Balance – What does yours look like?
Your own balance – what works for you - is purely personal and as unique as you are. Whether that balance means you work less and live life more, work more and live life a bit less, or it’s an even split between the two, is entirely up to you. No one can tell you that your balance is wrong; they don’t live in your shoes. If your balance is a success for you from both a work and a life perspective, then that’s good enough for me! But what if it’s not? What if you’d like things to be different, but you’re a bit stuck on where to start. It is worth remembering that whatever you decide is the right balance for you now, a time will come when that balance will need readjusting. Your life will change and develop over time; what was once important and took up much of your time, may fade into the background as something else moves to the forefront of your mind. The right balance for you in January may be different to the balance you strived for the previous June. There are four key steps to developing your own personal balanced seesaw. Step one – Your best balance If you don’t know what your best balance looks like, how will you know when you reach it? The first step to building your balanced seesaw is to understand how you will know when you’ve got the balance right. How will you feel? Relaxed, happy, calm, confident? If you were to take a good look at your balanced self, what would you see? Someone who has had enough sleep and doesn’t have bags under their eyes? Someone who is organised, in control? Or someone who has time for everyone but doesn’t feel rushed? Step two – Your balance shakers What does it take for something to shake your balance? What causes your seesaw to tip the wrong way? Do certain events alter your balance e.g. People being late for appointments. Does not being given enough time to complete a task or other people not doing what they said they would (pet hate!) all help disrupt your balance? Identifying what can upset your own applecart can be key to pre-empting the situation and either taking steps to make sure the balance shaker doesn’t occur or having a balance big hitter (see step 4, but only after step 3!) in your pocket as a countermeasure. Step three – Your balance reactions You were doing just fine, your balance was good and then from out of nowhere you got hit with a balance shaker. How do you react? Do you scream and shout? Walk off in a huff? Does your motivation take a nose dive and you put on your ‘why do I bother face?’ Do you lose sleep or just worry constantly? It’s important to know how you react both mentally and physically to being out of balance. With that knowledge you can spot the signs and take a hop, skip and a jump to step 4. Step four – Your balance big hitters This is the fun bit. When something has happened and you’ve had a reaction, what can you do to regain your balance? Would you go for a walk, take a trip to the gym? Read a book? Take time out away from the situation? Play loud music? Daydream for 5 minutes? Contemplate your navel? It may take a combination of things to get back to your best balance, but I’m sure there is one thing that you can do that will make a difference. After all, doing one thing has to be better than festering and doing nothing.
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