Is Lack of Balance Causing a See-Saw Life?

Watching the Oprah show yesterday, I listened with interest as she spoke about her weight gain was caused by her life being out of balance. It was eye opening that even someone as successful as Oprah, could not only lose control, but allow it to go on for so long without doing anything about it.

This is something I can relate to quite strongly. I tend to be a bit of a control freak myself, I have lists all over the place of things that I need to do and goals that I want to achieve, but about three years ago, I became tired of the constant control and started to let go. This was great in the beginning. A HUGE relief that allowed me to relax in a way that I desperately needed, but I took it too far and allowed my life to slowly spin out of control. It was gradual at first, so I didn't really notice what was happening, but after a while, I realised that life was getting harder. I wasn't effective any more. I wasn't achieving as much as I used to. So I immediately tightened the controls and created structure to put everything back in it's place.

Unfortunately, I put so much stress on myself to control everything, that I became overwhelmed and gave up the job as being just too hard. The result was a see-saw ride that lasted a few years as I tried to find the balance between enough control to keep things ticking over stress-free and enough relaxtion so that I didn't burn out. I read books on organisation, time-management, living a worthwhile life, in fact, anything that I could get my hands on that would help me find the way to manage my life in a way that didn't put stress on me.

What I did learn is that there are many, many practical tools for managing your time, output, achievements and life in general, but none of these help without one thing - self management. Keeping your life in balance, is not so much about managing your time, as about making sure that you are spending the appropriate amount of time on the things that have meaning to you.

The only way that you can feel successful, is if the results of your actions, are in line with your goals and the choices that you are making are based on your personal beliefs and values. And this means REALLY understanding yourself and what you want out of life. All this needs a lot of self-management because it involves that hardest thing of all, being honest with yourself. If you can't be honest about yourself about what is important to you, you will always be spending your time working on what is important to others.

You also need to be honest about how much you can do yourself and where you need to ask for help. It is no good stubbornly holding on to trying to something that can be done quicker and more easily by someone else, just because you don't want to admit that it is not something you can manage.

The quickest way to get your life back in balance is to do a 'time-budget'. This is similar to doing a financial budget as you assess what it is you are spending your time doing, whether these are things that are important to you, and whether you can off-load some things that are of no benefit to you, so that you can free up some time. The quickest check to see whether you are getting yourself out of balance is to add up how much time you spend on yourself. If it is less than an hour a day, then you need to re-assess how much self-management is in place.

So now that you know where you are, take some time to think about where you want to be, and draw up a time-budget that includes all the things that are important to you, if there is a huget difference between your current bugdet and your ideal budget, draw up a plan to slowly start making changes that will bring you closer to your ideal time-budget.

THEN most importantly, manage yourself so that you take action on those changes and before long, you will start to notice the difference in your life.