Do you feel like your life balance is all over the place and find it increasingly more difficult to juggle the demands of running your own business while keeping up with your various other responsibilities?
You’re overloaded with so much going on and too many tasks that there are never enough hours in the day to get it all done.
On the whole, your life seems to be racing at 100 miles per hour between your business, the house, your family and other projects.
Perhaps awhile back you signed up for a further professional development qualification like a Masters degree or a diploma. But you’ve struggled to find time to work on it consistently, so you’re not progressing at the pace you were hoping to and it’s just dragging on.
Maybe you keep skipping going to your favourite workout class because something else usually comes up or you just don’t have the energy for it.
I see this time and time again. Most of my clients who are driven, smart business owners have gone through similar scenarios. By the time they come to me, they are exhausted, on the verge of burnout and asking:
“How can I manage it all while still growing and developing my business?”
And while everyone’s circumstances and challenges are different, there is a simple core strategy that can be tailored to your particular needs, reducing stress and overwhelm, so you can achieve more of what’s important to you.
This simple, timeless and effective strategy is the foundation of what has helped my clients gain more balance in their life and create time for what matters to them most.
So today, I am pulling the curtains and revealing the exact steps that we go through with my one-to-one clients, so that you can, too, create a balanced life you love.
Let’s dig in!
STEP 1: TAKE STOCK
Start taking stock by assessing where you are in your life right now.
- What exactly is troubling you?
- What are your key challenges?
- What’s great about your life?
- What would you like to be different?
Spending some time to reflect on your life and what’s going on for you at the moment grounds you and brings greater awareness about what’s working, what’s not and on what you need to focus. This step is critical to making an effective and lasting change especially in moments of overwhelm and confusion when we can’t see the wood for the trees.
STEP 2: GAIN CLARITY
Before you can define what a successful, balanced life means to you, you have to get clear on what’s truly important to you.
While at first, this sounds simple and perhaps obvious, most people don’t know exactly how to go on about gaining the clarity they need so that they can make the necessary changes to transform their lives.
This essential step is what has created that crucial, pivotal moment for most of my clients.
There are two aspects to defining success to enable you to lead a fulfilling and balanced life.
The first one is about understanding the priorities in your life. Using the Wheel of Priorities, identify the key areas that are important to you right now.
You can find a detailed explanation about how to complete this exercise in the 10 Proven Ways to Successful Life Balance – get your FREE copy here.
The second aspect is about understanding your values. Values are something I had never consciously considered before I did my coaching training. It was a massive eye-opener for me, and it’s been game-changing not just for me but also for many of my clients.
Values are about your judgement about what’s important in life to you. Your core values drive your motivation, influence your thoughts and your behaviour, and they determine your actions as well as your inaction.
So knowing your values helps you understand what drives you, what you enjoy, what inspires you and what you’d like more of and hence, they’re instrumental for creating a balanced life you love.
STEP 3: DEFINE SUCCESS
With a widespread definition of ‘success’ typically expressed in financial terms and belongings like flashy cars, multiple homes, private jets, celebrity status, far too many people end up feeling inadequate and unhappy with their lives.
As someone who spent over 13 years in Investment Banking and Wealth Management working with affluent and high net worth clients, I would argue that there is so much more to WEALTH than purely your financial state.
To shape a successful, balanced life you love, create your own definition of success that is meaningful to you based on your core values and your top three priorities.
When life feels great, it’s usually because the things you do and the way you act are in alignment with your core values and life priorities. And on the flip side, it feels bleak when there is a misalignment.
STEP 4: FREE YOURSELF UP
Now, you’re clear on what you want more in your life; you’re probably wondering:
“But how I do I fit all this in when I already have an overflowing plate with everything that I’ve got going on?!”
So, the next important step is to free up headspace, time and energy for what’s important to you.
Looking at what’s happening in your business and personal life right now, what could you …
- Stop
- Do less of
- Automate
- Outsource
- Delegate
- Continue
- Do more of
- Start
… to ultimately free yourself up and create more freedom and what you truly want in your life.
You don’t have to execute all of the above ideas. The brainstorming part of this step aims to show you a variety of options that you may not have considered previously and demonstrate to you what’s possible.
Now it’s time for you to evaluate your options and decide where to begin. You can use the following questions to help you select your starting point.
- What can I implement that will make the biggest difference to me?
- What’s the easiest step for me to act on?
- Which option excites me the most?
STEP 5: CREATE A PLAN
I often see entrepreneurs create endless to-do lists without seeing how feasible it is to achieve it all in their desired time-frame. And then, they find themselves frustrated and disappointed that they didn’t get it all done.
This is why I strongly recommend using a calendar and allocating a reasonable, realistic amount of time for given tasks or activities which will show you what you can fit in a day.
Using the previous steps and focusing on the top three areas of priority in your life, create a plan of action with the steps that you’re going to take and when, so you can start leading the life you want.
The more specific and clear you’re, the easier it is to implement. So, start with the details of what you will you commit to doing
- What
- How
- When
- For how long
Plot it in your diary and see how it all fits in. Does something need to be removed or scheduled for another day or week?
STEP 6: STAY ON TRACK
Having an excellent plan in place is not the same as following through with it. We’ve all experienced things popping up in our lives and throwing us off course. So, it’s essential to have a back-up plan and at least some ideas, in advance, about what you can do if something does come up.
Here is what I ask my clients:
- What could derail you?
- How will you cope with such a situation?
A bonus tip from me is to have empty blocks of time in your diary to allow for dealing the unexpected.
These are the six steps that I take my clients through. I’d love to hear what will you create time for in your life – share in the comments below.
And if you’ve had enough of struggling on your own and want hands-on personalised one-to-one support, I’d love to help you cut through the overwhelm and jump-start your way to a successful, balanced life.
I created a fantastic programme so you can fast-track your journey to feeling fulfilled doing the work you’re passionate about AND having time to enjoy life again.
Photo Credit: Aziz Acharki – Unsplash
