By Diane Lang

  1. Career Vs. Job- do what you love. Imagine you have a job where you work as least 40 hours a week then add an hour commute each way, that’s a lot of time to spend doing something you don’t like. If your parent then you have 2 jobs. Parenting is a 24 hours, 7 days a week, no holidays or vacation time job. So, you better like your job outside of the home or it will make a very stressful, unbalanced and unhappy life.

The happiest/balanced people will tell you they have a Career. They  enjoy going to work because it’s their passion. The first step you need to take to create a balanced life is find out your passions/strengths. Take a personality test if you need to and ask yourself some questions.
1. When you were a child what did you love to do?
2. If money wasn’t an option what would you love to do?
3. What causes flow? Flow is when time stands still, when your so involved in your activity that you don’t even notice what is going on around you?  

2. Personal/Professional growth - to remain balanced we need a mix of both professional and personal development. The happiest people are always growing and learning in both areas of their lives. If we stop growing both professionally and personally we becomes stale and stagnate which can lead to depression..  

3. Are your basic needs met? You won’t find any balance if your not taking care of yourself. This involves taking care of your basics such as: sleep, eating healthy, exercise, etc.

The other part is self- care - we usually feel unbalanced because we give a 100% to our work and then a 100% at home to our family but what about ourselves.
For me, self-care is a necessity, I schedule in “Me” time. I schedule in daily activities that will be two fold. I will be putting myself first and also doing things that cause happiness.


This includes: Gratitude checks (morning and night), exercise, reading, etc.
Write a list of activities that you love to do that involve your strengths/passions. Then in your daily calendar schedule yourself in. What keeps me motivated to add self-care is my child. A positive parenting tip - kids are visual learners. Telling my daughter she needs to take care of herself is one thing but showing her is even better. When my daughter see’s me exercising, reading a book, going out with friends, etc. I’m showing her respect for one self and how to be happy.  

4. Visualize what your balanced life would look like? I have clients come to me and say that their lives are unbalanced. When I say what would make your life better and more balanced, they aren’t sure. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in the feelings of being overwhelmed, stressed out and tired that we forget to focus on what we want. What kind of life do you want? Do you need more vacation time? Time with your family? A different job? You can’t make changes till you know what they are.  

5. Control - most of us spend a lot of time on what we CAN’T control and all that does is take up a lot time and negative energy. We can’t control anyone but ourselves. Write a list of everything you can and can’t control. The list with everything you CAN’T control, rip up. If you can’t control it, let it go. Take the list of everything you can control and ask yourself this question: What can I do about it now? What changes can I make?  

6. A lot of times we feel unbalanced but really we aren’t happy in our lives. So, take some time to be honest with yourself. What are you feeling? I have seen clients pre-occupy themselves with a lot of “Stuff” that they felt unbalanced and overwhelmed but after a lot of  thinking they realized they were filled up with “filled” activities. They would keep busy but it wasn’t anything important. They were avoiding their real feelings.  

7. Realistic - be realistic I haven’t meet anyone who has a perfectly balanced, happy life. We will have bad days, days we are rushing and feel stressed out. When this happen remember, it’s only TEMPORARY. We won’t feel this forever. Odds are you will be over in a few hours. It’s ok to feel stressed out sometimes. There is also good stress. Good stress motivates you to move forward and be the best you can be. So, don’t always be turned off by stress.  

For more information please visit my website: www.dlcounseling.com or e-mail Diane at Lifeline36@aol.com