One of the biggest struggles in motherhood is how to create balance in your life.  Between being a mom, maintaining a healthy marriage, excelling at work, and staying on top of your health, fitness, friendships, and more, it’s a lot to manage.

How do we do it all and how do we do it well?  

It’s a common fallacy, especially among women, that in order to create balance in our lives, we need to be able to efficiently manage all these aspects of our lives perfectly with equal grace, importance, and time dedicated to each.

But creating a balanced life doesn’t mean being able to “do it all” and balance can’t be achieved through time management hacks that teach us how to squeeze more “doing” into our days.  In fact, it’s quite the opposite.

In this post, we explore what it means to create balance in your life, how to take a step back from trying to “do it all”, and the 5-minute practices you can use to help create balance for yourself in less than 30 minutes a day.

Related:  “Mama, You Can’t Do It All: How to Let Go of What No Longer Serves You”

What does it mean to create balance?

It’s natural to want to excel in all your different roles in life (i.e. mom, wife, friend, employee, etc) and to fall victim to the mentality that you need to “do all the things” and constantly hustle in order to juggle it all.  

But what if you gave yourself permission to not “do all the things”?  What if instead, you took a step back to examine your personal values, so you could refocus your time and energy on what matters most to you?

That’s why creating balance in life is going to look different for everyone.  First, you must define what balance truly means for you, starting with assessing your values and what is most important to you in your current season of life.  

Once you understand your priorities, you create balance through the ongoing process of making intentional choices about how you use your time and energy in a way that reflects what you value most.  

Related:  “Are You Making Time for What Matters Most in Life?”

Why is it important to create balance?

Creating a balanced life allows you to feel confident that your actions and decisions are in alignment with what matters most to you.

This is important because when you feel balanced, you also feel more calm, grounded, clear-headed, and content in life.  Consequently, this leads to a healthier mindset, less overwhelm, and a greater peace of mind and sense of overall well-being.

Furthermore, when you create balance in your life, you have a far greater capacity for productivity when it comes to attaining your goals and maintaining focus on the actions, routines, and habits that help you move forward in a meaningful way.  This ensures your growth as an individual.

Related:  “Why You Should NOT Focus On Your Goals (but these 3 things instead)”

How can we create balance?

We all wear many different hats with varying responsibilities, values, dreams, and aspirations.  At the end of the day, we all want different things out of life. Thus, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to create balance in your life.

However, the common thread is that if you can properly assess where your priorities lie, then you can work to create balance for yourself through intentional choices and purposeful action towards those elements that hold the greatest significance in your life, rather than trying to do it all.  

Create Balance in Under 30 Minutes a Day

Spending just 5 minutes daily on each of these practices below can help you maintain focus on your priorities and create balance in less than 30 minutes a day.

1.) Setting daily intentions

Each morning, take 5 minutes to set your intentions for the day.  Think of your intentions as your commitments to your priorities.  Your daily intention is how you want to be and feel throughout your day.

Setting an intention that reflects your priorities has the effect of making you continuously draw your focus and mind back to it throughout the day.  Thus you are more likely to get what you want out of each day. 

Related:  “What You Need To Know About Setting Daily Intentions”

2.) Planning your day

After setting your daily intentions, it’s a good idea to spend some time planning your day.  Simply take 5 minutes to do a big brain dump of what you need to do that day and then organize your tasks in an order that reflects their importance.  

Once you get the thoughts out of your head and into a game plan that accounts for your priorities, you can go about your day feeling in control and confident that your day’s itinerary will focus your time and energy accordingly.

Related:  “How to Plan Your Week to be Productive (9 tips that really work)”

3.) Checking in with yourself

Whether you set aside 5 minutes in the middle of the day or break it up into intervals at different times throughout the day, make it a point to check in with yourself.

Consider how your choices are aligning with your daily intention and if you’re successfully sticking to your day’s plan or what you can do to get yourself back on track. 

This is not to judge or beat yourself up if you’re falling short.  Rather, the idea is to self-reflect and draw yourself back to your priorities in an effort to keep your focus where you had decided you wanted it.

Sometimes you may decide you need to shift gears altogether and that’s perfectly okay too.

Related:  “10 Major Benefits of Self Reflection (+ FREE Questions to Get Started Today)”

4.) Practicing mindfulness

Each day, spend 5 minutes practicing mindfulness in some way.   Mindfulness is simply noticing and accepting what is going on in the present moment without judgment. This cultivates more calm and intentionality within you and helps you focus on what matters most as you go about your day.

You can practice mindfulness in a variety of ways including traditional meditation, sitting quietly in stillness for a few minutes, taking a few deep breaths, or anything else that helps you recenter during the busyness of your daily routine.

Related:  “The Unique Ways Being Mindful Matters for Moms”

5.) Winding down

If you don’t currently have a wind down routine at the end of each day, it’s important to create one.  This means giving yourself some time to decompress from your day before going to bed and doing it all over again.

Allow yourself 5 minutes (or more!) to engage in a self-care activity that relaxes you and acts as a boundary between your personal time and the responsibilities of your daily life.  This could be as simple as a nightly ritual of taking a shower before getting into bed or listening to a relaxing playlist as you prep dinner.

Just like checking in with yourself throughout the day, this allows you to reflect on your day and assess if you need to re-adjust how you’re spending your time and energy going forward.  

Related:  “Fall in Love with Taking Care of Yourself”

Are you ready to create balance in your life?

A “balanced life” is not a life in which you figure out how to “do it all”.  Rather, you learn to confidently maximize your time and energy towards what matters most to you on a consistent basis.

Through a little self-reflection, you should be able to define your priorities and what creating balance means for you, and then engage in the ongoing process of making intentional choices that reflect what’s important to you each day.

Did you like this post?  You might enjoy these as well:

Mama, You Can’t Do It All: How to Let Go of What No Longer Serves You

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