Financial Blog

Finding balance in life is a very difficult thing. What exactly is it? What does it look like? What does it feel like? With countless click-bait articles floating around our news feeds telling us what we need to do to be happy, it’s important to get back to the basics.

Balance in your life is unique to you. No one else can say that your life should be 50% work, 30% relationships, 10% play, 7% chores, and 3% staring blankly at the ceiling pondering the mysteries of the universe. What might be balanced for one person may not be balanced for another.

Trying to force your life to look like someone else’s in the pursuit of balance can be extremely damaging. If an introvert tried to copy an extrovert’s lifestyle, he’d probably become a reclusive monk just to recover from the trauma of dealing with so many people.

If you don’t know what energizes or drains you, what you hate or what you love, how are you supposed to achieve something as elusive as work-life balance?

In order to tailor-fit the things in your life, you need to know your measurements. How much sleep do you need to feel rested? How much food do you need to feel satisfied? What are the things that can bring your time at the office from merely tolerable to enjoyable?

We can’t really know ourselves if we don’t put ourselves in situations we haven’t been before. How do you know you don’t like parties if you’ve never been to one? How do you know you hate Maroon 5 if you’ve never listened to one of their albums?

A lot of times we rely on a purely theoretical idea of who we are and what we like. Other times we are just biased towards doing what we’ve always done before. Don’t be trapped by how you think life is. Go and experience it for yourself.

Adjusting is the most important thing you need to learn in order to find a bit of balance in your life.

If you’re hungry, usually, you try to find something to eat. When you’re thirsty, you look for water. When work stresses you out, find ways to deal with that stress.

Life is always in flux, and we need to learn to adjust and adapt to it. Maybe last year your stress relief was going to see movies with your friends every week, but this year you can’t afford to do that. Find something else you can do.

There’s nothing that says you have to do the same thing over and over again. As they say, the world is your oyster. When you feel like you’ve hit a nice rhythm in life, stick with it. But life will change, so be ready to change with it.