By Hussein Manack
Anxiety and stress can be avoided by living a balanced lifestyle
What is a Balanced Lifestyle?
We all strive for health and happiness. After all, what's the point in working hard toward a long and healthy life if you can't enjoy it?
While focusing on a healthy lifestyle by exercising and eating correctly is great for your body, balanced living means protecting your mental and emotional health too.
And stress reduction needs to be at the top of your to do list. Balanced living means considering all aspects of your life: relationships, work, fitness and health, and emotional well-being.
In addition we are all blessed with a unique gift, talent or potential that we may want to fulfill while we have the opportunity. It is therefore important to maximize our potential and one of the best ways to do that is to live a balanced life by prioritizing what it is we would like to spend more time and energy on.
"Your talent is your Creator's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to Him."
How does one attain a Balanced Lifestyle?
Below is a four step approach to begin living a balanced life, which starts by appraising exactly where you are currently and getting a birds-eye view of your situation as it stands at the moment. Almost like an annual audit of a business.
It doesn't matter who you are, a student, housewife or a professional, you will be amazed at how revealing and helpful this exercise can be. If you begin the process and take the first step today, it may well be the beginning of fulfilling your lifelong dream. At the very least it will lead to a happier and more fulfilled life.
Step 1) Do a lifestyle audit or appraisal of your life using the Wheel of Life (WoL)
Example of a Wheel of Life (WoL)
You can design your own WoL depending on your own life and circumstances. For example, a teenager may want to include Schoolwork as one of his / her Core Areas, while a Housewife may want to make Home Environment a Core Area. Your WoL could even be divided into 12 Core Values if you feel it's necessary.
Having said that certain key priorities may be worth including on almost everyone's WoL. These would probably include Health, Family & Friends, Finances as well as Personal Development.
Start by doing an appraisal on the different elements of your own life by asking the following questions for each area:
⭐️ How satisfied am I regarding my Health, for example?
⭐️ On a scale of 5 (as in the WoL above) or 10, where am I?
⭐️ Make a mark at the appropriate score on your WoL or colour it in as in the example above.
Ask these questions not only of yourself but also ask your partner and a close friend or acquaintance before completing your wheel.
Step 2) Reflect
Identify areas of the WoL that need attention either way. In other words are there areas where you are spending either too little time and focus, or areas where you are spending too much time. It could be that after doing your appraisal and filling in your wheel you discover that you are spending too much time on your business or at work and not enough time with your family. This may require a slight change in the time and energy you put into both these areas in order to balance your wheel and your life. Remember, ultimately the aim is to end up with a wheel that is balanced and at probably around 7/10 in each area of your life.
You will find this exercise to be quite revealing and probably something you were already aware of, but just couldn't place your finger on it. It's a great place to start before taking any steps regarding goal setting or trying to fix your life.
Many people try correcting certain areas of their life because they are aware that things are not quite right and chop and change different areas of their life haphazardly only to find that it works for a short while and then goes straight back because they haven't clearly identified where that particular priority fits into their life as a whole and also because they don't have a plan. It's also important to remember that each area of your life impact the others because we only have a limited amount of time in a week. If you therefore decide to spend more time with your family, it's important to understand up front where that time is going to come from and how much of it your are prepared to sacrifice from another area such as your work. If there isn't a clear plan and understanding regarding this you may discover somewhere down the line that your business has suffered to an extend where the damage is irreversible and that then impacts on your finances which ultimately puts a strain on your family. In this example, while your intention was noble and sincere, ie, to commit more time to your family, in the end your actions actually placed more strain and pressure on your family that wasn't there before.
Step 3) Set GOALS
Goals are dreams with a deadline. By setting goals you are in effect creating the future in advance. By doing an appraisal of your life using the WoL you now have a birds-eye view of your entire life and identified areas that need tweaking. The other important thing you have now achieved is that you have created some level of dissatisfaction with where you are in your life right now. This is important, because as long as we are satisfied with where we are, we may never be pushed into action.
How to set goals
a) Set one goal in each area of the wheel that you feel would balance it and commit to take immediate action. You now have 8 ( or 12 depending on your own WoL) goals which you must absolutely committed to.
b) How would you feel if you could achieve all 8 goals within 1 year? Let this be your objective and your deadline.
c) Now write down and take at least one action immediately today towards achieving each goal, eg, a phone call, google search, etc
"Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." Abraham Lincoln
Now that you know where you are and have a plan and a deadline, it's time to take action.
4) Take ACTION (Time to put your wheel in motion)
⭐️ Ask yourself the following question:
What would the price be if I didn't achieve my goals?
⭐️ Also use the Rocking Chair test by asking yourself the following question:
How would I feel if I did & didn't (answer and imagine both scenarios) achieve each goal when I am on my rocking chair at 80 yrs of age?
Remember, human behavior is motivated by two things, pain and pleasure. It is therefore important to inject as much pain and pleasure into your answers to these questions. And when you think about them, picture them as vividly as possible, in other words, add color, taste, smell, emotions, etc and include all the senses.
Happiness and success depends on being fulfilled in every area of our life while being able to prioritize important areas where you are driven and have particular dreams or ambitions. Success will be short lived if other areas of your life are being neglected. While it may seem difficult to achieve this, all it requires is a clear plan. The four steps above are amazing tools which will assist you to archive what sadly, most people today cannot and are battling to come to terms with.
Go for it, take the first step and all the best.
"The secret of getting ahead is getting started." Mark Twain
