Ever feel like your life is a little off-balance? Maybe you’re spending too much time at the office and too little time asleep. Or maybe you’re so stressed that you feel constantly on the edge of a breakdown. Perhaps you’re the type who’s convinced they can tough it out and keep going, but first, let’s look at a few reasons why balance is important for you and your children and a few tips for trying to find balance in life.
Why is Balance Important in Life
If you’re a stress junkie or you could win a trophy for your sleep deprivation, take a look at a few of the reasons why you should balance your life.
Reduces Stress
When you’re overstretched in one or more areas of your life, it causes a lot of unnecessary stress. Stress can be good, of course, but not at such high levels for long periods of time. When you take the time to rebalance your life, you can reduce your stress levels. You aren’t getting enough sleep? Make that your priority and start going to bed earlier. You’ve taken on too many projects at work? Start doing a little delegation—don’t do it all yourself.
Improves General Health
Finding balance in life helps you improve your overall health. When you have balance, you have time to pay attention to your body’s needs. You can prioritize things like diet, exercise, and meditation instead of regretting that you never have time to take care of yourself. Not only does the fact that you have more time to dedicate to your health help you, but balancing your life helps remove things that damage your health from your life, like excessive stress and lack of sleep.
Increases Productivity
You and I both know that working when you’re too tired, too stressed, too hungry, or too upset is exhausting and miserable. Often we think that if we just keep going, we’ll get our work done despite our fatigue, but the reality is, if you take a break, you’ll be a lot more productive. Pushing through just makes you more tired, stressed, hungry, and upset but doesn’t lead to quality work. So balance your life a little—take a break, listen to your body, and get the rest you need, and your productivity levels will thank you.
How to Achieve Balance in Life
“Balance” might sound about as hard to find as the fountain of youth, so you’re probably wondering how to find balance in life. Well, let’s look at a few things to get you started.
Be in Tune With Your Feelings
Finding balance in life isn’t easy, but it’s a little easier when you quit pushing your needs and feelings out of the way. As a parent, you’re an expert at putting the needs of others above your own, but remember, you can’t get water out of a dry well. You need to make sure you’re doing okay before you go around helping everyone else. So make an effort to start listening to your feelings and addressing your needs. If you can, consider taking some time to meditate. If you notice you’re feeling tired, take a nap. Hungry? Grab a snack. Need a longer break? Organize something so you can take a day off and ask for help if you need it.
Prioritize
Things can really get messy when you put everything in your life on the same level of importance. Sometimes it’s hard to see, but some things are more critical than others. If you’re doing a million ”critical” things at once, take a moment to stop and think “which one of these things can actually wait until tomorrow to be done?” Most of the time you will be able to prioritize a few things over others, making life at least a little more manageable.
Don’t People Please
Right along with prioritizing, make sure you avoid pleasing people all the time. Trying to find balance in life won’t be easy if you keep adding things to your plate. None of us like to disappoint others, but sometimes it’s what you have to do to keep yourself healthy. If you’re constantly taking on more, you’ll become more and more stressed. Do yourself a favor and learn to say “no” so you can keep your health and sanity.
If you teach your kids how to achieve balance in life now, they’ll have the management skills so they won’t run into the same problems you have in your potentially overscheduled and overstressed life. Sure, they might want to do every extra curricular activity out there, but help them set priorities so they don’t stretch themselves too thin. And for more tips to help your kids prioritize and live a balanced life, check out Troomi!