How Well Do You Maintain Life Balance?

Maintaining Life Balance

If trying to maintain balance in your life makes you feel like a tightrope walker, you’re not alone. Most of us have so many demands on our time and energy, the endless pursuit of life balance can feel like a three-ring circus! Striking a balance between work responsibilities, roles you play, and all the other things you’d like to accomplish takes a high degree of alignment with your core values.

In an effort to strike the right life balance, my clients start with an assessment of where they are today using the Wheel of Life Coaching Tool. [Click for your free download and give it a try for yourself!] The Wheel of Life is a metaphor that depicts all the major areas of importance in your life in a 360 circle. For you to determine where you are today, you’re asked to assess these different areas with a number from 1-10. When you see your entire snapshot by category on the wheel, you’ll have an idea of where to start making incremental improvements in your life to attain more life balance and increase your overall satisfaction.

The next step is to take a look at your current life responsibilities. Many of us juggle hundreds of tasks daily and it can be exhausting! So, if you’re fed up, overworked, and bordering on dissatisfied, take this quiz. It will help you to see how well you are meeting responsibilities, while also recognizing and fulfilling personal needs and wants.

Answer True or False to the following statements:

1. The only way I can successfully manage my life is to take care of myself physically and emotionally.
2. Nurturing myself enlarges my capacity to help others.
3. I eat healthfully and exercise regularly.
4. I get check-ups, go to the dentist, and take preventative precautions.
5. I set aside personal, quiet time for myself, whether I’m meditating or simply letting my thoughts drift.
6. I experience the gifts of each season: ice skating, sledding, bundled-up beach walks; gardening, hiking, more time outside; camping, swimming, barbecues; harvesting the bounty, gathering wood, and spending more time inside.
7. Creativity nurtures me, too. I do what I love, whether that’s cooking, drawing, painting, writing, dancing, singing, or another creative pursuit.
8. Reaching out to others enriches my life. I spend quality time with family and friends.
9. Contributing to the world provides connection and purpose, so I give my time, energy, and experience where it is most useful.
10. I notice and heed the emotional signals that tell me I’m out of balance: irritability, overwhelm, resentment.
11. If I feel that I’m catching a cold, I realize I may have stressed my immune system with overactivity, so I stop and take care of myself.
12. When I need or want to, I say no to requests for my time.
13. I listen to and honor the requests my body makes for such things as a nap, a walk, green vegetables, and hot soup.
14. If I have something planned for myself, I don’t just toss that aside when someone makes a request of me.
15. I’m busy, but I find time to do the things I want to do.
16. I’m happy. I regularly experience well-being, contentment, and even joy.

If you answered false more often than true, you may want to take a look at the questions to which you answered false. To create more life balance, see if you can incorporate something of its message into your life.

Life balance is not achieved through some external magic formula, nor is it ever achieved based on someone else’s measures. Your life balance is attainable only after you’ve done the necessary work to define what is MOST important to you.  Balance requires feedback, aliveness, and an awareness of where you are – through all your senses, so you can course-correct when things feel wrong. Life balance is living your life to its fullest, most satisfying capacity… while still feeling challenged, yet satisfied.

The quiz and some content are used under license, © 2011 Claire Communications