Flower

Listen to me

Watch me

Let’s take a look today at ways to help you understand and develop more balance in your life. I think our lives have become much busier than ever before and we have to make many more commitments in all areas of our lives. Whether this is due to our work, children, wider family, friends and last but not least our own health, hobbies plus all the things which collectively go to making our lives fulfilled. What comes first? How do we prioritise? How we find balance in our lives is a tricky affair, a bit like walking a tight rope. But just because it seems super hard and at times impossible to get right we shouldn’t just give up and abandon this as this will ultimately have a massive negative impact on you.

Let’s take a look at what being balanced is all about and how easily we can topple over if we’re not being mindful of this in our daily life. If we imagine that we’re a flower and at the very centre of the flower is the core of who we are. Then see all the petals as the things you do in life, imagine if we work too much and the work side of our flower has to then have so many more petals to accommodate for this level of work. It will mean that the side of the flower will be fuller and heavier. We only have so many petals, like the hours in our days and we can’t knit ourselves any more petals or time. Because of the excess work in our lives, other things like our family or our health will start to suffer as there will be no more petals left to fill the other sides of our flower.

Take a moment to picture how your life would look like as a flower, for many of us we are out of balance and uneven, in the worst cases, we will look a little deformed if we are totally out of balance. Now let’s imagine not only do we look out of balance, but we will feel out of balance. How can our flower stand straight if we are so heavy on one side? The answer is we can’t, and the flower will start to topple over and at its worst, it will have to rest on the ground to support its self, a bit like being in the recovery position. Even if we think our flower isn’t too bad, what happens when the wind blows like stress in our life, will we stay strong when the stresses of life around us start to pick up speed? Again, the answer is maybe not.  If this is the case what or who do we blame? The stresses around us? Or ourselves for being out of balance? This is how our views can get distorted and we can start trying to fix the unfixable instead of change what we can change. Like the flower can’t change the wind and how strong it is, when it will blow, whether it blows into a storm etc. This is just like the lives we lead, we can’t say when a big storm rain’s down on our life and we can’t change the how the stress can blow up our lives at these times either. But if we are balanced we can bend and move with the winds and storms, still staying strong, to deal with the ups and downs of life.

If we are unbalanced, then you will feel very out of control, as allowing ourselves to free fall through life is quite a scary experience and not one I would recommend to anyone.  Also, when things get tough we just don’t have the strength to hold strong due to the imbalance in our lives.  I know some things are hard, but finding ways around them will help, if life is stressful and we use a bottle of wine or bar of chocolate to soften the blow this won’t help. In fact, it will make you more out of balance, as you’re using your free petals negatively, that will only add to the imbalance not help it. But if you spend the time being active, doing yoga, having a walk with a friend, doing something fun with your children, practising mindfulness or mediation these would all help find more balance within you. Sometimes when we feel out of control with life we can just give up and end up curling up in the recovery position abandoning all hope of change. Don’t get me wrong I know life can be very tough at times and balance can be near impossible, but if our lives are like this all the time then we have to understand we can’t go on like this forever.

The biggest thing is to see this imbalance and start the process to change, often we see but then live in denial over it by saying, we can’t change, and we just plough on living this way. We can’t go on like this forever it isn’t possible, we will break and all the reasons why we couldn’t change in the past will not work, our worst fears of not being able to work, or look after our family or our children or whatever was unbalancing will come true. If you are in the recovery position. where your flower is so imbalanced it is resting on the floor this is the time your most vulnerable to breaking in this way. Please don’t be forced to change due to breaking over life’s pressures, take the time to find some way of changing this before it becomes out of your hands. Every small change you make will make a difference, don’t try to look for the big change if there was one then you may have already chosen to take that option. Small changes over time will make a massive difference to your life you just have to be patient to let them grow and tip that balance within you.

Take the time to look at any destructive areas of your life and start working on those first as those are not needed and changing those for something more positive will be a double whammy. Look to streamline as much as possible and don’t imagine your superman or woman, accept that the picture-perfect experience is not always achievable. Also, you can stand back and look at the bigger picture it sometimes easier to see it from this angle.

I know you can find a better balance in your life, start today.

Thanks for dropping by Sara x