In general, most of us have many common aspects that can be broken down in to just a few general areas.
The Wheel of Life
Usually these include things like;
- Love and Family
- Friends and connection
- Career/Business/Education
- Finances/Money
- Home and surrounds
- Community and contribution
- Fitness and Wellbeing
- Fun and Adventure
- Spirituality
When you have balance in each sector life feels free and easy, but for most people the scales are weighted out of proportion and life feels chaotic and out of control.
Burnout, depression, anxiety and a loss of purpose in life are an increasing result of this lack of balance and it derives increasingly from a lack of awareness of how we are spending our time. Caught up in the busy rush of each day, time flies by and passes unacknowledged. Multiple distractions vie for the precious minutes each day and before you know it the sun is setting on yet another 24 hours gone from your life.
Do you find yourself saying “maybe tomorrow?” or “I wish I had time.”
So how do you find enough time to give everything that matters most the attention and time it so rightly deserves?
Doing a quick audit of the main sector of your life is a good place to start. There are many Wheel of Life tools that provide a rapid assessment of what is working for you and what needs more focus in your life. By knowing where we currently score in each area, we can decide to make changes around each part that needs improvement and bring back some of the life balance we are so desperately lacking.
Balance isn’t always equal
All of us are given the same number of hours, minutes and seconds in a day, week, month and year. So how do some people manage to find time for everything they need to do and still have enough hours to add in the things that make life fun and create extraordinary moments?
Once you understand where you are not happy in life, you can begin to plan your time to allow these things to be a higher priority. When you first do your audit, you may find that the areas that are lacking need more time and attention until they are back into flow. Once they are on track, it takes less time to maintain the status quo, thereby freeing up added time for other areas.
In life we also have important projects or events that fit into a particular sector. These may seem to take up much of our time and effort while we are working on them. The idea here is not to take away necessary time that delays the progress or completion, but instead to use super focussed time and effort in chunks, but ensure at intervals and at the end, there is blocks of time for the things you neglected while you were achieving the deadline.
Life is not a linear line drawn straight through with regular set points for everything we need and want to succeed at in our time on earth. It is more like a messy scribbled drawing with intermittent point at which we achieve our goals. When there is awareness and flexibility of how our time is spent, we get to choose to do what matters most in each moment.