Life needs balance

Have you noticed that in order to have a rainbow first you must have rain?
 
In order to keep one species alive, another species has to give up something of itself. In the case of a lion - the other animal has to die. In the case of a flower, it allows itself to be stomped on by the bumblebee's feet - because it knows that the bumblebee can help it propogate, by attaching pollen to its feet. The bee gets something in return of course, he/she gets a nice life sustaining drink.
 
Life is balance, without one you can't have the other.
 
And so it is with us - supposedly THE "top dog" on the planet. Are our lives in balance? Do we give as much as we receive?
 
Much is said of work life balance. But what does it mean?

I feel that it means - when you are at work - then that is what you should be doing. When you are at home, you should be with your friends and family. Unfortunately, both impact of the other - usually in a negative way. You take work home so your family time suffers. Your kids become sick and you are forced to work from home or take time off to visit the doctors. 

We are all given 24 hours in a day, yet the balance is usually way off. Take a nice big sheet of paper - and colour in the amount of space you are usually at work, then block out the time you spend getting ready and travelling to and from work. Then block out the time you actually spend in bed (hint most adults need between 7 and 9 hours sleep per night). Watch a movie, do some exercise - then block out the hours...get creative, use some coloured pens....write big letters. What's left?
 
The answer is probably not very much.
 
Looking at your drawing of your life today - would you say that your life is "balanced"? Probably not - if you are anything like me.
 
We all need some "down time" but we need to make sure that our lives are in balance. And you determine that by deciding what is really important to you.

• Are you working and studying?
• Are you working and raising a family?
• I was working full time, studying and pregnant with my first child - my life was definitely not in balance.

Do you spend every day eating too much? At the end of the day if you have eaten too much you either need to do some exercise or you will put on weight. As I said - Life is all about finding the right balance.
 
Do the colouring exercise a few days in a row - get a feel for how your life is at the moment - then take some time and figure out where your life is out of balance, and you can start to take the steps to correct it.