How balanced is your life?

Have you ever felt that your career has derailed other aspects of your life? Your personal relationships? Your health? How many of us give equal importance to all areas of our lives? 

The question is – have we actually even sat down and divided our life into meaningful areas? 

There are a lot of questions right here in this post. But that's just the thing. We don’t ask ourselves enough questions. Life is usually divided in to two parts – Professional and Personal. Maybe some of us sub divide the Professional part into Career and Finances. But I’m pretty damn sure there’s little or no thought given to what goes into the “Personal” bucket. Yes, some of us have goals – job, car, family, house, travel (perhaps) and the list could go, but I’m not sure it actually does go on.

 

How important is your health to you? Does it go into your list of goals – if it does, kudos to you. Yes, I know, there’s growing importance to one’s own health (especially nowadays and I AM rolling my eyes here); however, how important was it to you when you were younger. Has it been hastily added on to your list after a health scare? And yet are you able to dedicate enough time to it? Has your career affected your health? Do you suffer from a stress related disease and blame it on your genes that have been carried forward into your blood stream?

 

What about your relationships outside of work? Have you been able to spend meaningful time with your loved ones? Of course, we’re more than spending time with our loved ones during the Covid lockdown, but has it shown you anything? Do you find that you can have easier conversations with your family now that you are home or has your relationship suffered at some level due to your work hours? How do your kids respond to you when you return from a normal day at work; or are they even awake when you return? What’s the kind of conversation your significant other or parents have with you on a typical day at work?

 

The truth is so many of us are so wrapped up in checking the right boxes as soon as we graduate from University or Business school and Corporate life and life in general can be so demanding; there’s always an area of life that gets neglected. And we’re left wishing for more. We make so many sacrifices to reach goals outside of ourselves, we sometimes forget the more meaningful aspects of life. At the end of the day, we are all individuals. Life gives us names, designations, roles to play; however, we are also individuals with our own identities, needs and interests and somewhere along the line, aspects of our own individual goals and individuality gets lost along the way.

 

But the beauty of this is, it can be fixed at any stage of life. The minute we start looking at our lives as a whole; and then ask ourselves probing questions of what parts of life feel incomplete and less fulfilling; we’ve begun our journey towards creating more balance in our lives. Getting off the corporate treadmill to assess one’s life is a scary prospect. Even if it’s just for 30 minutes to reassess where we really stand in life. The possibility of going against societal norms and perhaps resetting the buttons to one’s life isn’t easy. However, it doesn’t even have to be that route. You don’t have to quit that job of yours, you just need to figure out how to balance all aspects of your life that are important to you; to your overall wellbeing.

 

It is actually a super simple exercise. Take an hour at the minimum for yourself. Find a quiet space, if that’s not available, play some relaxing music on your phone and plug in your headphones. Grab something to drink. Take some deep breaths in and out and begin.

·      List down areas of LIFE that are and have always important to you as an individual. Not as per the labels life and society give us.  – Minimum 6, maximum twelve areas.

·      Plot them down on a circle/ pie chart with the way you’d ideally like to see them distributed.

·      Now plot them down in the way they really ARE distributed.

 

See any differences? Can you think of anything that can be changed or juggled around to be in the balance that you’d ideally want? Are you willing to make that change – or would you rather wait until you really feel that awful pain that just forces one to make changes in one’s life.

 

In the end you need to realize you’re worth that change, you’re worth that investment. Ultimately, any Marketing Professional knows that unless something is worth an investment – it won’t be bought. The last question is – do you believe you’re actually worth investing in?

 

And if you think you are – drop me a message – I can help you regain the balance that you want in your life.