By: D. A. Slinkard
Do you ever feel like the world is flying past you and you are just hanging on for dear life? I have to admit that sometimes I feel like I am bouncing from week to week; life is just hitting the accelerator and time is not slowing down. It is during times like this I feel out of sync, and I know my life is missing the balance I desperately need. So as I write this article, I want you to know it is just as much for me, the writer, as it is for you, the reader.
How does one slow down life when it seems we are about becoming as efficient as possible. Think about all of the gadgets we have that are supposed to make us more efficient, but what happens is we become easily distracted. Our phones distract us, our computers distract us, and who would have thought we would ever say, our watches distract us.
We live in a time that Dick Tracy would be proud of; and sadly, as I write the name Dick Tracy, there will be several readers who will not have a clue who I am writing about. For those young readers, AFTER you finish reading this article THEN you can Google who Dick Tracy is. Until then, be prepared to take back your time, take back your days, and take control of your life.
The first step in taking back control is to understand what your purpose is. If you do not know what you are working for or working towards, then you are going to struggle. Once you are able to define what your purpose is going to be in life, you will have a better understanding of what you need to do in life in order to obtain success and ultimately regain control over your life. I am amazed how many people go about living their lives waiting for it to happen to them instead of living their life purposely and being intentional with their lives.
After you have defined your purpose, the next step is to sit down and prioritize what is important in your life. You will be surprised how often we get our lives out of balance because we lose focus on what is important and what is not important. We need to look at the activities we have going on in our lives and simply give them a number. We need to rank the activities based on priority, and this can be tricky. You need to make sure as you prioritize that you do not allow your #4s to outrank your #1s. Even more important is that some activities or time wasters will need to be thrown out. Yep, sometimes we lose balance in our lives because we get sucked into distractions, such as social media and status updates. Eliminate these and gain control back of your life.
So we have to have a Purpose and we have to Prioritize. The final “P” in our journey to regaining our balance in life is to have Persistence. Too often in life when things get tough, we see a lot of people who give up on their dreams and just quit. As you start to turn the tide in regaining your life balance, you must be willing to keep persisting. I love the saying, “Persistence beats resistance.” This is a truthful statement prevalent in a successful person’s life. We see someone successful and we automatically think it is an overnight success; yet what we fail to see is their persistence in pushing through when facing adversity.
You will not be any different. Something is going to come up that is going to make you want to slide back into your old distracted ways, and you must learn how to limit these distractions. This is where having the right attitude is going to be most important for you because when you have an attitude of persistence, there will not be many things that will stop you along your way to finding the life balance you desperately seek.
Once you regain your life balance, however, you must be adaptable and ready to readjust as life happens to you. The formula for achieving life balance comes down to the 3 Ps: Purpose; Prioritize; Persistence. If you can remember this simple formula, there are no distractions in life that can hold you back from maintaining the balance we all desperately seek. Time to get your life back.
By: D. A. Slinkard
