Purposeful Growth

There’s lots of talk in the media about work/life balance as if we all understand exactly what that means. And we think we do, as we knowingly nod agreement at the latest pundit’s advice on gaining a balanced life. But what does it mean to have a balanced life?It may be easier to tell you what it isn’t. A balanced life is not stealing a few minutes from a busy but boring work day to do some online shopping or check on the kids at home.

It isn’t learning to meditate at the end of a hectic and harried day to wipe out the negative emotions of conflict with the boss or a customer. These things may be helpful, but they won’t bring lasting life balance.

A balanced life won’t necessarily come with self-employment; many entrepreneurs will attest to the long hours and relentless demands of running business. Taking a course in saying no or managing your time will help, but again, these are tools attacking symptoms, not the root cause of imbalance.

Blending Work and Life

Some even talk of the term itself, work/life balance, being part of the problem, as if work and life are separate and distinct. They talk of blending work and life, an acknowledgment that work activities are simply a part of life.

So what is a balanced life? It’s whatever a person says it is. Balance in life is not measurable in hours or number of responsibilities. It’s measured in emotions. A life is balanced when it feels balanced. A balanced life has a certain overall feeling of being right. It feels natural, normal, and appropriate for the individual experiencing it. Each person will reach that balanced feeling with a different mixture of activities and responsibilities.

The Fundamentals of a Balanced Life

The path to a balanced life is paved with the fundamental stepping stones of well being: Life Purpose, Passionate Activities, Personal Strengths, Principles of Living, and Personal Beliefs. These are easily remembered as the five P’s, Purpose, Passions, Powers (strengths), Principles, and Perspectives (beliefs).

A life built around the fundamentals of the five P’s will feel right, natural, normal, and appropriate. It won’t matter that much what life’s activities and responsibilities include, because they’ll be chosen in alignment with the fundamentals and they’ll naturally blend.

For more on building your life atop the five fundamental building blocks, see The Balanced Life.

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.