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Finding Life Balance

Finding Life Balance - Episode 99

How does balance work in your life? Stop and think for a moment. Are you able to balance work, your relationships, your passions and things you want to do? How does that balance look in your life? Hopefully it’s going well and you feel like you’re really able to enjoy life while doing the work you need to get done! However, most of the time life doesn’t actually look like that. Sometimes we claim it is but in reality, it is a constant struggle. You spend too much time at work or don’t have as much time with your family or chasing your passions as you’d like. It is OK! Now let’s work on finding that balance!


Again, it is OK if you don’t feel balanced. It changes almost constantly. So know that your life balance can be out of whack and that’s alright! Don’t keep living that way though, t’s something that you should try to fix. When you don’t have a good balance in your life it can cause illnesses, create stress, and cause nervous breakdowns. You don’t need to deal with that! Heck, even if you do feel like your balance is good, it never hurts to take a look and see if you can make it even better. So let’s dive into some ways to finding the perfect life balance for you!

Many people believe that balance is everything having equal priority. For an example let’s say there are three categories: work, family life, and passions. Most people believe that all three of those categories should be equal, each one taking up 33% percent of their life, give or take some decimals. It doesn’t work like that. Balance doesn’t mean that everything is equal. Your balance is unique to you. It needs to work with your needs, values, priorities, and the time you have time. Let’s say you work eight hours a day, that gives you 16 hours left. You need about eight hours to sleep, now you only have eight hours left. In those hours you may need to eat, shower, commute to work, hang out with your family, chase your passions. That’s not a lot of time and can be easily wasted and go down the drain quickly. 


You may have seasons in your life where you are busier than you are during other times of your life. For example, when I was a choir director I helped out with the musicals. During the months of the musical, I was far busier, and I had very little time to spend with my family and chase my passions. That’s ok! It is entirely normal! 

The key is to realize it’s happening and it’s a season. If I had to live my entire life the way I went through musical season, I would have a nervous breakdown. You see it happen to people who are overworking themselves, and I don’t want that to happen to you. It is ok for a little while, if you know it’s coming you can brace yourself, but you just need to keep working through it. Eventually your workload will lighten again. When musical season ended, I got my usual time back again and I could re-devote the energy I used for the musical back to my wife and my passions. 


Your work-life balance shifts, you need to remain flexible. Think about how it’s going to work, and how it’s going to affect you and your family. Is the balance you have now helping you get to where you want to be? Sometimes it’s trial and error, you might try something for a week and realize that it’s just making you more stressed. That’s ok, you just need to shift and try something else for some time. 

The first thing you need to do is figure out your priorities. What matters to you? What comes first in your life? It could be spending time with your family, it could be your passions, it could be work. Be honest with yourself, figure out what truly matters to you. Then create a schedule of each day, write down your priorities first. You may have a job, that should also be scheduled in. Then once you have those scheduled, you can put in everything else that you may need to do that isn’t necessarily a priority. You may need to change your schedule for different parts of the year like I needed to do for musical season. That’s ok! Be ready to adjust as needed. You may try a schedule for a week and realize that it isn’t working for you and you aren’t able to fit everything in. Switch things around, remove some things that aren’t priorities if you can. 


The biggest tip YET! It’s not just the time that is important, you also need to think about the energy that you put into that time. Would you rather hang out with your friends or family when they’re just on their phones and you aren’t talking to each other, or would you rather hang out with them and talk and have experiences together. It tends to be a much more meaningful and valuable time when you are actually talking and doing things together rather than just sitting around on your phones. Time is nice, but it’s your energy and focus that makes the most difference. 

When you have balance in life it feels absolutely incredible. You’ll be happier, more energized, and you’ll truly be able to enjoy and love life! If you’d like more help I have a worksheet on my website that is completely free that may be able to help you further. I would love to hear what you think about Finding Life Balance. Send me a message on social media @Jonesinfor or email me at spencer@spencermjones.com.