5 questions to help you gain clarity & focus
Big Sur, CA; a place my family comes to when we need perspective.
How do you react when someone asks, “How balanced is your life?”
Maybe you feel defensive, frustrated, hopeless, angry or perhaps you roll your eyes and check out completely. The word balance (which can sound exasperating and unrealistic) can be a turnoff and triggering for many who think of balance as being a state of perfection, divine equilibrium or an unattainable Zen zone where nothing ever goes wrong.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Life balance–which I define as having enough time, energy and resources for that which matters most–is about living in alignment with your life priorities. It’s about making conscious choices and living intentionally. It’s about getting clear and focused on what matters most right NOW.
This week I’ll be leading a life balance workshop for the teachers/staff at a school in my area. Knowing many may have misconceptions about what we’ll be exploring, I shared my definition of life balance with them this morning and proposed five questions for them to reflect on prior to Thursday.
Seeking more balance in your life in 2015? I encourage you to take a few minutes during your lunch break this week and reflect on the following questions, too. Now is a great time to do some “belly button gazing” before we start anew in January.
• What is most important to you at this life stage (ex: career growth, creative expression, balance, life purpose, relationships, self-care, etc.)?
• Take a step back, examine your personal and work life: what are 1-2 things that are draining you? What are 1-2 things that feed/nourish you?
• What did you learn about yourself in 2014?
• What is one habit that keeps you from experiencing greater physical and emotional well-being?
• Envision yourself in 2015—what three words describe how you want to be?
Want to read more about my approach to life balance? Check out Is Ms. Balance Out of Balance? and Is Life Balance Possible? from my popular blog. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic on our Live Inside Out FB community or here under the comments section.
RESOURCE: What helps me experience greater work life balance? Being with others who also desire to live more intentionally. Join me for an upcoming self-renewal retreat, find/become trained to lead a Personal Renewal Group in your area or check out our online life balance teleclasses (some include amazing interactive forums). View all our life balance offerings here.
Subscribe here to Live Inside Out, a weekly blog written by work life balance teacher and Career Strategists president, Renée Peterson Trudeau. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Good Housekeeping and more. Thousands of women in ten countries are becoming RTA-Certified Facilitators and leading/joining self-renewal groups based on her award-winning curriculum. She is the author of The Mother’s Guide to Self-Renewal and Nurturing the Soul of Your Family: 10 Ways to Reconnect and Find Peace in Everyday Life. She lives in Austin, Texas, with her husband and 12 year-old son. More on her background here.
