Take Time to Create a Life Balance Sheet for Success

Written by Joy Fisher-Sykes


It’s important from time to time that we sit down and honestly assess our lives. Doing so allows us to make an honest determination about where we are now and where we want to be inrepparttar future. When we’re assessing our finances, we prepare a financial balance sheet. On it we list our debits and credits so that we can determine our bottom line. What if you wanted to determinerepparttar 135445 state ofrepparttar 135446 life you lead? How is it, or is it not, serving you? The answer is simple – prepare a Life Balance Sheet. Much like a financial balance sheet, list all of your lifestyle debits (choices that detract from balance) such asrepparttar 135447 following:

­ Maintaining relationships that drain you ­ Constantly whining, griping, or complaining ­ Inability to say no ­ Always expectingrepparttar 135448 worse ­ Being ungrateful ­ Unwilling to listen effectively ­ Forgetting to mind your manners ­ Taking others for granted

Next list your credits – ways you live your life that support and honor you. Anything positive you count as a credit – no action is too big or too small. Below are a few credits that add to your life’s bottom line.

1. Smile – not just at people you know, but especially at

Plan Your Life Effectively

Written by Charlotte Burton


Big Changes, Little Changes

Magazines these days are filled with articles on how to plan your life well in advance, but which don’t necessarily takerepparttar fact into account that LIFE can, and will, get inrepparttar 135426 way. What do you do when everything around is changing at a pace that even you can’t keep up with and your life plan certainly can’t? With all that has happened inrepparttar 135427 world economy andrepparttar 135428 decisions made by certain countries regarding terrorism and war, it is not a good idea to stick your head inrepparttar 135429 sand and ignore it all.

What about when change happens at a more microcosmic level, i.e. what happens if you are one ofrepparttar 135430 casualties ofrepparttar 135431 recent ‘downsizing’ of firms inrepparttar 135432 City so your life changes in a far more immediate fashion? Or what if your life changes in a positive way? You get married, get promoted, have a baby - you could even winrepparttar 135433 lottery!

Reactive to Opportunity

Life plans are a good idea but for them really to work, they must be flexible so that they can still be useful when situations change. It is important for them to be not quite so specific as to ignore any opportunity that just presents itself because it is ‘not quite what you wanted,’ or if you feel thatrepparttar 135434 opportunity has come along too early or too late. There is a saying that "opportunities are viewed as more important withrepparttar 135435 vision of hindsight" but this can be flipped to say that opportunities when they first present themselves can be seen as risks too large to cope with.

Bring Your Dreams to Life

So how do you plan your life inrepparttar 135436 first place?

There are so many techniques that you can use for planning your ideal life, butrepparttar 135437 one that works best is when you really and truly know inside and out what you want, how it would look and what it would feel like to be there.

Imagine Who You Want to be

You can start simply by imagining what you want to be doing on a specific day inrepparttar 135438 future, for example 1st January 2020. Flesh outrepparttar 135439 daily tasks - where are you living, who with and how busy is your day? What do you look like, how do you behave with others and what are your relationships like? Allrepparttar 135440 areas of your life should be included within your plan: Career, Friends and Family, Physical Environment, Health, Personal Growth, Money, Significant Other, Fun and Recreation.

This is not an exhaustive list - if there is a significant part of your life that is not included above, add another category or rename one.

Pay Attention To Detail

Once you know what you want, it is essential that you break each goal down into smaller ones that you can work towards on a daily basis. For example, if you wish to be healthy enough to run a marathon next year, you could sign up to your local gym today and start going regularly, or find a local running group to join, and then start doing smaller sponsored runs until running is a daily part of your life. Of course, just doingrepparttar 135441 physical exercise is notrepparttar 135442 only thing you can do to make this dream come true - for a goal of being healthy, you must also eat healthily, sleep well and enough for you (sleep amounts vary from person to person), be able to manage stress, among many other things.

Life Comes Around To Play

But what happens when you get sucked intorepparttar 135443 day-to-day drag of life and end up realising that a year has gone by and you haven’t done anything towards your goals and you can barely remember what they were inrepparttar 135444 first place?

So what CAN you do with your plan when life gets inrepparttar 135445 way?

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