Everyone’s talking about life balance. “Oh I am so out of balance!” “My life is a mess.” “I can’t seem to get anything done…”
We had a very spirited and insightful discussion at this past week’s Coaching at the Corner on Life Balance. When I asked our participants what balance means to them, there were a lot of answers, but the discussion led to the fact that balance – the word – implies equal parts.
When we say to ourselves that our lives should be “in balance,” we might be fooling ourselves to think that each of our priorities should be treated equally. That’s not how life works.
The conversation turned to replacing thoughts about life being in balance to life that honors our true priorities.
It was interesting to note everyone in the group seemed to be uplifted by that change of focus. Because when you think all of your priorities should be in balance, you possibly could be defeated before you start. We have many priorities, and if we work on one, applying the concept of balance means that we would not be honoring the others. It can feel self-defeating.
In the short hour that we talked about priorities and life balance, we came to these realizations:
- Priorities do not have to be equal
- Priorities shift over time.
- Honoring priorities does not have to happen daily.
- Priorities enable us to set boundaries.
- The clearer we are on our priorities the easier it is to set boundaries around the time we spend.
- When we work on our important priorities, we feed our sense of fulfillment.
- Focus on our priorities enables us to make progress with them.
- Shifting from one priority to another, rather than attempting to multitask multiple priorities, can bring greater reward, and can fuel your energy. I like to call this “switch – tasking.”
This discussion led us to the subject of living in the moment, and controlling our attitudes while we are working on our priorities. The trick is to be clear on what those priorities are, and to make a choice about what to focus on next. Once you have chosen the focus, your ability to be satisfied with your choice, committed to your choice, and to control your attitude about it can be key to personal happiness.
And isn’t personal happiness really what we are talking about about when we express concerns about not being in balance?
