After creating the ideal vision for your lifestyle, it’s important to consider the importance of balance. You can achieve your dreams and still manage to make a mess out of your life if you’re not careful.

Unless you’ve intentionally put your life in balance, it’s unbalanced. Having balance among the various parts of your life is necessary for happiness and well-rounded success. Focus on the areas of your life that you would consider low-rated.

If your life is out of balance, you could:

• • Be financially successful at the expense of your social life.
  • Be successful at your career at the expense of your relationships.
  • Be successful at your spiritual interests at the expense of your career.

Without balance, you’ll be suffering in at least one aspect of your life.

This can be tricky. We live in a society that worships those that have accomplished amazing things, often at great expense. While it’s easy to admire these people, many of them are very unhappy. By giving too much attention to any single area of your life, other parts of your life will suffer.

 

Set Goals That Increase the Level of Balance in Your Life

After assessing your life, you should have a good idea of where your weaknesses lie. Time is a limited resource, so ensure that you’re spending it on the areas of your life that will provide the greatest returns.  Seek balance and contentment will follow.

You can have multiple goals covering several areas of your life, but divvy up your time intelligently.

Find balance by choosing your goals intelligently:

1. Create one goal for each area of your life. You can create your own categories, but limit the number to 6-8. Set bigger goals in the areas of your life that are lagging or are the most disagreeable to you.
   • It’s not a bad idea to rate each part of your life on a 1-10 scale. Set smaller goals in the higher-rated areas and more significant goals in the lower-rated areas.
   • Choose goals that can be achieved within 12 months and are measurable. Being “healthy” isn’t a suitable goal. “Weigh 150 lbs. or less” is suitable.
   • Be bold. You can accomplish much more in a year than you currently believe.
2. Determine the new habits you need to develop for each goal. While we enjoy the stories of those that are successful, the truth is that path to success is quite boring. Losing 50 lbs. is exciting, but 300 days of eating well, exercising, and avoiding snacks isn’t that thrilling. But that’s exactly what success is: performing the right habits over an extended period of time.
   • Make a list of at least 10 habits that will ensure your success.
   • Now choose the three habits that will make the biggest difference. Forget about the rest.
3. Determine the old habits you need to drop. Habits can make your goals easier or more challenging to achieve. Identify your current habits that are obstacles to your success.
   • Those habits might be direct obstacles, such as wasting money or eating too much chocolate. Others can be subtler, such as procrastinating, wasting time, or having a negative attitude.

Excess and happiness aren’t well correlated. A balanced life is enjoyable and minimizes the low spots. Having enough money, love, friends, and health is preferable to having an excess in three of them and a lack in the other. Create a solid foundation before attempting to achieve something outrageous.

Meeting any goal requires resources, even if the only resource you require is time. When you have the proper resources in place, you have what you need to be successful. Gathering your resources is the topic of the next lesson.

Get Started on the Tips in This Lesson:

Determine the lowest-rated area in your life. This is the area of your life that seems to be behind the others.

• • Create one goal for that area of your life.
  • Create one habit that will help you to reach that goal.
  • Make the habit a true habit, where you do it daily without forcing yourself.

 

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I Balance My Personal And Professional Life