5 WAYS TO ACHIEVE WORK LIFE BALANCE USING MINDFULNESS AND MEDITATION
Posted on October 18, 2022 by Harlan Snyder, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
How can we insure that our time, energy, and attention are being used in a balanced and effective manner?…
Work plays an important role in our lives. As adults, we tend to spend a majority of our time at our jobs. Some of us get so caught up in our work that we neglect to cherish the little things in our personal sphere.
How can we insure that our time, energy, and attention are being used in a balanced and effective manner?
It just so happens that mindfulness and meditation can have the biggest impact on our work-life balance.
Try these mindfulness and meditation strategies to help you achieve a healthy work-life balance:
1. Cultivate calmness and tranquility. In order to make wiser decisions and work smarter instead of harder, it’s important to be calm and composed. If you’re checked out or you tend to be reactive instead of proactive, you’re not going to achieve your goals.
Calmness and tranquility can be cultivated through meditation. Even a simple practice will make a difference. Here’s why:
At least 15 minutes of meditation, if performed consistently, can make a significant difference in the way we do things at our homes and offices.
Being calm enables us to build confidence and to develop trust within ourselves, others, and our world in general.
Meditation is the conduit through which we gain clarity of mind. It helps us make better choices about how we spend our time, energy, and attention – leading to better work-life balance.
Meditation centers us and brings us into a state of mindfulness. We can ask ourselves reflective questions like, “What makes me lose my calm? What kind of consequences am I facing if I rush this decision because I’m under the influence of stress? What can I do to cultivate more inner peace in my life?”
2. Become a master of your mind. We tend to pay more attention to taking care of our bodies than our minds. In fact, we often take our mind for granted. The result is that we end up living a life where our minds are controlling our lives instead of the other way around.
The life we experience is basically just a creation of our minds. When we are more able to control our inner world, we know how to tap into our creativity and visualize…then create a better future. Even though it may seem that our destiny depends on external circumstances, the truth is that the way we perceive our circumstances determines our experience. Like I always say, “The only difference between a stumbling block and a stepping stone are our choices.” Mindfulness and meditation help prevent stumbling blocks and create forward momentum.
Being a master of your mind allows you to create your own most desirable circumstances where you’re enjoying a sustainable balance that works for you.
3. Mindfulness and meditation are the gateway to self-awareness, which allows us to observe and express our needs. A significant part of our frustration, stress, and suffering in life comes from our unmet needs. When we work too much, or too little, we can end up neglecting our well-being. Greater awareness of our needs brings a better balance and more satisfaction in our lives.
Through mindfulness, you alert yourself when you sense or experience a negative emotion. And those signals are telling you there’s an unmet need. Learning to sit in the moment with those emotions opens the opportunity to follow it and let it tell you what and how to meet that need. When you do, you’ll beam with happiness, because you took responsibility for meeting your needs.
When you’re balanced and can meet the needs of your body, mind, and spirit, your energy levels rise and vitality increases, so you can start living in tune with your values, principles, and purpose.
4. Respond instead of react. The highest level of mastery over mind can be seen as an ability to respond instead of react.
There’s a huge difference between the two. Reacting is like being on autopilot, letting your emotions control what you say or do next. Responding, on the other hand, presents a conscious, calm, and constructive action that promotes resolutions of conflicts.
To respond means to be in control of your own thoughts and behaviors. It helps you take charge of your life and supports you to set and stick to your priorities, such as a healthy work-life balance.
An ability to respond requires you to be in the present moment as much as possible. As part of my coaching process, I’ve created and digitally mastered 8 Guided Meditations for Conscious Creation. They’re included as part of the packages I offer with my coaching services.
5. Save some time for self-care. Our work, friends, partners, and kids all need our care, energy, and attention. It’s not always easy to balance our time with all the situations life presents us from day to day. If we’re checked out or existing on autopilot, it’s pretty much impossible. It’s critical to balance everything with our own mindfulness and meditation ritual, which is in essence, a self-care ritual.
If you want to be there for others in a healthy and sustainable way, it’s crucial for you to save some time for self-care: to slow down, relax, and engage in pleasurable activities that renew your energy and restore your spirit.
“Self-care is never a selfish act – it is simply good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer others. Anytime we can listen to true self and give the care it requires, we do it not only for ourselves, but for the many others whose lives we touch.” ― Parker J. Palmer
Caring about your well being and incorporating a few of these mindful ideas can support you in achieving greater levels of harmony in your personal and professional life.
Which one will you try first?
