There has always been quite a bit of buzz in the personal development industry about “finding life balance”. It seems that everyone is seeking this “life balance”…and more importantly wondering how to get it.

Life balance means different things to different people – for some it may mean a feeling of organization, for some it is a sense of freedom, for others it may be emotional serenity. How do you define life balance? This is the most important question.

The first thing that you must remember is that balance is a state of alignment – energy alignment, emotional alignment. It is the state of equilibrium that is achieved when your emotional resonance is in alignment with what you are seeking to create, desire, and focus upon.

For example – if it is your desire to create pleasant and joyful relationships with your children, you would not experience balance if your focus is on everything you dislike about their actions. To experience balance, you would need to line up your thoughts and emotions with your desire, versus your lack of it. What do you love and appreciate about them? Thoughts of ease versus thoughts of resistance – the place to be.

Another example – If you desire more in your life than you think that you can achieve…you are out of balance! You must take the emotional journey to line up your thoughts and emotions with what you desire in life. If you desire a million dollar home, the you must do the emotional and energetic work to be alignment…you need to redirect your thoughts, emotions, focus, to be in alignment with this desire. Replace thoughts with negativity with perhaps the thought that “anything is possible”!

One more – And I will speak directly to money because it is such a prevalent “issue” when it comes to creating. But imagine for a moment the affects of being out of balance with money…desiring more money in your life that you are allowing to flow into your experience. Gets a little uncomfortable doesn’t it? So, sense for a moment how it might feel to be in alignment with the amount of money that you would like to create…to love money, to appreciate it, to give up negative beliefs about it. Shifts you to a different place doesn’t it? This is the place of balance.

So, let’s talk a little more about how to create life balance….here are a few tips from this perspective.

1. Keep your desires loud and clear. Ask yourself, are my signals muddied by thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that are not in support of where are I want to go? Do I have negative resonance in my creation field? If the answer is yes, then keep reaching for thoughts and emotions that support the joy of your desires.

2. Balance the emotional journey with the action journey. How you feel is much more important that what you do. What you visualize, what you expect, what you hope for, what you get passionate about is your emotional journey. What you do is important – but make sure you are taking “inspired action” …which of course was brought forth from such a juicy emotional journey!

3. Be cognizant of your resistance, and take this as a clue from your built in guidance system that your are not in balance. If you are not, then release your resistance by making emotional choices (thoughts and feelings) and line up – or make a choice to change your desires. Do you want something because you want it, or do you just think you want it…or think you should want it? Do you need to walk away from something or is your negative belief system need tweaking? Pay close attention.

4. When you experience difficulty or contrast in your life use it as an opportunity to become even more crystal clear about what you are wanting, your preferences, your desires….will you settle for less? NO! Use contrast as a learning tool and as spring board. Ask yourself, hmmmm, now how did I attract this and create this in my life? (By the way this is a very powerful place to be)

5. With that said, “get” there is no “random”. Life balance, or the experience of it, is a state that you create, period. You don’t randomly get picked for a terrible career, you don’t randomly get in a car accident. You are a magnet, and you live in a world of attraction. Period…(does that sound harsh?) It is the lovely and beautiful truth. Truly, when you start to step into this state, you will begin to realize how absolutely powerful you are.

6. Do not let others needs, circumstances, emotional balance supersede your own. Self care…this is something that is foundational to an emotional resonance that brings forth a state and an experience of life balance. Do you put yourself first? Do you honor yourself as the perfect spiritual being that you are? Do you honor yourself enough to step into your power? Do you allow yourself to make “mistakes”, learn from then, and know your are perfect no matter what? Do you give yourself permission to believe? Do you give yourself permission to want more? There are millions of different ways to take care of your self and allow this resonance to permeate your life. Find what feels good to you….

7. Do not forget to ask yourself, what does life balance look like to me? What would it feel like? and focus on the feeling of balance…step into this place and know that it exists within yourself, versus outside of yourself. Will you allow yourself to step into life balance, let’s say…RIGHT NOW? Begin by writing down and appreciating all that you can in your life this very second.

Peace,
Lori Hamann

A definition of time management might be a process of gaining flexibility and cutting back time. The advantage to having a time management plan is that we are loosing something that brings us reward and gaining something that brings us bigger rewards. We end up with a “no loosing” situation if our time management plan is right.

To develop a successful time management plan we must first evaluate our time. We must sit down and ask ourselves how long does it take us to eat? How long does it take us to get dressed and groom for work? How long does it take us to prepare the meals we have to eat? Everything we do takes a certain amount of time. You might start out by writing down just how much time it takes to do each of your very have to tasks each day.

