Purposeful Growth

Tel Asiado, an Australian freelance writer, blogger, and Great Thinkers Feature Writer at Suite101.com interviewed me recently and posted the following on her Life’s Tiny Tips & Hints blog.

Tel: Recently, I completed a stimulating and insightful eCourse on Balanced Life. Quite timely too. I’d like to share my insights on the 10-week self-study course, through an Interview by Jerry Lopper, Personal Development Feature Writer at Suite101.

Tel: Over the last few weeks I’ve had the

pleasure of getting to know Jerry Lopper, a writer and life coach from the US. Jerry had developed a self-study course for people whose lives are out of balance. He calls it The Balanced Life E-course . I volunteered to test the course by taking the lessons, which are delivered weekly by email.If your life is feeling out of balance, if you lack energy and enthusiasm about each day, and feel overwhelmed and unfulfilled, I strongly recommend this course. It’s an insightful and engaging exercise. It inspires and motivates as you seek that balance for your life! It challenged me a lot as it hit hard certain areas that need looking into.Jerry took an already good product and made it great by incorporating many suggestions for further improvement from more than a dozen beta testers, myself included.

The best news is that Jerry has offered my readers a 20% discount. Jerry and I conducted this email interview, which I’d like to share with you.

Tel: What prompted you to develop this Balanced Life course Jerry?

Jerry: I had written several articles on life balance, and the more I wrote the greater my insights about what real life balance is and how to obtain it. Researching the subject brought up lots of helpful tips, but they mostly seemed to address symptoms, not the fundamental problem of life imbalance. So I took the themes from several articles and began outlining a self study course that gets to the root cause of imbalance.

Tel: What is a balanced life and how does one get it?

Jerry: I like to start with what a balanced life is not. It’s not learning to work more efficiently, though that helps. It’s not learning to manage time better, though that helps too. And it’s definitely not learning to multi-task. That can make things worse!

A balanced life is a life that feels right and appropriate to the person living it. Each person is unique and a balanced life is uniquely different for each of us. The way to get a balanced life is to focus on the fundamental building blocks of a good life, what I call the five P’s.

Tel: I’ll give you the straight line, what are the five P’s?

Jerry: First and most important is life purpose. A person’s life will not feel balanced unless it’s built upon and well aligned with their unique purpose in life. So Purpose is the first P. Next is Passion, the activities that we love to do and naturally gravitate towards. We can often see a thread of passionate activities beginning with childhood.

Third is Power, not power over anyone else, but a person’s unique strengths, the talents and abilities that give a person the power to accomplish. The fourth P is Principle, the rules of life that we assimilate that help us live our lives with integrity. The fifth P is Perspective, the set of life beliefs that guide us. When our lives are built upon Purpose, using our Powers doing our Passionate activities, and our lives are aligned and honoring our Principles and Perspectives, we’re living the balanced life.

Tel: How does your course teach this to people?

Jerry: The five P’s are important, so I devote one lesson to each, with discussion, examples, exercises, and homework. The homework serves to reinforce learning and help people assimilate and gain insights in the week between lessons.

Tel: Self study sounds like people are on their own. What do they do if they’re confused or have questions?

Jerry: During the ten week duration of the course, I encourage comments and questions by email, and I respond to each one personally.

Tel: How about time management and being able to say no sometimes so we don’t take on too much out of kindness or hesitation to disappoint?

Jerry: The course also covers five critical life skills that are helpful once the five P’s are in place. The five skills are Positive Thinking, Self Awareness, Using Powers Effectively, Setting Boundaries, and Time Management.

Tel: This sounds like a lot of work Jerry.

Jerry: I won’t kid you or insult your readers intelligence by claiming life balance is just ten minutes of light reading away. It takes self reflection, insight, an open mind, and the intention to gain life balance to get there. But it’s worth it! Each lesson will take around an hour to complete, but a person should also expect another couple of hours of time during the week for homework and self reflection.

Tel: Thanks Jerry. I can personally vouch for the value of The Balanced Life E-course and appreciate that you’re providing my readers with a 20% discount. Subscribe to the course and receive your 20% discount at this special web page for my readers.

[Note: Purposeful Growth readers can obtain the same 20% discount here.]

Research studies show that high self esteem is good for your health and happiness. These brief daily activities can be helpful in raising self esteem and contributing to a balanced life. If life seems boring and depressing, perhaps a big dose of daily self esteem help is just the spark you need for a happier life. The self esteem activities suggested here take just a few minutes each day and research studies indicate high self esteem is beneficial to your health.

Research Studies

Self esteem correlates with happiness and life satisfaction according to psychological researcher Christopher Peterson, author of A Primer in Positive Psychology. The higher your self esteem, the greater your reported happiness and satisfaction with life. The converse is also true, lower self esteem correlates with low life satisfaction and happiness. It behooves us to be aware of our own feeling of self esteem, taking steps to improve it when we’re feeling down.

Improving Relationships

Researcher David Schmitt, PhD, associate professor of Bradley University’s Psychology Department, reports that high self esteem also correlates with relationships. When we have strong relationships we feel better about ourselves than when our relationships are troublesome. Strong relationships, strong self esteem.

Start with Compassion

A good building block for improving self esteem is to first work to grant self-compassion. Research studies suggest “it should be easier to teach people with low self-esteem to be self-compassionate than to teach them to have higher self-esteem,” reports WebMD Medical News reviewer Brunilda Nazario, MD, August 22, 2005.

Try These Daily Self Esteem Building Activities

• Reinforce your close relationships with high quality contact each day. Give something of yourself to people you care about. A few sincere words of appreciation, a few minutes of compassionate listening, or an earnest offer of help to an elderly or shut-in friend or relative will pay big dividends to both parties.
• Give yourself a break. We’re often much harder on ourselves than we are on others. Don’t expect perfection of yourself. Be forgiving of your human errors and treat them with humor rather than disdain or anger. Refrain from demeaning self talk. Instead, remind yourself that you normally make very few mistakes.
• Savor your good memories. Keep a mental or literal file of good memories and visit them often. Naturally nostalgic people have high self-esteem and are less prone to depression. Thinking of good memories for just 20 minutes a day can make people more cheerful than they were the week before, and happier than if they think of their current lives, report researchers from Loyola University (WebMD Feature from “Psychology Today” Magazine, Marina Krakovsky: WebMD’s depression help center).
• Snap back from negative events. Bad things will happen; that’s part of life. Foster an attitude of resilience and positive thinking to help you snap back from negative thinking just as quickly as you can. Positive thinking yields positive life events, and vice-versa.

In just a few minutes each day you can build your self esteem and reap the rewards of greater happiness and life satisfaction. Be your own best friend not your worst enemy as you build a balanced, fulfilling life. More on a balanced life.

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