Balance

From a young age we are taught to balance different elements in our life, from school and extracurricular activities, to school, social life and a part time job and so on and so forth.

No one prepares us for how much harder it becomes as we grow older to maintain all of these different parts of our lives without letting one take priority over another. You may have many, many different elements in your life that you're trying to juggle on top of having a job and a family.

Listed below are a few quick and easy tips of mine-

1. Planning your week the day before it begins.

2. Taking 5 minutes at least of every day to breathe and be sat still.

3. Start off slow, set a monthly goal of achieving a goal.

4. Having time to be creative.

5. Getting enough sleep.

6. Figuring out what is a priority.

7. Using more of your time to do what is real and meaningful.

8. Getting in touch with your feelings and emotions.

9. Realising what is good and bad for you (including people).

10. Go for a walk. Walks solve everything (almost...).

There's no right or wrong way of balancing life. But it is important not to let one part take up the majority of your life. It's important to have time to see friends or family, to do the things you enjoy, to relax

and to let your hair down (this can be taken literally or non literally!).

Whatever needs to be prioritised, prioritise it. Whether it's that you haven't spent time socialising for a while, you're in need of some overdue self care, or you need to take some time to do your favourite thing, for however long you need to, prioritise that one thing.

It would be critical of me to say that work should get the same priority as family, or self care the same as house chores, because everyone is different, life throws all this different stuff at us and so I believe it's nye on impossible to find the 'right' balance. Sometimes you just have to take that day off to do nothing and look after yourself and that's okay.

If you need to eat some junk food, do it, if you need to drink a smoothie to feel better, do it. It's all about balance. You don't always need to have the most perfect diet or to be getting everything done every single day.

We can't control everything in our lives but we can control how we choose to deal with the situations. Life is all about balancing the things we can't control with the things we can.

And so, with the stresses of work and other aspects life throws at us, we must balance this out by taking time alone or with family or friends to switch the off button and completely relax.

As my work life tires me I tend to take it slower on the weekends which is when my days off are. I never tend to plan a busy schedule for the weekends as I know that I need lots of relaxation and chill time. We're all different and we all relax in different ways, some with a busy schedule filled with activities, some by doing nothing -aka me- but it takes you and only you to figure that out.

In order to practise balance, you need to know what exactly it is that you'd like to fit in to each month or week and go from there. I like to use a weekly planner so I can space out what I need to do and for me to visually see it. It's funny how much doing this helps, it always makes me realise that actually, I have way more free time than I thought.

Ciao for now x