How to balance it all

In our lives, we have a lot of roles to fulfill. We are employees, friends, partners, children, and humans. In all those roles people expect something from us and we expect things from ourselves. We want to be a good employee who works hard and finishes their job on time. We want to be a good friend who checks in and is there for their friends. We also want to be healthy and work out and also have fun and be lazy. While typing this I already get stressed because yes I want to do all of the above and more. 

How do we balance it all?

Let’s start by making sure we are not playing all these roles at the same time. Planning is a keyword here. If we want to make a plan that aligns with what we want we must know what we value the most. This is not set in stone. Some months we prioritize our careers and other months we prioritize our social life. Priorities can shift over time. That’s why it’s important to sometimes take a critical look at our schedules to see if what we are doing is still aligned with what we want and what we find important. Of course, within the parameters that we have because unfortunately there will always be things we would rather not have in our schedule but are just a part of life. 

Even more important than planning is letting go of the idea that we have to be amazing at everything we do. It’s very hard to excel at everything and I think no one really does despite what social media is showing us. Lowering our own standards makes balancing everything a whole lot easier. So next time when you have had an extremely busy week and you go work out and notice that it doesn’t go so great, don’t beat yourself up. Be proud that you at least did a workout. The most important role we have is being human, and being human means that we can’t do everything perfectly!