Hello, Welcome to Lesson One interpreting life balance. Before we get started, let's do a quick recap of the three things that you'll be working on in this lesson. First, by taking this step, you're going to get back into the driver's seat of your life. I am so excited to see how your life changes now that you're taking the step to reclaim control of your life. It's powerful, you should be really proud of yourself. Our second goal in this lesson is to help you slow down and really think about what life balance means to you personally, I don't care about what everyone else thinks life balance means.

I care about what it means to you. And that's what we're going to figure out here over the course of this program. Our third goal in this lesson is to start analyzing the different pieces of your life that are required in order for you to feel balanced. start considering all of the different elements that you need to have in your life. You may need to include creativity or exercise or quality time with family or all of the above. Start thinking about what you can't live without, that's going to be your first clue to creating life balance.

It's also going to could look completely different for everyone. So let's start designing a balanced life for you personally. So first things first, we need to discuss this concept of life balance. A lot of people wonder what the term quote, life balance really means. There are a whole lot of different definitions of life balance floating around out there. But I don't really believe that there's any one particular definition of life balance, at least not one that's really all that useful to everyone.

It's sort of like the term success or hustle or happiness. To me. It's just so subjective, that any one definition isn't really going to apply to everyone. So we're not going to talk that much about words you use to define Lane's life balance here. Instead, we're going to focus more on making intentional decisions in your life so you can focus on the things that bring you joy, fulfillment and confidence. Understanding what life balance is to you.

And striving for that is way more important than whatever words you use to describe it. But on the other hand, how are you going to know when you've succeeded in having a balanced life? While you don't necessarily need one particular definition for life balance, we do need to know how you can recognize it and create it in your own life. So let's dive a little bit deeper. First, before we start coming up with your own personal concept of life balance, let's talk about what life balance is not. life balance does not mean spending equal amounts of time on all areas of your life.

This is one of the biggest misconceptions I hear about life balance. It's really not about dissecting your life up into pieces and making sure you spend equal amounts of time in all areas of your life. To me, life balance is more like a yoga pose than a scale. It's about adjusting and integrating all aspects of your life to make sure that you're not tilting too far in one direction at the expense of another. life balance also doesn't mean trying to fit everything that's important to you into every day of your life. There's not enough time for that.

You're gonna have to make decisions about Where you spend your time each day, and each day, you're gonna have different decisions to make. It's okay to focus more on one area of your life one day and then shift to a totally different area The next day, start trying to think of life balance more over the term term of a week or so rather than trying to fit everything into one day. life balance is also not something that will be consistent throughout your life, your life is obviously going to change over time. So experiencing life balance isn't something you'll achieve and then never really think about again, it's a daily practice that you'll constantly refine throughout your life. So now that we're clear on the myths of life, balance, quote, unquote, let's talk about what life balance really is. So life balance is a feeling it's to me it's a state of being.

What really matters is that you're experiencing those feelings of fulfillment and calm contentment, joy. We've all had those days when we just feel like we're really in the flow were completely productive and focused and on top of things and all areas of our life, our relationships all feel really good. We feel connected to the people who are most important to us. We're present and we're in the moment. Life is just stimulating and good. And we have this sense of peace without with ourselves, that we're doing what's most important to us.

That's the feeling that we're striving for here. Have you felt that way before in your life, and you might have to think back, maybe it's before you have kids or before you got married, or maybe it was just last week. So really think about when you might have felt really in the groove in your life. That's the feeling that we're going for here. life balance is something that you'll need to pay attention to, if you really want it also, you can't just don't know and expect life balance to happen to you. You have to make constant conscious decisions, and sometimes really tough decisions about your time and attention in order to make balance part of your life as a working parent.

And finally, life balance is an ongoing practice. life balance isn't something that you achieve and then you never have to think about Again, this part we talked about just a few minutes ago, if you want a balanced life, you're really going to have to start making intentional shifts in the way you think and the way you act in your daily life, you're going to have to start being very conscious. It sounds obvious, but I know it's such a difficult thing to put into practice. So that's why you're here. When you have this program now, which is a system that will help take you through this process one tiny step at a time, you get to go at your own pace. Alright, now you kind of have a better understanding of this general concept of life balance.

So let's start to break things down even more so that you can make it your own unique concept. To help you come up with that concept of life balance, I created an exercise called the life balance plan. It's a worksheet that you can use to begin to identify what life balance means to you right now. You're going to complete the life balance plan in the first lesson so that you can get a baseline idea of where you're starting from in this program. And then we're going to go through all sorts of techniques and strategies. To help you refine that life balance plan throughout the program.

So by lesson 12, you're going to have a very clear picture not only what you what life balance really means to you, but how you're going to implement it into your daily life. We're going to talk concrete skills, actions, daily things, tips that you can do to make your life more balanced. All right, so let's move on to the success tips for this lesson. Just as a quick reminder, these success tips are just suggestions to help you implement this material as effectively as possible. The first success tip is to take your time with this exercise, don't rush through it. This life balance plan is the basis for the rest of the program.

