Back to Balance

Welcome to 2013 – Lucky 13! This year holds a lot of hope and inspiration. It is a year where people are more aware of finding a life of purpose and meaningful connection. It is all about actively creating the life we want to live.

Raise your hand if you want to create more balance and happiness in your life. Come on – don’t be shy! Declaring your intent is an important step in the process. Go on…say it – “I choose to create more balance and happiness in my life.”

Good for you! You are now truly off to the races. But as you know from my previous posts, vision without action is going to get you nowhere. So let’s dive in and talk about what action to take to get you to where you want to go.

In “Step One – Align Priorities with Time,” we talked about defining your top three priorities and dispelled the myth that “you do not have time.” Let’s now talk about the next step – developing a practice to achieve sustainable action.

In the workplace we are “Outlook Masters”, meaning, we can tell anyone what day and time we regularly meet with our supervisor, when our budget review meeting is and when our conferences and planning sessions are. Some of these commitments are weekly, some are monthly, some quarterly and a handful are annual. We schedule all of these things into our calendars and attend to these commitments regularily 85% of the time. The other 15% of the time when there is a conflict, we actively re-schedule and maintain the commitment.

We have a practice that we understand and feel very comfortable with in the workplace and will likely all agree that scheduling these commitments into our calendar has set us up for a successful employment relationship. But can you tell me when your next appointment with your family is? You cannot? But you ranked them as your number one priority. Of course you spend time together on a daily or weekly basis, but the key to “meaningful connection” is to have scheduled time together to actually “do stuff” together.

The great news is…it’s easy. We do not have to reinvent the wheel. We just have to apply the system we have mastered in the workplace to the other relationships in our lives.  If you are super keen, you can do this with all of the pieces of the “life pie” – all of your relationships, but to get started, focus on doing it with your top three priorities AND if you forgot to put yourself as one of your top three priorities you need to add this highly critical relationship! You know the one – with the person in the mirror every morning and every night when you brush your teeth.

Let’s look at an example – If your top three priorities are your family, your partner and your friends pull out your calendar and actively block off times to spend with these people in your life. The best way to do this is at the same time every day or every month and set it up as a re-occurring meeting. This means that you are committing to spending the same, reoccurring time to nurture this priority relationship in your life, just like you meet regularly with your boss; except I am guessing your boss is not on your list of your top three priorities!

Go beyond the day to day, “well every Thursday night I watch Grey’s Anatomy with my partner” and create new and meaningful experiences. The important thing here is quality not quantity so you do not have to schedule weekly meetings for most things. Think monthly or bi-monthly and aim for quality time together with your priorities. This is likely not the only time you will spend with these key people or relationships in your life, but this is time set aside to grow or nurture the relationship.

Think of it like a plant. You may see your plant sitting in your kitchen every day; however, you take extra time every week or two weeks to water it and prune it. This ensures the plant will grow and live on. Relationships are similar.

Join me every two weeks this year as we continue down this path and talk about specific relationships in your life-pie and some ideas on how to schedule some meaningful time to grow your connections, increase your feeling of balance and lead you to a happier place.