A few months ago I wrote about my own life balance and how for most of last year I found it hard to achieve. What I’ve learnt, like anything in life, it takes work to create a life that makes you happy and fulfilled.  How to live a good balanced life isn’t about looking at what everyone else is doing and thinking that’s how you should be living your life too.  This is about you enjoying every single day and getting to the end of the week feeling happy to be alive.

I’ve deliberately not called this a work/life balance because living a good balanced life is about how best you balance family, friends, health and your career, to ensure you have an enriched life.  Knowing who you are and what makes you happy is the  first step to understand what a good life balance looks like for you.

Let’s start with a little exercise.

1. Draw a list using the headings (me, family, friends, career and health).  Now write down activities and how much time, on average, each week you spend on each of these.  Next add any concerns/ challenges you might have in these areas. Does this look like a balanced list or are there areas that are top heavy? Does anything appear under the me heading?
2. Now cross out anything that is an essential activity such as going to work, looking after a relative, taking the kids to classes etc.  You should soon be left with a list of things that  are taking up your time. Are they making you happy? Are you spending too much time at work and not enough time having fun with family and friends?  Are you spending too much time with friends and not enough time with your partner? Are you spending too much time looking after a relative and not enough time on your own health needs.
3. Start a fresh page and draw a new list with the same headings but now add what you want to be doing in each of these areas. These will become your priorities and where you will start to spend more of your time in creating a good life balance.

 

Now you have your priority list, on what a good balanced life looks like to you, next week I’ll be sharing with you Ten Tips for achieving a good life balance.