Purposeful Growth

Five important actions you can take to get balance and control back in your life.

If your life feels out of balance and you feel guilty that you’re shortchanging family, fun, and your own health, you’re not alone. In these days of business mergers, workforce reductions, and more work for less pay, many people are feeling a lack of balance in their lives.

A balanced life feels right even when you’re very busy. Here are five actions you can take that will help you move toward a more balanced life.

1. Balanced Life Assessment: Life will feel balanced when you are relatively satisfied with all the important aspects of your life. To see a visual representation of your current balance or lack of it, get your free self assessment here.
2. Values: No matter how busy you are, life feels in balance when you honor your values. Here’s a straightforward way to get a handle on your important values. Make a list of what is important to your life. Not what’s nice, but what must be in your life for you to be happy. Examples might be love, fascinating work, honesty, friends. When you finish your list go back over it and cut it in half. Now cut your list in half again. Repeat until you have five or six words or phrases remaining. These are your critical values. Life will feel balanced when what you do revolves around and includes these values.
3. Passion: What do you love to do? What activities so capture your attention and energy that you lose track of time while doing them? Make a list of these activities and divide your list into groups based on the level of passion you feel while involved in them. For example, it may be satisfying to organize your work space and shred old files, but it may be joyous to sing in the choir. Look for common threads among the activities. Perhaps creativity is common to many, or adventure, or learning. When you strive to include your passions in every day, you’ll have fewer days feeling overwhelmed and out of balance.
4. Strengths: We each have unique strengths and talents. Your combination of special skills, interests, and inherent abilities make you unique. You have many competencies, but just a few unique strengths. When you utilize those few top strengths your life will feel balanced. An excellent tool from a leading researcher in the positive psychology field is the VIA Signature Strengths Questionnaire. Take this questionnaire to identify your unique signature strengths.
5. Say no: Many people find it hard to say no, so they end up taking on tasks that interfere with the important aspects of their lives and then they feel resentful and guilty. Learn to say no politely and firmly, simply indicating “I’m so sorry, I can’t take that on just now and give it the attention and energy it deserves. Thank you for thinking of me.” Then recommend someone else who might be qualified to do the task.

This article first appeared in the Personal Development Topic at Suite101.com.

Related Article:

The Joy in Finding a Balance

A review of Timothy Ferriss’s book, The 4-Hour Workweek, how to escape 9 - 5, live anywhere, and join the new rich. Many helpful tips for working fewer hours.

Work From Home

In The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss outlines how to become part of the New Rich, a rapidly growing self employed population working from home or beach, working part time while earning full time. Rather than work from 9 to 5 for 35 or 40

years hoping to enjoy life in retirement, Ferriss advocates living a full life now with a series of mini-retirements funded by revenue streams which take very little personal attention. 

Ferriss describes how he went from a 40+ hour workweek, earning $40,000 per year to a 4 hour workweek, earning $40,000 per month. His approach to work may not be for everyone, but he offers excellent tips that will benefit everyone; even those who prefer a traditional corporate job.

Would you like to escape the 9 to 5 corporate trap?

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