. Instead, you could dedicate a few weekends to getting things how you like them, and spend a few hours per month keeping things in order.

Additionally, for your health, instead of doing a regular program like going to the gym, you could try a one-month detox where you only eat raw food and drink water. This will have amazing benefits for you and for only 30 days per year, it’s not exactly excruciating.

If you look at the first section of this post I bolded the word ‘personality’ as an area of my life that I would like to work on. By personality I mean my behaviours, characteristics and my values. I’m a big reader and I came across the idea of a 21-day challenge in the book Psycho Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz. Therefore I decided to create a 21-day challenge for myself and it turned out to be an excellent mini-idea that I could use, and it also benefited thousands of my blog readers when I wrote about it.

Your imagination is your only limit when it comes to creating mini-ideas for areas of your life that don’t require schedules. You could spend a few weeks in another country to improve your language skills, take a Friday off work and enjoy a long weekend with relatives or even just buy a cook book and spend time to learn some new recipes.

If you can’t come up with any mini ideas then you could do some brainstorming online or re-evaluate how important this item really is to you.

Identify Time Wasters

As I’ve stated, there are going to be people with a list and plan far greater than mine. This is partly because my responsibilities are quite small and I’ve managed to turn my hobby into my income source over the last few years. For those of you who are struggling to see where certain things you want to improve are going to fit into your life, it’s a good idea to identify time-wasters.

Did you know that the average American by the age of 60 years old has spent over 10 years in front of the TV? 10 years looking at a screen that is probably most often showing the lives of fictional people. Remember that there are 24 hours in every day. Let’s say that your job takes up 9 of those and your sleep takes up 8. That is still 7 hours of free time that you have available; quite a lot if you think about it.

Even if you include making food, looking after your kids, getting up in the mornings to get washed and dressed then there are still a good 3-4 hours to work with every single day. Even if you have a 9-5 job and want to get all areas of your life in order, you still have plenty of time to do it…as long as you rid yourself of the timewasters.

Possible time wasters include:

• Procrastinating on jobs you are doing
• Waking up at the last possible minute, even though you’ve had enough sleep
• Browsing the internet for no real reason
• Gaming on your computer
• Watching the TV

Everyone reading this leads different lives, so it’s up to you to make an honest self-assessment and look at the possible time wasters in your life and eliminate those where necessary. Remember I managed to build the majority of my internet business today while working 7 days per week. I didn’t even have weekends to give me a solid run of directed effort, just a few hours here and there.

Even if you only find 3 hours in a week day, that could still be an hour for the gym, an hour working on building an internet income and some time devoted to your children are partner. Things can be simple if you let them be so.

Balance Will Only Make You Efficient, Not Happy

Balancing all areas of your life is an excellent idea for people who feel they may be neglecting things or even people. Taking the action steps in this post will also be great for people who have goals but need to make time for them in their otherwise busy schedule. However, if you are looking for life balance to make you happy, then I’m sorry to say that you’re searching in the wrong field.

I’m sure some of you are instantly thinking something along the lines of:

“If I get to quit my day job then I’ll be happy”, “If I get to work on my goals then I’ll always be smiling”

How do I know? Because I’ve been down the exact same path. It used to take me about an hour to get home from my job each day, most of it on foot. I kept saying to myself how amazing it would be to get to work on my projects full-time and how perfect life would be if that were the case.

Well, I’m now in that situation, and while I fully appreciate my opportunities, it’s not where my happiness comes from. True happiness comes from being here, in this moment, right now. Look around you, take everything in. The sounds, the smells, the energy of the environment and just everything you can sense. Stop resisting everything around you, even if the smells are bad and the energy is dull…so what. Feel your inner body and just let everything be. Everything right now is as it is, and it always will be that way.

Don’t wait for happiness to come to you, recognize it in your surroundings and inner-energy at any moment of time.

Be grateful for the fact that somewhere in this world you’re able to sit down, relax, and read an article on a subject that wants to help you transform your life. Are you going to be the kind of person that takes action, or are you going to sit back and watch the script of your life unfold like it will for those who view the past as something they regret.

It is up to you.