Curating A Sought After Balanced Lifestyle

Beth Rush

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You can barely tune into a self-help YouTube video these days without hearing about work-life balance or how to create a rich and meaningful life. However, despite all the advice floating around the internet, people still suffer with imbalanced lifestyles. 

Rates of anxiety and depression have soared since the pandemic, fueled by increased responsibilities and daily headaches, while supply-chain shortages and global unrest continue to disrupt everyday life. Many today want to know how to live a balanced life because they feel adrift on stormy seas.

However, it is possible to regain a sense of control and agency, and doing so will considerably benefit your mental health. Here are nine tips for finding balance in life.

How to Live a Balanced Life – The Essential Components

What makes up a balanced life? While the ratio of the following components might vary from person to person, they’re essential for everyone who wants to thrive at their peak.

1. Physical and Mental Health

It doesn’t matter if you’re making small changes to restore balance in your life or tackling something like addiction recovery. Your path forward will smoothen when you pay attention to getting adequate exercise, eating a healthy diet, and taking time to relax and sleep.

• Physical activity: According to the World Health Organization, adults should get 30 to 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous movement daily. Walking, jogging, bike riding, dancing, and even energetic house cleaning all qualify.
• Healthy eating: You should strive for a diet rich in whole foods close to their natural forms. Avoid ultra-processed foods laden with sugar, white flour, and additives.
• Relaxation: Build in at least 30 minutes a day to unwind and do something you love, like reading a novel, taking a bath, or chatting with friends and family. Unplug from your devices at least 30 minutes before bed so it’s easier to sink into slumber.

2. Meaningful Work

People generally like to be productive and contribute to their communities. If you’re working in a job that lets you meet your basic needs but isn’t the field you love most, then consider using your spare time to build a side hustle in your desired field if you can’t break into it on the employment front.

For example, start an Etsy shop if you love to knit but haven’t yet found anyone to pay you to create baby booties and blankets just yet.

3. Supportive Friends and Family

You can’t choose the family you were born into, but you can create one in adulthood. It need not take the form of a traditional spouse and children. Many people have a core group of friends they consider kin.

4. Community Involvement

Likewise, it’s important to feel connected to something bigger than yourself. What’s a cause you feel passionate about? How can you get involved with others to bring about the change you want to see in the world?

5. Personal/Spiritual Fulfillment

Nietzsche once wrote that he who has a why to live can withstand almost any how. Having meaning and purpose in your life is perhaps the best way to stave off mental illness and despair.

What makes you tick? For some, it might be involvement in a church or spiritual community. For others, it can take the form of being the best parent they can be to their kids or helping others. Whatever it is for you, discover your answer to the “Why are you here?” question.

Now that you know the components, what are some specific tips for how to live a balanced life? Learn more in the next section.

9 Tips for Finding Balance in Life

You can treat this like a guide, checking off one item at a time or – better yet – taking it as an ongoing work in progress. For example, you might have to get mindful time and time again as your plans, interests, and goals change to keep you on track.

1. Get Mindful

Set aside some time where you can sit quietly without interruptions. Listen to the silence and ask yourself the following questions:

• How healthy is my lifestyle? Evaluate your habits non-judgmentally. Please be gentle with your plans to change and tackle one thing at a time. Perhaps you have an awful diet and don’t exercise, but going strict paleo-vegan while training for a marathon will lead to burnout. Instead, work on gradually building more movement into your life, then tackle your meal plan.
• How do I feel about my job? What would make me more fulfilled? It’s a grim reality that everyone must pay bills. However, you’re meant for more than that. How can you arrange your life to have more time for the things you love outside of work? What could you do to segue into a more meaningful profession?
• How are my relationships? Many adults struggle with loneliness. How could you reconnect with your nearest and dearest? Is it time to plan a date night? Should you consider taking adult classes to meet others with similar interests?
• What makes me feel fulfilled? This question could help you find anything from volunteer opportunities (a great way to make friends) to a side hustle. It might also prompt you to switch priorities, perhaps talking to your boss about obligations to spend more time with family.

2. Make a Plan

You’re busy. But guess what? So are people with balanced lives. What’s the difference between their calm facade and your frantic race to fit everything into the week?

Planning is key. Get a planner and sit down each Sunday to chart your week. Please go beyond your workday to-do list – include your social and self-care activities and a bit of unstructured free time for “play.”

3. Talk to Your Support Team

If your life feels unbalanced, chances are good your loved ones experience similar angst. Sit down with your spouse, partner, or kids and discuss how you can make things better. Perhaps make plans for getting together more often, prioritizing family and friends time.

Let them know what you need, too. For example, introverts often need time alone to recharge, especially if they work with the public. Would an uninterrupted 15 minutes to veg after returning home from work make you less snippy with family? If so, express that desire.

4. Meet With Your Employer

You aren’t crazy if you feel like you’re working harder and harder, yet still getting nowhere. Wages have stagnated for over 40 years, while productivity gains have exceeded them by far. Meanwhile, inflation has gone insane – you’re working harder simply to stay afloat.

You can’t singlehandedly fix the problem, but you can make a difference in your workload. If you feel overwhelmed, talk to your employer. Work together on a solution. If they continue to put more on your plate, take further action – don’t cause yourself unnecessary financial stress.

5. Find Movement You Love

Exercise is perhaps the best stress-buster and mood-enhancer known to humankind. It’s also essential for a balanced life. Find something you love so much that you look forward to doing it every day. If the treadmill isn’t cutting it, get out there and hike.

6. Learn How to Meal Prep

Reliance on ultra-processed convenience meals can keep your life unbalanced by making you unwell. Poor diets laden with sugar, salt, white flour, and artificial chemicals lead to obesity, type 2 diabetes, fatigue, heart trouble, and digestive woes. Instead, follow these three steps to ace meal prep:

• Invest in containers and wraps: Find ways to make your meals handy with compostable freezer bags or a Bento box you carry to work.
• Play prep cook: Take care of the hard part of meal prep when you have time. Cut carrots for dipping in hummus. Chop veggies for a stir fry. Slice fruit into individual serving sizes you can grab and throw in lunch boxes.
• Master a few healthy freezer/crockpot meals: Dinner need not be stressful. Assemble your weekly menu and have it waiting in the freezer so all you have to do is pop it in the crockpot in the morning and let time do the rest.

7. Create a Bedroom Retreat

Sleep is essential to creating a balanced life. Make your bedroom a cozy retreat by soundproofing it if necessary or by investing in noise-canceling devices to get rest if noisy roommates or a snoring spouse disturb you.

Furthermore, ban electronics. The light and distraction from screens can keep you awake into the wee hours. Make a charging station elsewhere in your home and park your phone at night. Invest in an old-fashioned windup alarm if you need one.

8. Engage in Positive Activities

Build time into every day to participate in things you love. One day, you might enjoy a long, leisurely meal with your family. Another you might meet your friends at the court for a pickup basketball game. Prioritize these activities – put them in your planner.

9. Volunteer for a Cause You Support

Find something bigger than yourself to give your life purpose and meaning. Some people might find solace in socializing kitties or walking dogs for a local animal shelter. Others may work to advance health care or racial justice. Whatever you decide, get involved with others who share your passion.

Please don’t overwhelm yourself by tackling all nine tips for finding balance in life at once. Instead, implement one new and improved habit at a time, getting comfy with each small change before moving on to the next. A year from now, you’ll look back and be amazed at your progress.

The bottom line? You’ll know your life is balanced when you feel inner peace and satisfaction more often than not.

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Featured image courtesy of S’well on Unsplash. No changes were made to this image. Image license can be found here.