So the more you can focus on this exercise, the more you'll get out of it. Try to set aside maybe an hour or so to focus on answering these questions before you move on in the program. The second tip is to make it your own. The life balance balance plan will dive deep into the main areas of your life. You'll have an opportunity to identify what those areas are for you. For example, one of the main areas of your life might be identified as family, which includes in general, you know, your spouse, and your kids and your extended family, maybe even really important friendships.

Make that description specific to your specific life. Make them you know, put the names of your spouse in there, or your kids, or the family members who are most important to you. The final success tip is to reach out to the Facebook community if you have any questions or if you get stuck. You know, one of the biggest pieces of this program that I wanted to offer was that support to walk through this program with someone else, and not just meet with other people in the community who are going through the same thing that you're going through. I want you guys to riff off of each other and get ideas and inspiration from each other. Ask questions when you get stuck, don't just get stuck, put it in a drawer and walk away.

Let's get through this together. You're going to have a much better life as you go through this program. And I want you to stick with it. So please reach out to us in the community. We're here to guide you. And we're here to help you through these exercises and offer tips and research and suggestions.

So let's get through it together. Go ahead, reach out to us if you need to. I also wanted to go through and point out any potential obstacles that I think might keep you stuck and prevent you from moving on in the program. So the first potential pitfall you might come across as overthinking it. Well, I want you to take a little time to work on this exercise. Please don't take it so seriously that you get held up with it.

Just answer the questions as well as you can given what you know right now in your life. Go with your first answer and move on. Remember that this is just a baseline. We're going to be working on this plan throughout the program so it's going to change no matter what. The other pitfall but I want you to be aware of and to avoid is procrastinating to not getting started at all. This is the first exercise in the program and you might feel overwhelmed or already pressed for time.

Trust me you will be saving time and your life as you go through this program. You don't need to put this exercise off, just get started. You'll build on each exercise and by the end of the course, you're going to feel less frazzled, and you're going to have more balance in your life, I promise. Okay, so for this lessons recommended resources, I wanted to give you a couple of different books that I read about balanced having a balanced life as a working parent. And I thought that they might be helpful for you too. So if you want to dive deeper, this is an opportunity for you to kind of do some extra bonus work on the side.

You don't have to. This is really just for you. If you like this lesson, if you like the topics that we're talking about here, here are some resources that you can go to if you kind of want to learn more or dive even deeper. So the first book that I wanted to recommend is I know how she does it by Laura Vander CAM This is an awesome book. It's full of tactical suggestions for managing life with kids with a demanding career travel, housekeeping and all the rest of the things that we need to do to keep our lives going. So her book is based on research.

She interviewed and then reviewed time logs from hundreds of professional moms and the way that she identified professional moms were women who were making over six figures who were married and had kids. And she believes that working parents create more of a mosaic of their time where they can fit in all of the relevant pieces in a seemingly haphazard way. But in a way, it works for each individual. So she kind of rejects this traditional idea of a nine to five job where she says, you know, we might have more flexibility these days with all the devices that we have at our disposal. So use that to your advantage. So she comes up with a lot of really creative ways to make various pieces of your working parent life fit for you.

So I just thought I'd throw that out there in case you wanted some immediately immediate help, some immediate tactics and tips. I thought it was interesting, because it kind of opened up my eyes to Hey, there might be a different way to do this. I don't just have to kind of be stuck in this. This way of being that I've been stuck in for many years. The other book that I wanted to recommend is called maxed out American moms on the brink by Katrina Alicorn. So this is a different kind of book than the one I just mentioned.

Alicorn writes about the six years after she had her first two kids. So it's kind of you know, that first, maybe five, six years of after having kids is difficult. I mean, it's really hard to adjust to life with kids, you know, you used to maybe be a really ambitious professional before you had kids and then kids gonna throw a wrench in the whole works. And it's hard to really figure out how to put all of those pieces back together or put them together in a new way. So Alcorn is she was a busy marketing executive in San Francisco. And for some of you who might know I just moved from San Francisco to San Diego so I could absolutely relate to her struggles, to long commutes, and long days and people who were you know, on 24 seven unexpected you to be on 24 seven, we had to drop everything at the moment at a moment's notice to go take care of your career.

So she was traveling a lot. She kind of just tells the story of her life where she started off thinking she could do it all. And it just kind of slowly unraveled, and I won't give away the ending. But I learned a lot of really great lessons in terms of how important life balance really is not only to people in general, but especially to working parents. you're juggling so much. And, you know, I want to help prevent that, you know, that feeling of complete overwhelm and exhaustion and frustration and impatience.

That's what this whole program is meant to do. So if you wanted to kind of just get lost in someone else's story for a while and and just relate to someone else's story and other working parents story, that was another book that I thought I'd throw out there for you guys. Okay, so that's it for now. And now that you've finished listening to this audio lesson, go ahead and download the first exercise your life balance plan, and don't forget to let us know how Going in the Facebook community we're here for you don't get stuck. You know, let us kind of walk through it with you and provide support and resources and all the rest. So I'm excited to get going with you guys.

You did it first lesson down only 11 ago and I will see you in the next lesson.