Not enough time? Wish you could have a more stable work life balance? You’re just a breath away from achieving it. Meditation is the way to invite peace and serenity into your life. Increase your work life balance, by making more meaningful decisions.
Meditation is all about finding the middle way between total relaxation and in-depth concentration. If you’re too relaxed when you meditate, then you can easily fall asleep. Being too concentrated isn’t helpful either. When you are very focused on achieving something, you deprive yourself of the joy and comfort that come with meditation.
There is a parallel between your life and the practice of meditation, you know. Look at the meditation practice as an allegory for life. The more balance you catalyse during your meditation session, the easier it becomes to keep this balance throughout your daily activities.
Three way meditation helps you have more work life balance
- Better time and stress management
Stress is usually undeniably linked to time management. All of a sudden everything around you demands your attention: your boss is no longer happy with the report he has previously validated, your partner feels that you are spending too much time at work, your friends say it’s high-time you met and so on and so forth. Sounds familiar? Time is a scarce resource, depending on how you invest it. In meditation we learn to deal with one thought at a time. So the mind, does not only become more organised in recognizing the issues that scream for our attention, but it also creates a better pattern of approaching priorities.
Try to transfer into your life the steps you are following when you’re stilling your mind: relax your body, gently bring your mind to that what is essential, to the centre, increase your level of awareness and keep on stilling your mind. In approaching daily situations, relax before tackling something challenging. With a clear mind, it will be easier to maintain a balance in your actions. Now bring all of your attention to what is important now. Start working in that direction and persevere.
- Easier to prioritise and take decisions
When you are in the middle of it all, and all that surrounds you is a big bundle or requests, demands and prayers, you will tell me “Everything is important. They all have to be taken care of.” And that is valid. Remember the lesson meditation teaches us? One thing at a time.
Grab a post-it and a pen. Write what you need to do. Don’t think about it too much, just note the points down, in no matter what order. Now, set durations for work-related and private-life matters. Take two other post-its and write “work” and “private”. Start with one post-it. Write all the tasks you have to do and commit to taking care of inside that time slot. Prioritise. Do the same for the second post-it.
We are often afraid of taking decisions. Making a decision comes with the unbearable thought that consequences will come along. What if we looked at a decision not as having an “irremediable” outcome, but just a natural continuation? Would you give it as much thought and put so much pressure in making one?
- Letting go as a way of life
Things might not always go the way you want them to. Sometimes you might have to spend an extra hour or two at the office to get things done. It is so, that in life we cannot have all the things at the same time. Being able to let go of emotions that come with accepting this, is useful since it takes you further in leading a balanced lifestyle. During meditation, many thoughts, feelings and emotions come up. Still, since you know that is not what you want to invest your attention into, you will acknowledge and let go of them. Just the same, being able to say “No” to things in your life that are not supportive is a part of the letting go process. The more you let go of unimportant things, the more space you have to balance your time and energy.
- Equanimity
Has it ever happened to you to be under pressure and just snap at people? Were you sorry afterwards? Did you realise it was not really how your better self would have managed the situation? Many of us are familiar with this moment. And then what? Meditation helps us develop the aptitude to respond to situations with calm and peace. Of course, as anything else, it does not function like a magical wand. In challenging situations it is still your choice to balance your emotions and respond from a place of clarity and forgiveness.
Balance is not something you achieve and there it is, you have it in your pocket for the rest of your days. Balance is a calibration of who you are and how you choose to go about your life. Every single conscious moment. The fundamentals still apply. And you are the only one who can go back to their balancing force.