How To Achieve Life-Work Balance Without Stress

 

Most of us have things in our lives we want to do, as well as those things we have to do. Perhaps you want to go to the gym more often, or you want to read more books this year. Like most of us, do you find yourself wishing you had more time to pursue the things you want to do as well as the things you need to do?

 

Whilst time management is important to achieving these goals, some other steps must precede it. As you define these steps, preferably using a journal to keep track of what you discover about yourself, they will help you achieve that work and life balance that will enable you to do those things you want to do and achieve at this point in your life.

 

1.    List Your Goals

 

All of us have goals that change regularly and that reflect other things going on in our life at the time. List your goals and prioritize them from important to least important. Include not only the goals you have to achieve but also the personal goals you want to achieve.

 

2.   List Your Daily Schedule

 

Although we want more time in the day, all of us have 24 hours per day. No more, no less. We use some of these hours for sleep and some of these for work and recreation purposes. List down your daily schedule and include the things you must do because they are a commitment. This may include work commitments or school sport commitments with the children.

 

3.  Prioritize Your Personal Goals with Equal Priority as Work-Related Goals

 

Don’t minimize the time available to do the things you want to do, particularly if they are contributing to your life goals or overall wellbeing. Include family time and other essential life activities that require your time and attention.

 

Keep to the Schedule unless in an Emergency

Most people who create a daily schedule, keep to it for a while, but not long enough for it to become a habit. Habits take approximately around 3 weeks to form, so if you want your new approach to work and lifestyle to be maintained, you must protect it at all costs. If you want to achieve your own personal goals, you must protect them at all costs. Eventually, the changes you implement will become second nature, but until then, you need to stay in control of your time management.

"You have six days each week for your ordinary work, 

but on the seventh day, you must stop working, 

even during the seasons of plowing, and harvest." 

Exodus 34:21, NLT.

How To Eliminate Stress In A Stressful Situation

All of us face change in our life. Sometimes we love it, look forward to it and enjoy the preparations that are involved in making it happen. On other occasions, change can be very distressing. Usually occurring without warning, we are usually unprepared for it. We can feel quite disorientated when change is unexpected and it can produce physical reactions we may feel we have little control over.

If we noticed that our life is disorganized and is full of stress and after reading this, we firmly decide to make the necessary changes in order to attain the desired life-work balance, then we should first of all prepare for the unexpected.

 

Facing unplanned change with a prepared mind helps to re-orientate life even when it seems to be out of our control. If we accept that change is inevitable, we see the sense of thinking about and preparing to deal with it well ahead of when it actually happens. It also helps us reflect on how we will eliminate stressful reactions when we face those stress and the changes we're going to make in our life.   

 

Taking the time to plan and prepare for change is not inviting fate, but facing reality. People who work in occupations that involve dealing with sudden unexpected emergencies are in a state of readiness at all times. They learn to anticipate all possible scenarios by learning how to deal with them before they occur. They learn how to prevent the situation or minimize their harm, and they learn to enact certain actions when these events do occur.

 

We gain valuable insight into how to prepare for change by learning how to apply their approaches to potential change and stressful situations. We prepare for change, or potential stresses in three ways: 

Firstly, the higher the risk of something happening, the more we should anticipate it likely to happen. People living in areas where there is a high risk of a natural disaster occurring, prepare for its inevitably, by preparing their surroundings each year and psychologically being ready for it. 

 

Secondly, contrary to people may think, being psychologically prepared for change is possible. Although it is impossible to know what it will be like to face being a parent, for example, we can prepare ourselves by reading and identifying possible areas of concern we may personally face in our new parenting role.  

 

Thirdly, we can learn to manage our responses and thoughts in times of minor changes and challenges. As we do this, we are providing ourselves with invaluable training. Learning how to deal with the many minor challenges and changes we face daily, will help us to develop the skills to deal with stress in both the unexpected an expected major events.

Here's a video of TED talk by Nigel Marsh, author of the book: Overworked and Underlaid: A Seriously Funny Guide To Life. He is giving his thoughts on four observations he found in studying the issue of work-life balance.