Work-life balance

Work-life balance

There was a time when the boundaries between work and home were fairly clear. Today, however, work is likely to invade your personal life — and maintaining work-life balance is no simple task. Still, work-life balance isn't out of reach. Start by evaluating your relationship to work and  apply specific strategies to help you strike a healthier balance. When your work life and personal life are out of balance, your stress level is likely to soar. We need practical strategies to restore harmony. But what is work-life balance? Well, we certainly know what it isn't! When your to-do list is as long as your arm, when you come home from work, open the refrigerator, and find the set of keys you lost that morning in the butter dish, when you're thinking of sticking post-it notes on your children's foreheads to remember their names, then you know you're out of balance…way out of balance.  Let's be honest. How many people do you know, including yourself, who are living a truly balanced life? Work-life balance is unique to every individual- it's a matter of learning what truly nourishes you and what causes stress and chaos in your life. Balance is about discovering an awareness of what throws you off balance and learning skills that bring you back to your true self.   Work-Life Balance is a deep understanding, that no matter what challenges we face in our everyday lives, we have the ability to experience life with a sense of power and balance.

The secret to work-life balance is listening: listen deeply to your inner voice, listen to the people around you, listen to your environment. Listening gives you the information you need to make the choices that can restore balance and energy to your life.

How avoid getting out of balance in life? We can't! It happens to the best of us. But you can develop practices that will warn you when you are out of balance and help you return to balance easily and effortlessly.  We innately know when we are out of balance. We have implanted detectors that go off like smoke alarms screaming to us, "red alert, red alert, out of balance." But we have learned to turn a deaf ear to our inner alarms. We have unplugged our inner alarms. We have taken the batteries out, so can move faster and faster and faster, like a train running out of control on a track. Millions of us share this same experience.

What are three simple things we can do to achieve work-life balance?

Just remember A-C-E, "ace": Awareness.  Choice.  Energy.

A. Deepen your awareness through listening deeply and noticing two things: what throws you off balance, and what brings you calm and fulfillment. AWARENESS. Being mindful, present in your life.

C. Exercise the power of choice. Choose to release what drains you and embrace what truly nourishes you. When you begin to make life giving choices in your life, you will be able to make many more decisions easily. Realizing your life is the consequences of your choices becomes very empowering.

E. You will reclaim the energy that is your natural birthright. You life will become a powerful dynamic concentric circle. The more aware you become the more you become aware of your choices. The more you realize that your life is created by your choices the more real energy and power you will experience in your life.