How to Find Balance

As human beings, it feels like we’re constantly juggling all aspects of our lives. From work, school, family, to seeing friends, getting enough sleep, working out and staying hydrated, how do we maintain the balance? Usually when we feel the most off-centered is when we feel like we’re doing too much of one thing and not enough of another.

Finding a healthy balance enables us to not only prioritize what’s important to us but achieve our most important goals. Often, it’s identifying the balance that is the most difficult. Here are a few tips on how to find a comfortable equilibrium in your life:

1. Be able to set goals in different target areas of your life

While this may not be intuitive, setting goals in the more social aspects of your life is just as important as setting goals in your professional life. Try to sit down and truly assess what your priorities are. If one of your priorities is connecting with family or friends more often, try to set a goal of reaching out at least once per weekend. Or inviting a friend to do something that you both enjoy, at least once every week or so.

Assessment is one of the most important features of seeking balance. Being able to assess your goals now can prevent you from neglecting an important portion of your life later.

2. Don’t stress too much about not meeting those goals

If you’re like me, you probably feel a lot of stress about not meeting an item on your to-do list. The key part about finding balance is trying to avoid unnecessary stress, not creating more for yourself! Not being able to meet all of your goals is completely normal and even expected. If you find that you’re running out of time to accomplish your target goals, this suggests that you need to compress your to-do list into smaller, broader, and more manageable goals. Alternatively, you might realize that those other activities or facets of your life trump some of your less important targets.

3. Take a mental health day

Unfortunately, we aren’t invincible. Exhaustion, dehydration, and a myriad of other things are bound to catch up to us eventually. Don’t be afraid to give yourself a mental health day to recharge and reassess. The key part of this tip is being able to recognize when you need a mental health day the most and being able to commit to it.

4. Remember that balance is not one end goal, it’s an ongoing process

You should expect your life to change and for your priorities to change. As people, we aren’t static, so our balance will change depending on what is important to us at any point in time. You may be entering a point in your life where you really want to focus on work or school, so your comfortable balance might skew towards that portion of your life and away from other activities.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that you stop prioritizing other important things like working out or seeing friends, but you schedule your time differently. Being able to adjust to a change in priorities is important to keeping your life balanced and avoiding unnecessary stresses.