3 Steps to a Better Work-Life Balance
“Balance is not something you find, it’s something you create. ”
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The year is coming to an end and honestly, I love this time. We’re wrapping up Christmas celebrations, spending time with family that we don’t get to see very often, reflecting on the past year’s successes and failures, and dreaming about the year to come.
Since this time of year is one for dreaming, goal-setting, and planning and because my guess is that many of you would love to have a better work-life balance in 2023, I thought I’d use this episode to share three simple steps to creating a better work-life balance; an elegant balance. These three steps are the framework around which the entire Elegant Balance Academy (my new online course that launches soon) is built.
You can design a life you love.
A life where work, family, leisure, and rest exist harmoniously.
I want to introduce you to the Elegant Balance Academy: a step-by-step guide to creating a work-life balance you love.
Join the wait list here!
But, before we dig into those three steps, let’s define an elegant balance by breaking those two words apart – elegance and balance. Starting with elegance…
Elegance refers to the beauty of something unusually simple and effective.
Did you catch that? Simple. Effective.
If you were able to create a life where you could meet the demands from your various roles with simplicity and effectiveness, how much differently would you feel? I can say that I would feel lighter. If things were simply and effectively taken care of, it would allow me to have space to pursue the things that really matter to me. Things that light me up and make life beautiful.
Now, some of you might be skeptical about ever being able to achieve work-life balance. You’ve tried to do it all, and instead of feeling “balanced” you just feel wiped out and exhausted. So, let me explain what I mean when I use the term balance.
Balance can be defined as a condition in which different elements are in the correct proportions.
Based on this definition of balance, we don’t have to devote equal amounts of time to the various roles we hold. This is good news because it invites you to define the correct proportions for yourself. Yet, many of us haven’t taken the time to truly reflect on our ideal work-life balance, let alone taken any steps toward creating it. Instead, we are stuck in a vicious cycle of reacting to demands, whether they be from work, our spouse, our kids, or our friends, and allowing these external forces to define our work-life balance. The problem with this is that you might not like their definition of work-life balance. But not anymore! Let this year, 2023, be the year that you pursue elegance; that you define balance for yourself.
But how do I create an elegant balance?
Here’s three simple steps to do just that. I call it the 3E Framework because, you guessed it, each step starts with the letter “E”. Like I mentioned previously, the 3E Framework serves as the foundation for everything I teach in my Elegant Balance Academy course. These 3 E’s are the major steps you need to take in order to create an elegantly balanced life. They are Evaluate, Eliminate, and Elevate.
Step 1: Evaluate
The first step to creating a work-life balance you love is to evaluate your current situation. To evaluate something means “to determine the significance, worth, or condition of something by careful appraisal and study. In order to move forward, you must understand your current work-life balance. What’s working? What’s not working? You also have to take a step back and evaluate what truly matters to you. What do you want your ideal work-life balance to look like? An artist does not begin painting a masterpiece without carefully planning out the desired end result. Likewise, creating a life we love, a life that in the end we can look back on and call a masterpiece, requires careful evaluation and reflection.
Step 2: Eliminate
The second step is to eliminate anything in your life that does not help move you forward toward your desired outcome. In this step you must ruthlessly get rid of any roles or demands in your life that aren’t necessary. Are there roles that you have taken on because you felt like you “should” do them? Or maybe you’ve got a to-do list a mile long because you haven’t mastered the art of saying “no”? We must get rid of those, eliminate them completely from our lives.
Step 3: Elevate
Finally, it’s not enough just to remove all the unnecessary stuff from our lives. If you’ve followed along for awhile, you will know that I’m not one to settle for the status quo. And my guess is that I’m not alone in my desire for more. You aren’t a woman willing to settle for an “okay” work-life balance that you kinda like, but kinda don’t. If you were, you wouldn’t be here listening to this episode or joining me in this journey towards a more balanced life. And so naturally, the final step to creating a better work-life balance is to elevate. To elevate something means to raise or lift something up to a more impressive level. And so we do just that. We elevate the way we manage our time, plan our weeks, design our routines, and take care of ourselves.
And there you have it – three simple steps to creating an elegantly balanced life; evaluate, eliminate, and elevate. The steps themselves are simple enough. However, actually following through with each of them can be a bit more challenging. I hope that the resources I provide here on the Elegant Balance podcast and on my Instagram page are helpful for you as you start to think through how you can create an elegantly balanced life for yourself in 2023. However, if you would like more support and direction in terms of how to walk through these three steps, I would absolutely love to have you join me inside the Elegant Balance Academy. I’ve designed this self-paced online course to walk you through each of these steps with bite-sized lessons and accompanying worksheets to help you put what you’ve learned into practice. The course will launch soon, so make sure you join my VIP waiting list. By doing so, you’ll be the first to know about the launch and will have access to an exclusive discount! You can find the link to join in the show notes.
I hope you all have a beautiful, joy-filled week and a very happy new year!
Is a better work-life balance one of your goals this year?
I’ve created a workbook just for you!
If you’re interested in creating a work-life balance characterized by simplicity, joy, and beauty, why don’t you start by checking out my Elegant Balance Workbook? In it, I help you define what work-life balance looks like for you and share some tips on creating that balance. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it – Balance doesn’t happen by accident.
What are you waiting for?
Let’s pursue our Elegant Balance together!
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We spend a great deal of time at work. Like Annie Dillard once said, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” I encourage you to look around your office and see what steps you can take to add simple luxuries to your workday because in the grand scheme of things, they will add up and lead to a luxurious life!