Balance

I’m working on a few personal things in my life and one of them is achieving balance. From experience, I know it’s important to actually define what this looks like for me before making any decisions about how to do it. I don’t believe there is one exact way to live a balanced life and, for me, it’s constantly changing depending on how my priorities shift.

Right now I’m focused on business but I don’t want other parts of my life to suffer. My strategy looks like this:

• Define balance – an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady. All the parts of my life do NOT have to be equal!
• Find my why – I love so many different parts of my life and I want to continue to nuture them while being able to focus on a select few.
• How – Decide what my priorities are, make a HUGE list of all the things I want to do, schedule my life (read-calendar) in a way that FEELS balanced. This helps me be intentional with how I live.
• Implement – Just follow my plan. This is probably the hardest part because I can almost always find better stuff to do that what I plan for myself. And yes, I schedule my life and random fun too!

The interesting (and amazing) part about all of this is that I get to actually CHOOSE to think I’m already living a balanced life. Part of me does already. I can look for ways I’m finding balance in some areas of my life and be honest with myself about what I want to work on. I don’t really want to be in a mental space where I’m always feeling the lack of balance. I want to be satisfied with where I am and simultaneously strive for improvement.

A recent example of this is during a family road trip over the winter holidays. I love to be with my family but I like to find time to work on my photography as well. Southern Utah is a particularly photogenic place! I was able plan my time such that I could insert some time with my camera and not feel like I was sacrificing the experience with my family. My people also recognize my complete love for my art and do go out of their way to make it possible. On the occasion of this image, we were traveling between destinations and saw some amazing things happening in the atmosphere and the landscape. A short 30 min stop was all we needed to take a dirt road and hike up a hill to enjoy the view. It was AWESOME! By not over scheduling ourselves, we able to leave time for serendipitous moments like this. It felt like a well-balanced trip.

So, is balance in life something YOU are trying to figure out? If you feel you aren’t living a balanced life, how about looking for small ways you’re achieving this right now? If this is something you want to work on, check your priorities, make a plan, but, most of all, decide to love where you are right now. If you don’t love where you are now chances are you won’t love where you end up either.