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…