As I continue on this journey of self-discover and of finding my identity, I have tried to reconcile different areas of my life. Think about it, we have so many responsibilities that pull on us. Do you ever feel like you need a system that can help you keep each area of your life in check? If you are anything like me, I would find myself excelling in one area, while another important area of my life falls apart. Do you find yourself playing catch up? Look no further in this post, we are going to explore the journey that I went on to find a balance in my life. There are four areas that I focused on while on this journey of finding balance. In my self-discovery journey, I learned that we are tri-beings. We have a body, a soul, and a Spirit. Each part of who we are needs to be taken care of. Additional we are living on this planet called Earth, so we have external needs. These needs must be considered in this journey called “finding a balanced Life”. Some areas to explore when considering creating a balance in your life are Spirituality, Health and Wellness, Finances and Wealth, and Relationships.
My Story
I was struggling with finding a balance for a long time. I had individual goals for different areas of my life, but I found myself frustrated because I felt like I did not have control over my own life. I ha tried everything I could from time blocking, to list making, but still as soon as one thing was caught up, the other thing was falling behind. I felt like I was on a roller coaster that never ended. Due to ups and downs, I started to get stressed, my health declined, and as result I got behind even more which created frustration. My quality of life in terms of joy and happiness started to get affected. Naturally, I am a goal-setter, an over-achiever, a dreamer, and I found fulfillment in achievement. Part of my self-discovery journey, it was important to me to be honest with myself in terms of looking at my strengths and weaknesses. Self-discovery and the journey of finding my identity meant that I had to do the hard-work to get to the root of the issues in my life that I wanted to change. I went on a 90 days journey to fully understand my life, and re-evaluate what is important to me. This is what I found out:
Common Reasons Why We Lose Life Balance
Looking back now, it it is easy to pinpoint some reasons why life balance is lost. One of these reasons reason is trauma. Like I shared in the previous post https://thrivingatlast.com/?p=2409 recovering from trauma is a life long journey. Although therapy helps, sometimes we are triggered, and if not careful we can fall into the old habits and stay in a unhealthy cycle. My tendency is to shift from pain to doing, and doing, and doing. This results in extending myself too thin. Do you find that you have some coping mechanism when triggered? What are your coping mechanism? How do you overcompensate when dealing with past trauma. I believe that knowing ourselves even knowing the things about us that are negative, can help us get our balance back sooner.
If we are not careful, our strengths can easily turn into our weaknesses when they are not in balanced. For me my dreaming and goal oriented nature can easily be used against me because, when triggered I want to go back to doing things I find fulfillment in. Having people in your life who know your strengths and weaknesses can play a huge role in helping you get your balance back. It is important for those who are close to you, to be people you can trust. I do believe that people in your life can make or break you. A supportive team member, spouse, friend, etc…can make a big difference in telling you the truth when they see that you are doing too much or too little. The can even volunteer to take things off of your to do list if it is something that can’t be taken off of the list. If everyone in your life did their roles or their jobs well, then you can focus better without worrying about everyone else jobs. Knowing that everything else is taken care of even when your to do list is increasing can ease your mind a bit.
Another factor to consider is responsibility. Lets be honest, we all have them. Bills have to be paid, we have to eat, and meet other financial responsibilities that fall on us. Life happens to all of us. One minute things are going very well, then next something unexpected happens. We are expected to figure things out quickly, and in all honest, this expectation is not realistic. So we fall behind, we choose which task to tackle first, second etc…and we do our best and hope for the best that tomorrow is a better day. However, if we plan for the hard times and have contingencies in place, we can maintain life balance better. Do you have challenges that come up once in a while to plan for? How can you go about combating those challenges?
Spirituality
As I dived deeper into who I am, I found that the best answer as to do with spirituality. The answer to the question, who are you? covers so much including our spiritual nature. The core of who we are. As tri-beings we are complex and this is why so many like myself struggle with identity, especially those who suffered severe trauma. The 90 days journey forced me to ask serious hard questions for the first time in my life. As mentioned in the Ways of Finding Who You Are posts https://thrivingatlast.com/?p=2503 I was asked hard questions because I had never taken a serious look into my life. My Spirituality took a hit the most because, the deeper I looked inward of who I was, the more I wanted to learn the truth about God, Jesus, and the christian faith. I had held the christian faith so dear to my heart, soul, and mind. Although initially Spirituality was not a part of the Program, this is something that was important to me. As I dived deeper into Spirituality and why I believe what I believed, it started a journey that I did not expect. In this journey, I was able to reconcile with some of the questions I had in my christian walk. I completely changed direction and start to re-learn everything that I thought I knew. You can read what I wrote about this topic so far here: https://thrivingatlast.com/?p=2525 I wholeheartedly believe that your Spirit needs care and attention. How do you care for your spiritual part of you? How do you find answers to your spiritual questions?
