Work life balance
Work life balance is something that everyone deserves to have and that everyone should strive to achieve. But how?
Well, to start with here are some questions to ask yourself now:
▪️How will I know when I have a work life balance? ▪️Who will support me in keeping up with my work life balance? ▪️What is my self-discipline like? How can I improve it? ▪️Am I completely in control of my work life balance?
When you write out your diary for the week, do you schedule in your rest? It is so important to do this because rest helps you function well. If you deprive any animal of sleep, even for a short period, it will die.
There are biological, physiological, psychological, theological and sociological needs for us to rest. In other words, rest is LOGICAL! Scientists used to think that when we slept, the brain shut down. Now we know that when we sleep at night our resting brains are far from idle. In sleep, our brains go to work consolidating memories, reviewing the events and conversations of the day and looking for creative solutions to the problems we have faced. Every second of your life you are busy producing antibodies, repairing your-self and adapting.
Removing rest damages your ability to remember and learn. You also increase your health challenges, chances of stroke and heart attack, give yourself a higher chance of getting other illnesses, mess up your skin and even set yourself on a path of weight gain. I think one of the problems we face is that we work hard and then wait for the world to grant us the space to rest. But it never comes. I can promise you something: you are not going to magically find a time where your life slows down. Therefore, you need to make it happen and practice rest now. It requires discipline and planning. If you want rest, you will have to prioritise it, place it in your diary if you work too hard and can’t rest -and be intentional with it.
So, rest has been pencilled in the diary, no matter how busy you are! Next, do you put in goals for your work and life? They will keep you motivated and add structure to your diary as well as giving your tasks a sense of purpose, knowing why you’re doing something can really keep you on track. However, it’s important to know that if one day the plan doesn’t work out in line with your goals it’s totally fine. It’s the journey to the goal that counts and life happens but it’s what you do the day or week after that counts.
Here are some examples of goals to set:
Making career, life, business decisions
Setting a goal with what you want to create
Health and Wellbeing related
Where you want to go on holiday?
Financial and wealthy goals, spend, save budget
What you want to buy?
What events you want to attend
What personal and professional development you want
Making time for the things that are important that LOVE
Praying, making time for your spirituality
Getting a promotion within a time scale
Signing up for an event such as a half marathon – something to train for
Schedule check-ins with your boss to review performance
Spending a certain amount of hours with family/friends
Making time for adventure
After scheduling rest and goals into your busy yet fulfilling life, it’s time to create the perfect work life balance. Here’s my top tips to get you started:
Know what matters to you most
Value yourself
Stop saying YES, to things you don’t want to do
Stop being a people pleaser
Listen to your intuition about big decisions you need to make
Pay attention to how you’re spending your hours, categorise them into how important they are to you
De stress – find something that makes you relax daily such as exercise, reading, adventure, pray, be creative
Limit your screen time – you deserve to have some time away from your phone to be present
Don’t multitask – it will cause more stress
Make time for YOU everyday for an hour
Eat mindfully, Eat a good, balanced diet
Sleep – get at least 8 hours a night
Slow down and stop rushing around
Dream and have a vision and create it
Lastly, you may be wondering now how you’ll know if you’re achieving the ideal work life balance!
Here are 6 signs to tell you:
You’ll stop missing out
You’ll be more productive
Your health and wellbeing will improve
You will actually enjoy work
You’ll have more ‘you time’
You will value and respect yourself more
I hope you have found this work life balance blog useful and are able to make some changes to achieve everything you desire in your work and most importantly your life!
Thank you for reading and do let me know what you have taken away from this by emailing me at hello@kikikirbycoaching.com
With Love
Kiki x
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