Is It Finally Time To Find Balance In Your Life? | Your How-To Guide
Goals. Intentions. Resolutions, Action plans. To-do lists. It’s a good thing you’ve got a few days off this Christmas because you’ve got a lot to do. Hope it doesn’t suck!
Not being a New Year’s resolutionist, I resisted writing this post for a bit. In my experience, resolutions mostly fizzle and goal setting is so corporate. Why would I write a post about something that so many people seem to resist?
Then I thought, well, it’s a new decade. 2020 is just around the corner!!! None of us are getting any younger. I hear over and over again that people want more balance in their life and just can’t seem to get it. Often times I hear that from the voice in my head. Maybe we should mark this new decade with a new mindset and a format for successful goal setting to go with it.
Give, Achieve, Receive
So, for this new decade, we want to approach our goal setting with the intention to use it to create balance in our lives. You know, the elusive state of being that feels like you’re giving and achieving and receiving equally in all areas of your life? Have you ever actually experienced that state of being? Me neither. But I’m ready to try. Again. And this time I know it’s going to work because I’ve got a new method and all of you to do it with.
Balance Wheel
To do this, we’re going to create a balance wheel and assess our success in seven areas of our life. Because seven is a good number.
So here we go. First, we’re going to answer the questions in each category and then give ourselves a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 in each area based on our responses. Our rating system has one being very poor and 10 is basically perfect. Here it goes:
Personal/social - How is your relationship with yourself? Do you look after yourself emotionally, are you a good friend to yourself? Do you have some strong connections with others and satisfying social life?
Relationship/family - How is your relationship with your S.O. if you have one, your parents, your siblings, your extended family? Are you satisfied with these? If you don’t have an S.O. do you wish you did? Are you actively looking or have you given up?
Work/career - Are you satisfied with where you are in your career? Do you feel comfortable in your work environment and do you have positive relationships there? Do you feel you’re making a contribution and are generally appreciated?
Mind/Intellect - Are you satisfied with your own growth? Do you prioritize ongoing learning and development? Are there subjects that you want to learn more about and do you have a plan to do so?
Financial - How’s your bank account? Do you have savings? Do you save regularly? Is there any money left at the end of the pay period? Do you have financial goals that you’re working toward?
Spiritual - How much time do you spend in meditation, contemplation, gratitude, or in practices that keep you centered, connected, and at peace?
Physical/mental health/fitness - How is your physical health right now? Any illnesses, nagging pain, or recurring health problems like poor digestion, breakouts, etc? How do you feel about your body? Do you get physical exercise? What about stress, anxiety, depression, does your mental health need some work?
Where are you?
So where did you end up? Anywhere that you scored yourself below eight needs to be addressed. Review your three lowest scores and your answers to the corresponding questions. Which of these do you most need to work on and which are you most willing to work on? Choose anywhere between one and three depending on what you’re motivated to tackle and what you really feel you can work on in the short term.
Now write a SMART goal OR set an intention for each of them.
What’s the difference between a goal and an intention? An intention is a promise to yourself of daily action toward progress. A goal is a plan for a specific achievement.
Intention Setting
To illustrate setting an intention, let’s say that I assessed myself at a seven in spirituality. Let’s say that I meditate regularly and have a gratitude practice, I make sure to be grounded and keep my energy balanced and I work to always be mindful of our interconnectedness. Let’s say that the area I need to work on is surrender. In letting go of my inner control freak and more readily accepting what is and what will be. To be more at the moment and more appreciative of every moment rather than always thinking about the next moment and what I could, should, and better do in that damn moment.
This one needs an intention and my intention is to spend ten minutes at the end of each day reflecting on the opportunities presented to me to surrender that day, how I handled it and what I could have done differently. By doing this, I believe I will become better at identifying the need to surrender as it arises and let go of my need to control.
Smart Goal
To illustrate making a SMART goal, let’s say that I assessed myself at a six for mind/intellect. Let’s say I’ve always wanted to learn Spanish but haven’t yet taken any steps. I’m going to Spain in May 2021 and want to be conversant enough to conduct all my travel-specific conversations in Spanish.
So my goal is to learn an intermediate level of conversational Spanish, as defined by Rocket Language platform, by March 2021.
It just so happens that this isn’t my only goal in the mind/intellect area. I also want to learn how to speed read so I’m going to do the Jim Kwik speed reading course over December and January of this year. This goal will help me to read 50% faster while maintaining reading comprehension so I can learn more in all of my areas of interest.
Now sometimes our goals are bigger and require that we break them down into actionable items. For example, say Jenny wants to improve her gut health. She’s seen several physicians for this issue and they can’t find anything physically wrong so they’ve labelled it “nervous stomach”. Jenny’s goal is to resolve her stomach pain and digestion issues (virtually eliminate) by Dec 31, 2020. This is going to require a series of actions:
Meet with Emily, her certified holistic nutritionist to get a personalized eating plan by January 15, 2020.
Implement a personalized eating plan by January 31, 2020
Research the link between stress, anxiety, the autonomic nervous system, and gut health as recommended by Emily and discuss with Emily for further action plans by February 15, 2020.
Implement recommendations over a thirty day period with the intention of creating new habits to support her goal by March 31, 2020
Review results of the changes she’s made with Emily by April 30, 2020
Implement tweaks to diet as recommended by Emily by May 31, 2020
Monitor and tweak and check-in with Emily - Ongoing
Match Your Approach To The Desired Outcome
So you see, we have several different approaches depending on the type and complexity of the issue you want to address. The idea is that you’ll work toward a more balanced life by focusing goals on the areas that you’ve self-assessed as being out of balance or not where you’d like them to be. You’re increasing your chance of success by selecting what you want to work on and being specific about what you want to achieve and how you’ll get there. You’ve just set yourself up for success.
We’ll call it the 2020 Kick Your Own Ass (With Love) Series.
