Balance in Your Life
// April 30th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // Daily Insight, Personal Development
Are you looking to find Balance in your life and not sure how to do it?
Power of Personal Development Podcast
What does that word mean to you? Many of us seek balance in our lives and sometimes it seems it is just not possible. We juggle our career, family, personal life and usually one area of our life suffers. What is balance, how can we achieve balance in our family and personal life when most people spend 80% of their waking hours at work.
Balance to me is not one or the other it is both. You see to achieve balance in your life you need to move with the flow of your life and your feelings. We need to stop flowing with the external circumstance that are put on us and move inside to our internal flow and what our feelings are telling us. This is the true guidance system of life and such the path to finding balance in all areas of our lives.
Your feelings are the gauge of the balance in your life. When something feels good and right and we are enjoying it, that it is our feelings telling us that this is right and to continue doing more of it. When something feels forced and uncomfortable, that is time to move your focus in another direction. The thing is that if we enjoy something and we continue to do it we bring more of what we enjoy into our lives and the lives of the people around us.
This does not mean if you enjoy watching TV, you just sit on the couch and watch TV. Sooner or later our feelings will let us know that it is time to move to something else. If you disregard that feeling you will notice that sitting around is not so much fun anymore and eventually for most of us we will get off our duff and go do something.
If we can trust our feelings and come from a place of seeking balance and joy in all areas of our life our internal guidance system will work as long as we trust in it. That guidance system is accurate, we just need to listen and go with the flow!
Think of it as a GPS, many of us may have used a GPS and we trust the directions it gives and we find our destination. If you tell yourself you want balance in your life, trust the directions of your feelings and you will reach your destination.
Some tips for learning to listen to your feelings:
- Ask yourself in the moment what you are feeling, joyful, happy, excited or mad, angry, frustrated. If it is the first feelings of a good and joyful state keep doing more of that, have fun and go for it. When you feel that you are not having fun anymore and you notice that things are forced, it is time to take a break and move to something else.
- Take time to be in the moment, the only way you can listen to your feelings is to be in-tune with the current moment you are in. If you are thinking of the past or the future your mind is so focused elsewhere you will be late on picking up your feelings until your body is overwhelmed. This leads to stress, frustration, and sometimes illness. Live now, in the moment, it is truly where everything happens.
Many people have heard about affirmations and for most people they understand them as the self talk, or the beliefs and thoughts we tell ourselves. The big thing to remember is we all have this self talk, however our self talk is not always self serving.
Many thoughts cross your mind one hour before the beginning of an Ironman Triathlon (2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike, 26.2 mile run). Can I finish? Was my training plan sound? Did I do everything I possibly could to prepare myself for the day? What if I get a flat tire on the bike? What is my nutrition plan for the bike and run? Self doubt is natural.
