Life Balance
What is Life Balance?
The concept of Life Balance refers to how you manage your priorities and your daily life. A highly individual and subjective process, life balance is about finding a healthy and satisfactory balance in your every day schedule and routine that allows you to meet all of the demands and expectations of your life while also ensuring that you are able to take care of yourself and your personal needs.
How do I assess if I have balance in my life?
There are many tools available to assess for life balance; perhaps the easiest is simply to self-reflect.
Reflective Exercise
Sit down with a piece of paper and create a chart or table or list depicting your lifestyle. What do you notice? While reflecting, think about what your personal values are; what is important to you and what makes you happy. Then ask yourself if your daily life is aligned with your values; if not, identify barriers to living your life aligned with your values?
Start the process of creating a more balanced life!
Try using this chart: Simply divide up the circle (like a pie chart) including the areas of your life that consume your time:
Once you are done making the chart. Verify it with the ones that we have.Click Here.Remember that this is not your ideal life; this is an honest illustration of how you spend an average day.
What do you notice about your chart? Are there certain areas that are taking up the majority of the space? Are there certain areas barely being reflected, or not reflected at all? What could you do to create a more even chart (a more balanced life)?
If I feel my life is out of balance, what can I do?
Starting with the process of personal assessment, you can work to create balance in your life. Finding balance in your life is a highly personal and subjective process; each person will have a unique blend of activities and tasks that make up their own balance. A life inventory could be helpful to determine the areas of your life that may need adjustment:
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Ask your self the following:
- Is my home life serene?
- Do I eat regular, healthy meals?
- Do I get enough sleep?
- Do I make time to exercise?
- Do I incorporate self care behaviours into my daily life?
- Do I have time to deal with mail, bills, home repairs, etc?
- Do I keep my appointments?
- Do I see my friends?
- Do the significant people in my life recieve attention when they need it?
- Do I work less than 10 hours in a day? Is my work fullfilling?
- Do I have time to enjoy nature, hobbies or my favourite pass times?
After completing the checklist, think about: What surprised you? What did you notice? What can you do to make changes to the areas where you are not as balanced as you would like to be?
Can Student Support Advisement help me to improve my life balance?
Yes, the resources and materials used in student support advisement can be very helpful in cultivating a sense of balance in your life. The Student Support Advisor can help you to evaluate your current lifestyle and together with you, come up with potential improvements and opportunities for a more balanced life. The benefits of having balance in your life are many and include: lower stress, more free time and an overall higher quality of daily life!
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