Life Balance – What is it and How Can You Achieve More of it?

What is life balance?

Life balance also referred to as Life-Work balance can be a complicated thing to define, as we all have different ideas of what it means when our life is “balanced.” What is balanced for you may not be balanced for another person. Life balance is something that we each have to learn how define for ourselves.

We all know when we’re out of balance. We feel irritated, our health may be challenged, or maybe we feel we’re not doing good enough at work, or perhaps our relationships are feeling troubled. Whatever the case, we can all very easily know when we’re out of balance, but how do we achieve this state of harmony and balance that we all yearn for?

Before we can dive into how to achieve our life balance, we need to define the various pieces that make up the puzzle of life balance.

Defining Life Balance – Picking Apart the Pieces that Create the Puzzle

By breaking down the various puzzle pieces that create life balance, we can start to gauge in what areas we are out of balance so that we know where we need to focus. Kain Ramsay, author, mentor, and life coach educator states that we have 7 main areas of importance when it comes to life balance.

Social and Family Relationships

This area of life balance consists of all of the relationships we have in our lives. Our significant others, our friends, our families, our work relationships and even our acquaintances. This area of life balance entails how we feel about our relationships, how we perceive others feel about us, how satisfied we are in our relationships, and how easily we feel we can connect to others and gain new relationships. By paying attention to our relationships, we can easily identify what we need, what we want and what we may be lacking in this area.

Career and Education Aspirations

This area of life balance consists of how we feel about our current success in our field of work and/or study. We can measure how satisfied we are with where we are in our job, and our past achievements. We can also measure our satisfaction in this area by gauging our daily attitude before work each day. Are we excited every morning, or do we dread going in? By examining our relationship with our work and education aspirations, we can gain insight into where we might be pushing too hard, or where we might need to make a change in our lives to gain more balance.

Money and Personal Finances

Related to work, this area of life balance focuses on how secure or stable you feel with your overall financial situation and how stable or unstable you may feel financially. By looking at finances separately from career/education we can more clearly identify the area/s in which we may be out of balance. Are we satisfied with how much money we make? Are we familiar with where and how we spend our money, or do we not know how we keep overspending? Do we worry about our finances?

Finances can be one of the most challenging areas of life to feel out of balance in, but by becoming more attuned to what our financial situations look like, we can more easily start to seek solutions to find more balance in life.

Health, Recreation and Leisure

Some people may argue that health should be in its own category, and that may be true, however, we add it in with recreation and leisure because without a healthy relationship to fun, we cannot truly be healthy. Fun is an essential ingredient to health and well-being, and that is why these categories are so closely tied to each other. When examining this area of life balance, we measure things such as the amount of “free time” we have and how we feel about that time. We look at what we choose to do with our free time and how satisfied we are with it.

This area of life balance also very closely relates to stress management. When we aren’t able to easily access a space of recreation and leisure, we become overly stressed, and our health and well being suffer as a consequence. We all have that inner child that needs to be tended to, and as adults we often fail to nurture our innate need for fun.

Life’s Routine Responsibilities

This one may not sound like fun with that big word responsibility staring at us, especially after discussing our inner child and need for fun. However, without the routine things to keep life going, we can easily fall out of balance. This category looks at our relationship to our daily tasks such as paying bills on time, buying groceries, keeping a clean house, keeping up with errands, etc. This area also looks at how we feel about these responsibilities and how important they are to us.

“Clean space, clean mind.” We’ve all heard that adage or something like it. Many studies have shown that this is in fact true, and as boring as the day to day responsibilities may be, we can’t get far in life without doing them. When they fall out of balance, so cane the rest of our life.

Contribution and Giving Back to Society

We humans are multi-faceted individuals and we are naturally communal creatures. This area of life balance measures how much we value giving back to others, and how well we think we are performing in our giving back. We can also measure this aspect of our life balance by gauging how we feel we are perceived by those around us in regards to our charitable and selfless acts. Do we feel that others value us for our contributions, or are we not recognized for them? Like every portion of life balance, this can look different for everyone, but addressing this area is important in gaining a more clear picture of how we can improve our life balance.

Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health

Another category that perhaps can be broken down further, these are linked as they are all very connected to one another. If we’re feeling out of balance spiritually it is bound to affect both our mental and emotional health, and vice versa with all of these aspects of our lives. When we take time to gauge our mental health, we cannot help but also tune into our emotional state. The spiritual state may not be as important to some as it is to others, but all of these aspects are deeply connected. Do we feel happy in our life? Are we able to deal with the stress at work? Do we feel connected to our inner self, or higher power, or both? Do we feel disconnected from our spiritual energy? By asking ourselves these questions and measuring these aspects of our life balance, we gain a more clear perspective of how we are doing overall.

How to Achieve More Life Balance

Life balance is a complicated subject, just like life itself can be! Achieving balance takes dedicated time, focus, support, and the drive to improve. The first and most important aspect of gaining more balance is possessing the desire to change. Our desire to change has to be greater than our desire to stay the same, or we will not grow and we will continue to be out of balance.

Once we’ve identified that we do in fact desire change, then we need to get very honest. We need to be truly authentic with ourselves, and we must gain a strong sense of responsibility. We have to look closely at all areas of our life and take responsibility for where things may be out of balance. Of course, so much in our lives is out of our control, and this can lead to us falling out of balance, and we have to accept that we cannot control everything. The true power comes from being able to choose how we respond to those things that are out of our control.

After identifying where we are out of balance, we can start to find solutions to gain more balance. Shifting into a solutions-oriented mindset is key to finding more balance and connecting to your inherent power. You have everything you need inside you, and you deserve to lead a happy, fulfilled, empowered life. Working to get more balanced in your life will help you find your inherent power and feel more fulfilled in life.

Sometimes we may not feel ready to navigate the uncharted territory in our lives when we feel out of balance. This is where coaching can be of immense support. Life doesn’t come with a road map, but when we work together, we can gain insight and growth that we may not have gained traveling alone. 1 to 1 coaching can be the light, the guide, and the shift in perspective that you may need to get out of the rut you’re in and to start paving your new road to empowerment and fulfillment in life.

If you feel called, I invite you to apply for 1 to 1 coaching today for free. I would love to be a part of your journey and watch as you blossom and grow into the amazing human you are destined to be. The world needs you, in balance, living out your inherent and unique power, and I am here to help you find and step into that power.