Health and Wellness
What does Health and Wellness means to you? Health and wellness is the way we take care of our bodies, mental health, and over-all quality of life. The health part is vital because it is very difficult to life a good life while the body is sick. Same for wellness, it is very difficult to enjoy what your body does for your while you mind is ill. A healthy mind tells the body what to do, while a sick body is worthless to the healthy mind. As you can see health and wellness go hand in hand. There are activities that we have to engage in to take care of our bodies such as fitness, nutrition, and hydration. What I have learned so much in my life, is that there is answer to a problem somewhere. For our wellness, we must manage stress, get enough rest, and practice self-care designed to enjoy life. The key to reaching our health and wellness goals is to find the answers and apply it to your problem areas of our health and wellness problems. One of the things that I am grateful for right now in our lives, is the access to knowledge, and information. All you have to do is have internet access, and ability to type up a question. The issue is not that we do not have the answers, the issue is that we have to ask ourselves hard questions, and be willing to change and adopt. Unfortunately this work is not easy. However, in order to change our habits that negatively affect our health and wellness, we have to invest in ourselves, and be willing to do the hard work. As I invested time in this not so easy work, I learned a few things about weight loss, eating habits, sleep, and mental health. I understood that not only that I have to take care of my body, but also my soul. Mental health is something that I have been advocating for especially when it relates to trauma. Achieving wellness is probably one of the hardest work I have done to date. How do you practice wellness? What healthy activities do you engage in to regulate yourself?
Relationships
Lets talk about people in our lives. If there is one think I know we are meant to co-exist with other people. We are social creatures. We come from a family, and we build our own families. Life is not meant to be lived alone. However, for people who suffered trauma, we can sometimes isolate. The causes of isolation can be a result of so many reason. In my journey of finding balance, I wanted to understand how I go from, the do-it-all myself kind of a girl to delegating and sharing these goals with others. I also learned so much about how to treat and appreciate people in your life. In order for strong relationships to be sustain, gratitude had to be a foundation. Simply taking time in my day to call, and to send a text to someone about what I appreciated about them and why I was grateful for them. When we are overwhelmed, we lose sight of the good in our lives. It is important to take note literally of what is good in your life to see how blessed we are.
I noticed that my priorities were a bit out of place. There was a time that I had to work 12 hour days every day when I was building my business. However, years later, the business was built and infrastructure was put in place, but I forgot to slow down and spend quality time with my loved ones. I will share some of the tips in a separate blog post. How can you be creative in planning quality time and make sure that your loved ones enjoy the time that you spend with them? Quality time with our loved ones is sometimes overlooked and pushed down to the priority list. This is a huge mistake, because we are not guaranteed tomorrow. Love and appreciate people in your life because life can be too short sometimes.
Finances and Wealth
Lets be real. We all need money. We need money for daily needs, but also to plan for our future. Additionally, we have to understand out money blueprint in order to be fulfilled in this area. Financial independence is very important, especially when we have children, and wish to leave them with a legacy. Most parents do not wish for their children’s to struggle like they did. This is why finances and wealth come into play. However, for me, I know how to make money, but I have not fully learned how to manage it well. This is where the financial blueprint comes in. The way we view money. The rich dad and poor dad concept. In my journey, I had to learn how to make money work for me not having to always work for money. At some point, all the hard work in creating a business, or in climbing a corporate ladder has to pay off, right?
Building wealth takes planning, discipline, and knowing what your financial goals are to start working towards them. Knowing your financial blueprint, goals, and having a system in place, helps tremendously, especially when life decides to throw us curveballs. I was in a way moving blindly in this area of my life, and I am so glad that now I have tools, tools that I will share with you.
The Connection
You can now see how how all these areas spirituality, Health and Wellness, Relationships, finances and wealth are all connected. If one of these areas are out of balance, everything else eventually comes crumbling down. In order for everything to move in harmony, and to avoid stress and frustration, there has to be a system in place that connects all these key areas together in order to have a balanced life. The system makes it possible to adjust when goals change or when life happens to us. A clear picture of our financial health allow us to have peace of mind. Tell me a little bit about how you have achieved balance in your life. What systems do you have in place that help you build on a solid foundation? What curve balls has life thrown at you that are hindering you from living a balanced life? Any advice?
