Finding Balance: A How-To Guide for Managing Work, Home, and Family

Finding Balance: A How-To Guide for Managing Work, Home, and Family

Life tends to pull us in so many directions. We’re like many strands of string cheese being pulled from the same block by multiple hands. After being picked away at, we can feel like there’s nothing left to us. Suddenly, things we used to enjoy such as family time, projects around the house, and advancing in our careers can start to feel exhausting instead of exhilarating. Coasting through the day-to-day isn’t a quality life. That’s why you need to find balance.

Finding balance is the key to overcoming the stress of juggling work, home, and family. Take a break from being the ringmaster of the circus and become a Zen master of your own universe. Here is a how-to guide for finding balance and managing work, home, and family.

Why Work-Life Balance is Essential

So many people, responsibilities, and chores require your attention every day. This divided attention can make you a jack of all trades and master of none. It’s difficult to put your best self out there because you’re not giving your undivided focus to any one thing.

Not to mention, there’s a physical toll these demands take on you. As much as you love your family and friends, their burdens can become yours. These sentiments only get stronger the closer these people are to your inner circle.

With this added weight on your shoulders, you can experience anything from:

  • Lack of sleep
  • Loss of focus
  • Disinterest in hobbies
  • Anxiety
  • Depression
  • Hostility toward loved ones
  • Decrease in ambition
  • Sexual dysfunction

As you can see, the very things that make up the fabric of your daily routine are also hindering you from carrying out necessary tasks. For instance, stress over work-related problems can cause you sleepless nights. One long-term effect of insomnia is a rise in cortisol. Excess cortisol in the system turns to fat. Unhealthy levels of fat may lead to sexual dysfunction. These occurrences are unpleasurable for both you and your partner. This cause-and-effect scenario can simply be summed up as an unbalanced work-to-life ratio, but may be hurting you and your family.

That is just one of the many scenarios that you can plug into the same formula. Too much of one thing will impede on another. The outcome will always be similar because they are all integral parts of your life. They all cut out a big slice of the pie chart that is your life. Here is how to bring a little more balance around that circle.

How to Balance Work, Home, and Family

We know what you’re thinking. “There’s only 24 hours in a day.” For starters, you should be sleeping for eight of those. Now, don’t freak out that there are only 16 left. There is still plenty of time. Here is how you can find some balance that will help bring purpose, focus, and peace to your routine.

Prioritize Your Goals

Sometimes we think we have more on our plates than we really do. Thoughts just rattle about in our heads over and over again until we complete the tasks. The best way to handle this surmounting stress is to write it all down so you can see the big picture.

Before you do anything, write down things that require your attention at least once per week. We’re talking everything from work to photography class to children to the bowling league to social media. It doesn’t matter how big or small this obligation may feel. Write down anything that calls upon your focus in a given week on a piece of paper.

First, take a look at what you wrote down at the top. The first things that come to your mind mean they’re the ones that are really monopolizing your time because are at the forefront of your mind.

Sometimes, these are good things. Family, fantasy football league, and your awesome job are all excellent priorities to have. However, there can also be negatives on your list. These things can cause anger, lack of focus, and cost money. These are things to think about as you prioritize your goals.

Keep a Schedule

The first step to finding balance is to write down things that require your attention. Now, you have a big picture. However, you likely have some things on your top priorities list that could be kicked to the curb. Let’s help you filter them out.

You have 16 hours in a day. Subtract the hours you have for work and commuting. We’re down to about seven or eight hours. Here is where you start to fill in your extra time. Let’s take dinner, for instance.

Dinnertime is an ideal way to address a number of concerns in your day-to-day. Is it a priority to spend more quality time with your children? Do you want to eat healthier? A solution here may be to cook meals with your children. Obviously, children are generally more picky when it comes to food. However, they’ll feel a sense of ownership if they make it themselves. Experiment with cooking healthy, delicious meals with them. This will help you find a balance between health and spending quality time with your children.

What do you do after dinner? Is that downtime where you watch television or scroll on social media? How many hours during the week do you spend doing this? Sure, we think it’s an ideal way to unwind. However, the LED lights in these products are messing up our circadian rhythm. Therefore, it’s really throwing off our sleep cycles and ruining our productivity.

Instead, try going back to your list of priorities and think about what you can insert into these last few hours of the day. After dinner seems like the ideal time to get in a light yoga flow, read a book, or learn a new language. Instead of polluting our minds with more mindless chatter such as the television, we can give it a bit of peace by accomplishing more of the items at the bottom of our list. You know, the things you’ve been meaning to actually get to!

Look for ‘Me Time’ Opportunities

Now that you have a schedule, let’s slice into that pie a little more. We’re about to carve the most important piece, the “Me” slice. Listen, you want to be everything to everyone. However, if you’re not taking care of yourself, you’re not helping anyone at all. No one is getting the best version of you. The only way to achieve that is to take care of yourself.

Look at your work schedule. This time of the day is probably the most demanding for you. So, see where you can really tighten up your productivity. Look for ways to make tasks more efficient. Schedule appointments sooner so you can get out earlier. Use all of your sick time. Do whatever you can to get out of the office without compromising your job. It is in these moments where you can claim back some of your sanity.

With your extra time, do you. If you want to nap, go ahead. However, we also encourage you to think about hobbies. Try to learn how to dance, get back into drawing, or go on a vacation. Serving others isn’t your only purpose in this world. However, if you feel like it is, then take the extra time to volunteer.

Focus your energy on helping others outside of your ecosystem. Your inner circle can sometimes take you for granted, so helping a new set of faces can give you a sense of reward that you may be missing.

Take Care of Your Health

Providing for your loved ones and crushing it at work makes you feel good. However, you need to live your life for yourself. It’s like when the oxygen masks fall in an airplane and you have to help yourself before you can help your child. When you are in poor health, you aren’t giving your fullest potential to your loved ones, your chores around the house, or your responsibilities at work.

Make sure you remain on top of your annual physicals. Always be honest with your doctor and be sure to tell them about any changes to your routine.

You should also consider using all-natural supplements. They are a great way to help bring balance to a system that’s always on the go. All-natural supplements provide our bodies with the energy and nutrients that we’re lacking when we aren’t able to stop to have a good meal or get proper amounts of sleep.

Here is a list of supplements for a variety of needs:

Supplementing with all-natural botanical ingredients is a non-habit forming way to lend support to your system. After all, even a balance beam needs a foundation. Get that help naturally with Tranquility Labs supplements.

How do you manage being pulled every which way? Let us know your tricks for finding balance in the comments below!

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