About Life Balance - Mastery or Myth? 

Searching for the term "Life Balance" on Google reveals more than 98 million results. This one is a very hot topic!

But is "Life Balance" possible in our modern society? At least, it seems to be difficult to gain.

Within the materialized wealth of our industrialized world, the struggle for balanced, natural living has reached pandemic proportions. Never before in human history did we have so much - and enjoyed so little.

Life balancing is not that easy. We are looking for balance - yet we take on more commitments. We dream of bigger homes - but we have smaller families. We are proud of the size of our networks - and have fewer friends. We consume more vitamins - and find ourselves in poor health. What is the problem? We look for calmness and relaxation. Yet, our life force is drained by stress and anxiety!

We are exposed to a permanent bombardment with information and the constant pressure to try to keep up with things. There is more and more to do - in less and less time! Our lives are over-segemented and out of balance. And we pay the price. With less satisfaction. With decreases health. And with a loss of happiness.

A recent study done by http://www.HRlook.com  reveals that the global workforce has stopped striving for a healthier work-life balance. There is sort of resignation and lots of people are giving up. More than 75% of the work force feel that their work-lives take priority over their personal lives.

But give this situation a thought. And let´s face it. Life balance is about choice. And the only person to have the choice and to make the decision is - YOU!

To get back and restore the balance of your and your families life - your own and maybe single life - you need to focus enough value on yourself in order to motivate you towards the change. If everybody and everything else gets higher priority you´re sure to fail. You can get started in doing a life review. By reviewing important core areas of your life, you can clean out and eleminate factors that no longer serve but hurts you. You can start integrating beloved but neglegted aspects of your life again. It will enable you to step out. Step out of the treadmill of chaotic living and a life filled with meaning and purpose.

You should start your life review with an honest assessment of core areas of your life. Your work, your home environment, your friends, your family. Also take a closer look at your spirituality, your physical health, recreation and also at your financial health which can give you some calmness and relaxation if you do not permanetly overstress your financial resources - independent of the height of your income! Ask yourself what the three most stressful or unsatisfying aspects in your common life are in each of these areas of life. Then start to consequently jot them down.

You also need to know, what you would like your life to look like. In other words, what is your ideal vision of your life and what does life balance look like for you? Identify three aspects that you value or would like to have more often in the core areas of your life.

When doing this simple little exercise, you will quickle discover which areas are in need to be balanced in your life. You will also note, that these are the areas where it hurts you to look into. Sometimes you may not be able to simply eleminate all negative factors, may it be in work life or other. But you should realize that on the other hand you may be able to change more of them than you may think. This requires consequence, braveness and targeted action. And very often a new way of valueing and handling things. Very often you can already add more balance to your life by eliminating just one stressfull activigty or adding one joyful activity that you have really missed and will truly enjoy.

Balanced living is not about achieving perfection. If you try this, you are in danger to make the attempt of balanced living a stress factor of it´s own. Instead just try to find the equilibrium overall. This holistic and integrative approach will allow you to feel nurtured even if you have to invest long work hours to meet a tight deadline. Becaus you know that you have scheduled and reserved time to relax and recharge with loved ones after the project is completed.

There are a lot of differing interpretations of what life balance looks like. This is because different people have different opinions, different feelings and different goals. For some of us, an unbalanced checkbook for example is just fine. For others it violates their sole existance. Everybody of us needs to clarify what we need to feel balanced in order to find peace of mind. And we start working towards that goal. Relaxed, but consequently.

In helping people to look at all their responsibilities and obligations in order to eleminate those that do no longer serve them, we also work on learning to say "NO". Much to often, you find that people say "yes" out of misplaced obligation or politeness, when they really wanted to say "no". No, they cannot donate a Saturday to help to clean up the park. But they do. No, they don´t want to waste their time to sit on the homeowners´association board of directors. But they do. No, they don not want to give up one of their weekends to attend a distant relative´s anniversary. But they do.

Is´nt this insane? You give away precious time of your life. Time that will never come back. Just for things you don´t really want to do?

At the start of every day, every one of us receives exactly the same amount of time. This is 24 hours! What we will do with this time will determine our level of satisfaction, accomplishment and success. In choosing how to spend our time and our resources, we make decisions about how to spend our life energy. The primary resource of our lifes. And this decision in the end is always just up to ourselves.

Taken from an old recycling slogan, I use three steps to assist people in this process:

1. Reduce!

Always ask yourself: do I really need this activity, item or commitment within my environment? Do you need as much of it to feel satisfied or secure? If not, it´s time to eliminate or reduce participation in order to make space for more fulfilling things or simple recreation. A good example would be setting boundaries to reduce the amount of hours you work within a week in order to spend more time with loved ones.

2. Reuse!

Ask yourself, how this activity contributes to your personal fulfillment or quality of life. Can you adapt it to serve your goals better? Can you get the same benefit from a different activity? For example, instead of skipping gym because you got bored with the workout routine, you could simply switch to a different type of exercise that would give you the same benefit without being boring.

3. Recycle!

Have you outgrown this activity, item or commitment? Perhaps it has already served it´s purpose long ago and you have been sticking to it out of guilt or habit. If so, it needs to give space for something more appropriate. For example, many social commitments do fall in this category.

When finally taking a look at life as an integrated whole, it is clear that balance can be achieved. It ulitmately is an inside job - your job! It is an inner equilibrium that enables us to flow with all the things that happen in our changing world.