DO YOU BELIEVE you deserve to have it all? Successful career, happy relationship, great family life? Now hold on a minute, do you think you can have your cake and eat it?
I believe you can, I believe that with the adoption of some positive habits and the right attitude we all have the ability to create our lives the way we want. But we not only have the ability, we also have the responsibility.
Your happiness and success is in your hands, stop waiting for others to make you happy. Don’t wait for the government to leave more money in your pay packet or your partner to bring you flowers; plant your own garden, make your own success, create your own happiness.
Your happiness and success will be determined by one thing only and that is the way your brain processes the world around you. Do you believe anything is possible?
As Qui Gon Ginn said in Starwars: “Your focus determines your reality”.
If that is the case, what are you focusing on? Success, abundance and happiness, or are your thoughts more of debt, lack, and self-pity?
If you want a successful work-life balance, step one is to take responsibility.
It is widely accepted that goal setting is a powerful process, one that can help you to excel in everything you do. It provides focus, motivation and direction. Set your goals and decide what needs to happen for you to have a balanced happy life.
If you don’t know what you want, how will you know when you have it? Set your goals, write them down and work towards them. Design your own life or someone else will design it for you.
Understanding your goals and priorities makes it easier to say no to the things that aren’t in alignment with your ambitions and aspirations.
Try not take on too much and before you decide to do more, always ask yourself this question: “If I say yes to this, what am I saying no to?”
One of the biggest complaints people have is that they don’t have enough time. They don’t have time for exercise or family. In my experience this is rarely the case. More often than not there is time, but bad choices are being made with the time available.
How much time do you spend browsing Facebook? Do you sleep more hours than you need? Do you watch mindless soaps? There is always time that can be used more efficiently or creatively.
Another big excuse is tiredness. I’m too tired in the evening to exercise, too stressed out to relax with my partner or too burnt out to play with my kids. Exercise creates energy, promotes well-being and also helps you become more focused and productive.
If you don’t already do it, get out and exercise. It doesn’t have to be running or the gym, you could try a dance class, a team sport, or a simple walk in the park. Get up an hour earlier in the morning to exercise. Your whole life will be more successful and happier.
Create the space in your life for the right things. Rid your home and life of unnecessary clutter. Removing unnecessary objects from your life can help to create a greater sense of calmness and control. It also means you have less stuff to organise, clean and sort every day giving you more time to spend on more important things.
When you have done the decluttering, organise what is left over. Organising your world will not only help you to become more focused and productive at work, it will also help you to reduce your stress and anxiety and give you the ability to focus on the right things at the right time.
Schedule your week in advance; create a system for managing your tasks, your email and your family time. The more you organise, the more in control of your life you will be.
Taking control of your life and your work life is easy, decide what you want and little by little make changes in order to achieve it. Even a one per cent improvement each day can add up to be a lot of positive change over a year and give you a work-life balance that you truly deserve.
Ciara Conlon is a Productivity Coach and author of Chaos to Control a practical guide to getting things done. She helps busy professionals save time and get productive. If you would like more help in controlling the email mountain, check out her eBook Email Zen, Freedom from Email Overload.
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