Better Choices Lead to Better Balance in Life

Balance is crucial for our physical and mental wellbeing. Our physical balance tends to deteriorate as we age, making daily activities like putting our socks on a lot trickier than it used to be! It’s worth making an effort to maintain a good sense of balance, as it helps improve our mobility and flexibility, and prevent the falls which can be so serious in older people. Pilates, yoga and tai chi are all good exercises for improving balance, but we can also incorporate simple activities into our daily routine to the same end. For example:

• Standing on one foot for 10 seconds while brushing your teeth, then switching feet.
• Imagining you are walking along a balance beam.
• Incorporating lunges into your daily activity.

Improving physical balance even as we get older, is a relatively simple undertaking. Attaining balance in all aspects of our life is much harder, no matter what age we may be!

The Enemies of Balance

Modern life is filled with stressors which threaten to de-rail us from enjoying a life of balance. Do any of these sound familiar? Typical stressors include: 

• Major life changes
• Work pressures
• Relationship difficulties
• Financial problems
• Being too busy
• Children and family demands
• Constant exposure to technology

While a small amount of stress helps us be productive, prolonged stress become overwhelming and has a negative impact on relationships and general wellbeing. We can feel torn between the competing demands on our time. We need to stop. We need to breathe. And we need to assess the choices we are making. Imagine life as a game where you are juggling five balls in the air. These five balls could be named work, family, health, relaxation, and spirit. Work is a rubber ball – if you drop it, it will (most likely) bounce back. However the other four are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be marked, damaged, or even shattered. These four balls are the key to achieving greater balance in life. It’s time to gently release the things – the balls – we are clutching on to so tightly. This means making deliberate choices, so that we are better able to gently release those balls from time to time – and they won’t shatter or break. BETTER CHOICES LEAD TO BETTER BALANCE Here are some ideas to help you achieve better balance: 

• Learn how to disengage from work at the end of the day. This might be by listening to music during your commute, or chatting over a cup of tea with your partner once you arrive home. Put work aside when you are not actually there, so you can better focus on the other parts of your life.
• Turn off those annoying beeps, alarms, chimes and messages on your mobile device. Even better, leave your mobile device in another room so you can be fully present in your home, on your walk, or with your family. Disconnect to reconnect!
• Focus on your body. That knot in your stomach, persistent headache, or other aches or pain is there for reason. What is it trying to say?  The longer you ignore it, the worse it will get. Pain is the body’s way of demanding attention.
• Good quality sleep consolidates memories and stores them while processing emotional experiences. Insufficient sleep leads to an inability to manage moods and emotions.
• Relaxation is a personal construct. It can be playing a game, taking a walk, reading, talking to yourself, or discovering the pleasure of doing nothing. Laughing, unwinding and enjoyment are also means of relaxation.

Balance is not so much thinking of a perfect day where you spend the exact right amount of time at work and at home. Rather, it’s making time for the people and things you value over the course of a week, a month, or a year. Balance is about building buffers into your life, so that the pendulum doesn’t sway too far. That way if you do drop one of those juggling balls – it will have minimal impact.