Then sit back and evaluate your list. Are you wasting 10 minutes here and there on those have to items that could be used for something else?

Where our time goes is an essential element to determine for our entire time management plan if we want to begin spending more quality with the most important people of our lives and less wasted time on some routine task. This is the absolute first step of creating your own personalized time management plan, a time management plan that will allow your more time to do the things in life that are most important to you. You must determine where you are wasting time and then decide how to use that time more effectively. Once that time is lost, there is no calling it back.

Another important element of creating a successful time management plan is to be sure and finish tasks before moving onto another task, unless you are at work, in a job that requires doing multiple tasks at one time (multi-tasking). Once you finish one task, move onto the next task and follow in pursuit of finishing all tasks. Once you finish the last task, sit back for a moment in a comfortable position and think of what you accomplished. How much time did it take you to complete task? Don’t forget to be keeping down your start time and end time. Of course this type of listing time of tasks works best for those things you do as routine each day. You want to work on completing the tasks in as little time as possible so you that you have to add in the unexpected tasks of the day or…….much better…….so that you have time to do something you really, really want to do, something that is not routinely required of you to do. For example, like visit on the phone with a favorite friend, your daughter or mother, or whoever, read some in the books you want to complete at some point or another in your lifetime.

A successful time management plan provides us with a source for more flexible schedules. When we have flexibility we have more time for ourselves. Once you have determined your priorities for time usage, then you can start adding tasks that you been putting off because you just don’t have the time to do them.

So….you now need another list of goals and plans of tasks and things you want to do but never have the time to do. One of the best ways of keeping these lists is on your computer where you can quickly erase and add to. But then again, paper in a notebook is also good, perhaps a special book.

Time management is the process of working to succeed. When we work to succeed we reach our goals. We first have to decide what those goals are, of course, and then work toward them using our time management plan. You will probably have to sit down and really ponder on what is needed to reach each goal of set of goals, and of course, decide how much time each step of the way you will need. Some people like to set short term goals, reach that goal and then set a long term goal. It might be a better plan to try and set short and long-term goals in the same time management plan. Whichever way works best for you, however, is what you should do.

Time management is essential since it demands that a person plan, act on those plans and stay focused on those goals with motivation. You must also keep reality in mind, and plan for the things out of your control that could go wrong and therefore steal time from your time management plan. Some examples would be computer failures, family illness, personal illness, inches and inches of snow and ice, horrible sudden tornados and hurricanes. It is always wise to include elements of your time management plan in accordance to what could happen out of your control. You may want to have a plan ahead of time of using your time in some other manner if your computer fails. Catch up on your paper filing or something. Right now for me, I am experiencing an internet outage. I have groomed many more Shih Tzu than the usual today in the time I usually spend answering e-mails and working on my websites.

Time management is working to succeed. If you want to succeed then you must work hard every day to meet your goals. I recently cut down my preparing and eating breakfast time by about ten minutes. Instead of my usual meal, I now mix up a Zone Shake and drink it while doing some other chore like adding to or emptying out the dishwasher, or even while opening up my daily e-mails. In reality here I am using ten extra minutes to work on my goals, rather than preparing and eating a regular breakfast.

We always seem to be in a rush nowadays. So how can you find the time to spare to meditate? There are so many other things competing for our time that we always seem to be in a rush. Food and coffee on the go, speaking on the cell phone while doing other things, typing away at the computer whilst on the phone to a work colleague.

So how on earth can we devote even 15 or 20 minutes a day to simply meditating?

Initially it may seem an uphill struggle. But you find a few minutes every day to brush your teeth and a meditation session is just as essential for your overall health.

Maybe getting up a few minutes earlier would work for you? Or, if you’re an evening person, the last few minutes before you go to sleep. A lot of people find this to be one of the best times to meditate as it puts them into a calm, relaxed state. Perfect for a good night’s sleep.

If you can’t devote the time every day to meditation, then consider becoming a weekend meditator. Oftentimes, Saturdays and Sundays are not quite as hectic as the rest of the week. So you may be able to regularly spend time on a meditation session. You’ll still get a benefit from these sessions.

There are also times during the day that you can re-work to make the time to meditate.

If you watch the news, skip it! The news will still happen and if something important crops up, someone will tell you about it. This works well for me – I catch up on the news weekly and have yet to suffer withdrawal symptoms from my previous daily dose of news.

If you have a television recorder, use it to skip the adverts. That will free up 15 minutes or more per hour of television you watch.