Balanced?
3 Ways to Boost Balance in 2024
A tightrope walker is rarely balanced on the tightrope. Instead, she spends her energy balancing. Finding balance is an active process (hence the -ing as a suffix).
Understanding Balance in Family Life
Balance in family life is similar. Few families experience extended periods of balance. Rather, as circumstances shift, effective families spend their energy balancing.
A curse of living in a maximising, optimising world is the fact that it is anti-thetical to finding balance. It’s hard to be balanced when we’re in an all-out sprint to be more, do more, and have more.
Establishing a Supportive Environment
If your life feels out of balance, don’t beat yourself up. Don’t try to optimise. Recognise that balancing is a process.
The Three Basic Psychological Needs
Start small. Establish an environment that supports your three basic psychological needs: relatedness, competence, and autonomy.
By increasing your responsibility level, you automatically take care of competence. The beginnings of a structure do this. And you also increase your feeling of autonomy. Making that intentional choice to live a more integrated life satisfies that.
Practical Strategies for Daily Balance
Let’s say mornings are a mess—unbalanced and unproductive. Try the following:
- Establish a structure.
- Ensure time for connection (seeing, hearing, and valuing others—and receiving that from them).
- Explore how to create buy-in with your family.
If you have an unbalanced mess one morning, try again the next. Aim to never have two bad days in a row.
Once you have established better balance for your mornings, move to the next area of your life that feels unbalanced (like meal prep, admin, yard work, etc.).
Stronger relationships help you feel more involved and connected.
Effective structures create competence and frameworks to help you function.
Better decisions build a stronger sense of autonomy.
And consistency helps you feel more balanced.
Ready to take the first step towards a more balanced family life? Start implementing these strategies today and watch how small changes can lead to significant improvements in your daily routines and relationships. Share your experiences in the comments below!
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