Why you should aspire to live a balanced life

99-SECOND READ

“Balance is not something you find, it’s something you create.” 

Jana Kingsford

What is a balanced life?

A well-balanced life means having enough of what you need in all the important areas of your life, which allows you to feel happy, healthy and fulfilled.



Here’s a reminder of the 10 important areas of life:

• Family
• Work & career
• Wealth & security
• Creative expression
• Friends & socialising
• Home & environment
• Romantic relationships
• Mental & physical health
• Activities, experiences and adventures
• Personal development, purpose & meaning

Key Points

1. Exactly what you require from each of these areas depends on your personality, priorities and values. E.g. People need very different levels of creativity, socialisation or wealth to feel satisfied.
2. Your needs will change over the course of your life. E.g. As your career develops, you may want more meaning / purpose from it, or how much you want to socialise may change as you get older, particularly if you start a family.
3. You can’t compensate for a problem in one area by focusing more on another. E.g. If you are bored or unfulfilled by your career, focusing on fun activities or holidays won’t help you feel better.
4. Achieving balance requires some consistency. Being on and off or up and down in any area will usually leave you feeling dissatisfied or frustrated. E.g. Exercising or dieting irregularly ultimately won’t help you feel good about your health.
5. Focusing excessively on one area usually creates a negative impact on other areas, which is where balance comes in. We simply have a finite amount of time and energy to spend. Sometimes it’s necessary to concentrate on one area of your life in order to achieve a goal, but if this continues for extended periods of time, it’s likely to throw the others off course and have a negative effect on how you feel.

Aspiring to live a more balanced life

Although life is never perfect and there are always things that we can’t control – we can create more balance in our life. Steadily making positive changes, however small, accumulate to make a big impact on how happy, healthy and fulfilled we feel.

Ultimately cultivating a well-balanced life mean’s making the most of life, which might just be the ultimate goal?

Incidentally, the act of working to improve areas of your life and create more balance feeds into personal development, purpose and meaning, so it’s fulfilling in itself.

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