Before I go into describing my blueprint or model for living a balanced life, I need to be clear about something. I work at balancing my life every day, and I ’ll hav to continue working on it throughout life.
That’s just a reality. Having a balanced lifestyle is not something that you attain once. It’s a continual work in progress.
The date stamp on this email will likely say Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018. My goal for releasing blog posts, though, is on Wednesdays. I can make up a whole bunch of reasons for why I didn’t release a post on Wednesday, or why my writing goals for this week didn’t work out the way I wanted them to. But those reasons aren’t as important as the lesson behind them.
The lesson is that in spite of your best intentions, there will always be challenges on your journey towards balance. Commitments, responsibilities, distractions…all of these things make balanced living a difficult objective.
But you have to keep trying anyway.
The PROMISE Wheel of Balance
Below are a list of areas that I believe are important for living a life in balance. It’s a model that I call the PROMISE Wheel.
- Physical. This refers to your physical health. It encompasses three parts: sleep, physical activity, and nutrition. Paying attention to each of these parts helps to fuel your body so that you can focus on the other areas of PROMISE.
- Relationships. We are social creatures and we benefit greatly from forming connections and bonds with other people. The number of relationships you have doesn’t matter. What matters is that you *feel* a sense of connection with another person, whether it’s a friend or family member.
- Occupation. Work is an important part of life and it takes up a lot of our time. But the key here is to try and manage your working life so that it doesn’t take over the rest of your life. If you have no choice but to spend a lot of time working, then try and see how you can incorporate the other areas of PROMISE into your job.
- Mind. If you want to live a more balanced life it’s important to think in more balanced ways. In one of my videos on balancing your thoughts, I share questions you can ask yourself to help with this. I also have another video where I illustrate a technique on how you balance your thoughts using pen and paper. Another component of balanced thinking is to keep your mind stimulated. Writing and reading do this for me.
- Interests and Hobbies. It’s important to have hobbies or interests in your life. They can bring satisfaction, entertainment, and contentment. Not to mention that Interests and Hobbies can help fulfill other parts of PROMISE. For example, a hobby could be physical activity or doing crossword puzzles, which could fulfill the *Physical* or *Mind* portion of your life, respectively.
- Spirituality. Religion and spirituality are different. You can be religious and not spiritual, and vice versa. What’s important here are spiritual activities. Meditation, prayer, practicing forgiveness, honesty, being non-judgemental. These are all activities and ways of being that can help a person feel more connected with humanity. Doing so, I believe, helps you to be more spiritual. It’s a component of balanced living found in most models.
- Emotions. If you refer to the image above, you’ll see Emotions is at the centre, or hub, of PROMISE. This is because I view emotions as an indicator of how balanced my life is. Emotions such as sadness, guilt, anger, and happiness are a product of how engaged you are in your PROMISE Wheel. Your emotions let you know if you are living in balance.
Question: Do you think I left anything out? What are the areas you focus on to feel balance in your life? I’d love to hear your thoughts.