Tips to Improve your Work/Life Balance

It's more sensible to have good health than get a payout from your insurance broker.

We’ve memories from our parents or grandparents telling us to eat our vegetables, get plenty of sleep, work hard and have Sunday as a rest day. Good old-fashioned ideas.

They abided by it and it worked for them.

However, they didn’t have the stressful life that we have today. We’ve got the dishwasher, the television, the remote controls, and the high tech toys that supposedly make life ‘better’ for us. But for many folk it hasn’t worked! Stress, too busy, not enough relaxation & exercise, laughter, joy, peace, filfulment and happiness. People in burnout mode with an unbalanced work/life ratio. Many people are left wondering how to bring back the fun and enjoyment into their lives.

Annette King, our minister of Health says, “Too many NZ’ers are dying or becoming ill, from diseases or conditions that can be prevented by positive eating and being physically active.

So the question for many of us is how do we do it? Here’s ten easy tips to balance your life, including time for You, Feel better about yourself, Exercise, Fun, Relaxation, Family, Relationships, Work, Health, discover your dreams, or whatever else you want to include into your life.

Record or remember what you’ve done over the past few weeks to enable you to evaluate any patterns in your life. i.e. Eat takeaways 3 nights a week, work late every night, not enough me time, lonely, too tired to exercise, haven’t laughed enough, all work and no play, don’t feel happy
Decide what you want to achieve in your work/life balance. Is it more time with family, new career, health, new relationship, have more fun
When assessing what you want to include in your life, ask yourself “Why is this important to me?” This gives you some ideas about your values. Often this is the most difficult part of this exercise, because people have never asked themselves this question. Eg. If Health is important then continuing smoking,
or eating unpositive food, or being overweight is incongruent with being positive, therefore you need to re-evaluate what you want. Having your values aligned with what you wish to achieve provides a much better grounding for your success.
Make yourself a weekly, hourly diary that you could record a new timetable for yourself on.
Slot onto your new hourly/weekly diary first, the MOST important thing you wish to implement into your life. i.e. more time for you …do it DAILY (if you can)
Soak in Bath on Sunday night,
Read for 30 mins Monday, Wednesday nights.
Movie on Tuesday night,
Massage on Thursday, Social time with friend on Friday night
Garden on Saturday afternoon,
Then schedule the rest of the week AROUND Your new diary.
Assess your STAGE IN LIFE when you’re doing this exercise. You may want to play your favourite sport every day, but with a family, house, work, building a business, etc, it may not be possible YET. Slot it in maybe every week fortnight/month, so you are not feeling you’re not getting YOUR enjoyment, but think about in five years time, when you CAN include it weekly, and in ten years time, daily.
Be Realistic – don’t expect to make drastic changes quickly i.e.: lose weight, get fit, give up smoking. Be patient with yourself. Join weight watchers, join a gym, walk with a friend, get a coach.
Check out your thinking and self-esteem. This is equally important, many people appear full of confidence but behind the smiley face is a person that does not love or even like themselves. If this is you, go and search for answers, coaching, local courses at night schools or books can help.
Praise yourself for your achievements.

John Kehoe says “Life is a journey not a destination, so be gentle with yourself…don’t make too drastic changes at once. This will set up failure and you not feeling OK A habit takes between 21 and 28 days to change. So be gentle on you! But the first step is one step in the right direction.

This is your life and your choice – life is very precious so grasp it in your hands and more importantly in your head, overcome those negative thoughts and Go for Your Own Personal Gold.

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