Most people are busy everyday with their work. My former branch manager is one of them. She works from early morning till late evening, from Monday to Saturday sometime Sunday and public holidays. Is her life balance? The answer definitely is NO.

There are 7 tips here to share in order to have life balance with live more authentic and meaningful life:

Life Management Skills for Stress Management – Determine Your Values

What is most important to you? Rank at least three things that bring your life purpose and meaning. This is part of planning to reach life balance.

Life Management Skills for Stress Management – Does Your Life Reflect Your Values?

Evaluate how you spend your time vs. how you’d prefer to spend your time. If, for example, the most important things to you are your family and your music…why are you spending all your time at the office? Sure, you have to make a living. Could you make a living doing what you love? Don’t discount that idea so quickly. Or perhaps you enjoy your work, but does it need to consume 10-12-14-16 hours of your day? If that’s the case, there’s certainly minimal, if any, time left for you, family or friends at the end of the day. Perhaps this is what you are noticing in your life now.

If you draw a circle with reflecting your life value, then you will notice whether your life balance or lack of certain things.

Life Management Skills for Stress Management – Learn to Say ‘No’

Often times, trying to do it all is what causes people to lead off-balance lives. It might not be easy for you, but saying ‘no’ to the things, events, responsibilities that don’t interest you is your right. Do not be afraid of hurting someone’s feelings upon declining an invitation; you are not responsible for how someone feels. If they are upset, it is something they can sort out themselves. Opportunities will present themselves that you would enjoy taking part in, but don’t have the time or energy for. You can choose to remove other things from your plate in order to make time for that special event or you can be assured that other opportunities will arise in the future. When you say ‘no’ to what you can’t do, you show up for what you can do. This prevents you from appearing unreliable, but most importantly, you respected yourself and look forward for your life balance.

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Few years ago, I attended a NLP course. The NLP master said Happiness Is a Choice. We make ourselves happy; it’s as simple as that!

It is futile for those people who are looking for happiness. Most of them think that things make people happy. They might dream for a luxury car or bigger house. One day, their dream come true, will they happy forever?

We know the answer: NO. The dream list is goes on. That’s reason why some people we look at him have everything but still not happy. But, there are people who seem to have nothing but always seem to be happy.

I have a very good example. My former branch manager has a luxury car with big house. But she works for almost 12 hours during working days. Sometime, she need to works during weekend and public holidays. She has no time for her family. She is stressful everyday. She worry cannot hit sales target by this month; she worry her staff want to replace her as branch manager. She is not happy at all.

Whereby, I have a best friend who works only half day; 5 working days per week. She has a normal car and stay with her family in normal house. She can sleeps as and when she wants after working. She read the story book she like everyday. She always laughs. She laughs while she talking with interesting topic; she send laughs symbol while she sending SMS or MSN message. She is happy everyday.

My friend told me, you can be happy like me. Life Management Skills for Stress Management – Happiness is a state. It’s our choice to control our state and change it to happy. It’s our decision, regardless what happen to us or what happen on our environment. Happiness is internal and available every time if we choice it.

Life Management Skills for Stress Management – What we need to do in order to feel happy is tell ourselves that “I want happy now”. If we are sad due to a particular event, then we tell ourselves that I am sad now but I want to turn to happy state.

Although easier than done, but practice make perfect. We can always practice to control our state all the time and always remember good times. A happiness life can be start with this little practice.

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• 7 Tips to Create Life Balance
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