A Balanced Life With Ease

Everyone should try to live a balanced life. The fine line between job; career and personal life is a fine one that needs to be monitored so one does not have greater emphasis than the other. However, this is not just the domain of executives and professionals it is for all.

In fact those who set goals in each area of their lives have greater life satisfaction than those who only set career goals thereby decreasing their odds of having a happy life.

So we need to examine how to write goals and set out a goal setting process so that we can achieve balanced living by achieving goals.

You possibly know what a SMART GOAL is or S.M.A.R.T. goals standing for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time related goals. Whilst this is a fairly successful format for those who are very familiar with goal setting it can prove to be complicated for people who do not know how to set goals. I much prefer SMA goals, Specific, Measurable and Attainable; after all if they are attainable they must be realistic.

Whether you realise it or not you set goals every day of your life, for everyone makes decisions as they move through the day, a decision can only be made by a goal setting process. You think of something you want, determine if you think you can do it, and take action to achieve it, that is the goal setting process. Obviously there are a few factors in the process that require expanding.

To get a balanced life you need to write goals for each section of your life - I call this the TOWER OF LIFE. The first thing to do is to identify the floors that will benefit from personal goal setting.

I want you to draw a Building that is like a tower with six floors and has three windows on each floor; you see you knew a goal setting was hard!

On the first floor (the ground floor if you are not in the USA) in the left hand window write the words Physical and Health. On the next floor up write Mental and Educational. The next floor up write Family and Home; on the next Spiritual and Ethical; then Social and Cultural finally on the top floor Financial and Career.

The window alongside each of the categories is for marking where you are now; related to that category. To do this you need to ask yourself some questions, for example working downwards in the window next to where you wrote Financial and Career ask yourself questions such as; Do you enjoy your work? Do you feel you make an effective contribution? Have you reached your full potential? Have you achieved a good standard of living?

Mark yourself against these questions on a scale of 1 to 10. Rate yourself against each question with a score of 1being lowest and 10 being the highest.

Now do the same exercise for the other floors in your tower of life:-

Social and Cultural (Does your circle of friends enhance your life, do they contribute to your life or take from your life; Have you got a friend you can have a serious discussion about your life without feeling uncomfortable; Do you have interests outside of your career - Sport; Theatre; Family)?

Spiritual and Ethical (Do you know what your values are what makes your life tick; What is your relationship with religion, do you accept the idea of an architect of the universe and life itself. Remember your religion can be based around an invisible deity or a god within yourself)?

Family and Home: (Is your family life the way you want it, have you achieved your dreams)?

Mental and Educational: (Have you accomplished your educational goals; are you still trying to learn something every day; Do you invest in your education on an ongoing basis)?

Physical and Health: (Are you satisfied with your current state of health; Are you the correct weight for your size and build; Are you fit enough to do the things you want to do)?

Having asked yourself questions such as these and others you may add, and marked yourself from on the scale of 1 to 10 make a note of all the areas where improvement can be made I suggest where your score is less than 5, if you have none below 5 then pick the lowest score and check that you have been totally honest with yourself.

Now you need to look at those areas where you could improve your score and set yourself objectives to raise the score towards ten where you can. As you do this and achieve your goals no matter how small you will begin to enjoy life satisfaction and bring your life in balance. Repeat this goal setting process on a regular basis for as you get to ten on your scale you will think of improvements you can make even when you reach ten and the process starts again.