Before 2014, I wasn’t taking care of myself. I was too busy at work, couldn’t sleep properly, had no hobby, and was constantly under a lot of stress and needed alcohol to relax and release the stress. I believe all these lead to my depression. My life was totally out of balance.
I’m sure many of you feel the same as I did and know that it’s important to keep a balanced life; but how many of us do it?
A balanced life means considering all aspects of your life: relationships, work, fitness and health, and emotional well-being. It not only has immediate but also long-term effects on our health and well-being. So, here I would like to share with you some suggestions on how to keep a balanced life.
- Create Positive Family Relationships
- Strong and healthy relationships are the foundation for true happiness, security, and support. A healthy relationship requires a balance of togetherness and separateness. Closeness and maintaining your own sense of identity and independence are both important.
- Take Control and Said No
- Learning to say no is an important step in safeguarding your mental and physical health. Figure out your priority and learn to say no to the things you don’t want or don’t have to do.
- Learn to Slow Down
- Life can get busy, and we sometimes struggle to keep pace. While being on the go constantly might make us feel productive and important, it can also make us incredibly stressed out too. Learn to slow down to reduce stress and appreciate life.
- Schedule Time to Rest
- Rest is any behavior that can increase your physical and mental well-being. Examples are: Going for a walk, deep breathing, or taking a short nap. Regardless of how you choose to rest, taking even 5 minutes of your day from work can help you get back in balance.
- Learn to Manage Stress
- Stress is not always bad. It can help you perform under pressure and motivate you to do your best. But chronic stress, which is constant and persists over an extended period can negatively affect our health. Deep breathing and/or meditation are good strategies to manage stress. Both give you a sense of calm, peace, and balance that can benefit your emotional well-being and overall health.
- Set Boundaries
- Setting and maintaining healthy boundaries can help you to avoid resentment, disappointment, and anger that build up when limits have been pushed.
- Taking Care of Your Physical Self
- Sleep, nutrition, and exercise play a huge role in our mental health and well-being. To live a well-balanced life, get enough sleep, eat a well-balanced diet, and get physical exercise into your routine.
- Do Something Creative
- With everything going on in our lives, it’s common to neglect our creativity. Engaging in creative behaviors is important in improving our brain function, mental health, and physical health.
Final Thoughts
There is more to life than the daily stressors that create life imbalance and affect our health and well-being. Start taking steps now to bring balance to your life by implementing some if not all of what I suggested.
Taking care of owns self is not a simple task when you are in a high stressed job. Taking steps to start the process never too late and is key.
Learn to say no is great but the receiver can take it differently and feel rejected. Perhaps there is a better way to learn to turn things down.
Thought I share my opinion
Regarding taking care of youself:
If you don’t take crae of yourself, you will have other physical symptom of stress, unhappiness, and mental health.
Regarding learning to sya no:
Think of it this way -If saying no to others make you feel guilty, bad, and uncomfortable, you may be taking unhealthy responsibility for othes. My suggestion is to learn to say no (kindly) and then let go.
If you can follow five out of the eight points you are doing all right (I believe). Otherwise, you are creating a different kind of stress for yourself.
Hey, my thought is that if you have learnt to manage stress successfully(Point 5), you must have overcome / conquered the other 7 points in one way or the other.
It means manage stress is one of the suggestions of the eight that you can take to balance our life.
You are absolutely right, we often let the stressors in life take over and forget to take care of ourselves. Saying no is setting boundaries that others may feel negatively about but I think of it as saying yes to yourself. Our culture puts such a high emphasis on collective values that there’s guilt with saying no. However, I believe we need to be able to help ourselves before we able to help others. In order for me to be my best self for me and for those who are important to me, I need to create space for that. That means I must say no sometimes rather than trying to appease everyone.
You inspire me to strive for better balance in my life!
Well said! Thank you so much.