How do you feel when your life is out of balance?
What are the signs of your life being out of Balance? Here are 7 key areas to look for tells in your life. They cross all areas of your life from work to relationships. How do you react to interruptions? How do you benchmark how well you are doing in yourself? How well do you eat? What is your personal self-worth? How many people truly ask these questions of themselves?
1: The control tell: The easiest way to think about how you feel is how little it takes to tip the scales. You feel emotional, stressed, overwhelmed all the time. This can lead to an unhealthy need to control yourself or others in a desperate need to readdress the balance.
2: The interruption tell: You have a lack of tolerance and patience. The smallest things push you over the edge in an unreasonable overreaction for the level of the challenge. You can also have a lack of tolerance for noise and interruptions. Do you lose it with people in your work or home environment easily?
3: Looking outside tell: There is a constant feeling of being overwhelmed and not knowing where or how to start tasks. Do you always feel as if there is a task hanging over you? You can find it very hard to know what others expect from you. You find yourself constantly seeking validation from others to see if you are doing well enough. You can find your perfectionism crippling. Unable to start tasks in case they are not done well enough.
4: Fitness and diet tell: You either don’t do enough exercise or become obsessed with too much. You control your food and don’t have good sleeping patterns. You are always tired and can’t get out of bed in the mornings. You wonder “what does sunrise look like” – you never see it! The alarm goes off 10 times in the mornings.
5: The wrong key tell: You feel displaced and opportunities don’t seem to arrive or never quite fit to work out. You are always blaming fate. The wrong set of circumstances for you. Besides not being promoted in jobs you can find that you are endlessly looking for a new fit, you never quite settle anywhere. You are constantly upskilling to feel whole. Will the next course fill the void?
6: Relationship tell: You can suddenly withdraw from people and relationships. Ending relationships suddenly without clear thought. Have you stopped talking to your family? Do you seem to have displaced friends from your life recently? Do you just feel disconnected from everyone around you?
7: The searching tell: You are constantly searching to fit in and belong somewhere. Never found anyone that truly gets you. This can lead to an obsession in self-analysis. What’s wrong with me? This can become a serial self-help or development search. Do you join many different groups and never stick at any one of them for any length of time?
If these are the tells what are the fixes? How do you counterbalance yourself? There are three simple factors;
1: You need to understand your strengths and weaknesses.
2: You need to find a way to express what it really is you want to achieve in life. Set goals.
3: You need to know how to fulfil your dreams or the steps to make them happen. Try to create a roadmap of realistic steps to these goals for yourself.
Why do the people who come to me crave more balance in their lives? Many people would assume that the aspirations are materialistic. The goals of a new car, a bigger house or to earn more money. It’s not that many of these achievements do not happen with greater balance but generally there are 7 key mindsets that people seek.
These are;
1: Happiness is the most important element.
2: Confidence is also a top priority.
3: People strive for self-worth.
4: Respect is huge, both at home and in the workplace.
5: Greater work-life balance. To not always feel tired and jaded.
6: Quality time to spend with the people who matter in their lives and for the other interests in life.
7: Better relationships with partners, children, family and work colleagues.
Everyone that comes to me uses the phrase to me that “they are at crossroads in their life”. They want me to siphon their dreams out of them, which have often been forgotten along the way. But most importantly they want a roadmap of how to get to where they want to be, “I now have a way of moving forward to achieve what I am capable of in life and doing what will make me happier”. I always say start with steps. No matter how small they are steps in the right direction. Take control in a positive way. I don’t ever tell anyone anything that they don’t tell me already knew inside themselves, “Dr. O’Reilly has helped to bring together feelings, thoughts, and plans that have been floating around in my head for some time”.
Originally Published for Family Friendly HQ in January 2018.