Well-being - the juggling act of work life balance

Last night I read this quotation -

"Take a note of the balls you are juggling. As you keep your work, health, family, friends, and spirit in the air remember that work is a rubber ball and will bounce back if you drop it. All the rest are made of glass; drop one of them and it will be irrevocably scuffed, tarnished or even smashed."   John Briggs

Well-being is achieved by balancing all the activities in your life and this often seems like a juggling act of the many competing demands. In order to make this balancing act easier to achieve I believe that we need to create a peaceful space in our lives so that we can see clearly what we are doing. Without the perspective that comes from being a calm centre in a vortex of activity we can become swept along and even overwhelmed by the many requests for a bit of us. Here are some hints that I have found helpful for creating such a perspective.

At least three hours a week should be spent doing something you love doing. Three hours isn't much! But we often find it difficult to make space for the calming things that refresh our souls. It should not be related to work. A woman I know said she only considered an activity as truly relaxing if she could do it without wearing makeup! I don't know about that! We each have to be our own judge as to if an activity is truly relaxing. 


This three hours a week could be fifteen minutes a day of active relaxation - listening to music or doing yoga or knitting perhaps. Watching TV does not count. This is passive relaxation.


It could be broken down further by having mini breaks. It has been suggested that we should spend five minutes of every hour having a five minute break for pleasure. Five minutes in every hour of the day doing something that refreshes and renews you to be much more awake and productive in the other 55 minutes of every hour. That five minutes might only be spent having a cup of tea or answering a personal email or having a stretch. It might even be closing your eyes and having a daydream for a couple of minutes. 


Once we have built a proper regime to relax we can begin not feel overwhelmed by the range of tasks that are on our often manic to-do lists. We can also recognise more readily the relative importance of the various balls we are juggling in the air. And we will begin to appreciate which can be dropped and which are really precious and should be the last to be squeezed out by anything!