Balance and Focus

I hear it all the time. How do you balance family, career, health, self?

It's a great question and many, many people struggle with it. For me, it's about focus. What should I focus on? what am I focusing on? What am I thinking about?

2010 was the year of enlightenment (It was a crap year actually, but need to focus on what I learnt). I got older and my body just didn't respond as I hoped. I changed jobs. I lost good friends. I forgot who I was and my focus was either in the past on some event or projecting into the future looking for better times ahead. I was rarely present in this moment - and that hurt. I don't know how we can simply live in our heads, looking backwards, looking ahead but forgetting where we are this moment.

How do you get out of your head and focus on now?

I use different methods, and it does depend on where I am at. A yoga teacher suggested to focus on the end of my nose. My priest suggested, and this worked wonderfully well, to sit down and just feel my body. Other activities that have helped - boxing (if your not in the moment whilst boxing your in big trouble), running, diving into cold water...Lot's of ideas. Right now, yoga helps most.

Balance is a completely different beast...this is based totally on your values and what is important to you. Family, career, fun, safety, children, sports, love....what is important to you differs from your colleague, from you husband or wife, from your friends. Again it's about focus, the question to ask yourself...what do I really care about? What is important to me? What do I like doing? All good questions, and I'm guessing questions that are not really answered all that well...it's only then that you can start to achieve balance.

Anyway, off to yoga.

M.