Balance

Today I wanted to discuss something I have been thinking a lot about lately; balance. There are always many activities and aspects I would like to integrate into my life but it is hard to find a balance in terms of how much I can fit, how many times I should do each activity, how important each one is to me etc. For example, ideally, I would like to make time for at least ten minutes of meditation daily but in reality I do not seem to have time for it. I hate that phrase, though, ‘I have no time for it’. I have tried to erase that phrase from my vocabulary because I think that if something is truly important you can make time for it and in the words of the Holstee Manifesto ‘If you don’t have enough time, stop watching TV’. In any case I have decided to find more balance by making a list of the things I want to add to my days/weeks and assess whether they are truly important to me and whether at the end of the day they will make me happier. Yesterday a friend informed me about a book he is reading called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande (another manifesto…) where the author discovers a great amount of human errors in the fields of science, health, law, etc. and after putting it to the test he proves that thorough checklists can greatly diminish these errors. From personal experience I know checklists to be one of the most effective tools to ensure everything is achieved when there is an overwhelming amount of things to get done. In this case, it is a way to remind me to not forget to do some things. I have decided to add creativity, exercise and silence into mine:

ü 10 minute meditation
ü One creative activity every two days (writing/drawing/cooking/new activity/dance)
ü Exercise every day (walking/resistance training/stretching/running)

The next step is to make more time in the day if time is an issue. For some people it is watching less TV, for others it is spending less time on facebook. Here are some of my suggestions:

ü Waking up earlier to fit more activities into the day
ü Limiting the amount of times you go on facebook to once per day
ü Enabling facebook notifications on the phone and blocking the site from the computer so that you only go on facebook when you receive a message from a friend and you limit yourself to just replying that message – that way you prevent mindless newsfeed cruising
ü Asking yourself before you open the laptop whether it will be to do a productive activity or to mindlessly cruise the web

These are some of my suggestions to achieve more balance and making space for more productive activities that will make you happier at the end of the day. First, make a checklist of all the activities you want to add into your life that will bring more balance if you feel you are lacking in certain areas. Next, make a list of all the activities which are not benefitting you in any way and work to remove them. I will do this for a week and see how it goes!