As someone who tries to take on more than I should, I know what it’s like to juggle many responsibilities. Keeping up with work, college, relationships, and self-care sometimes feels like a never-ending vicious cycle. While stability is something I’m striving to maintain in my life, it can be hard to stay relaxed when I’m trying to do so much. But if I’m totally honest, maybe it’s because I just don’t use my time in the right way.

Balance clearly means something new to everybody, but most of us are searching for it in one way or another. When you’re worn out and tired out, consistency appears to be the perfect solution. If you’ve been eager for harmony in your life, but you just can’t seem to make it work, here are some causes your life may feel out of balance and what you can do about it!

Why balance is a struggle

At times when I’ve said to myself, ‘I wish I had more balance in my life,’ I’ve noticed it means I’ve been slacking on a few key things. Check out these few topics and see if you can relate to any of them.

You haven’t established what balance actually means to you. If you’ve been wishing your life felt more balanced without defining what that looks like, it’s going to be difficult to achieve it. If you’ve chosen your life to be more balanced without specifying what it feels like, it’s going to be hard to do. After all, balance is different for all of us based on our responsibilities, families, interests, and careers. To set things off, why don’t you begin by identifying your thoughts and feelings about balance. Visualize what it would be like if you did. This is going to give you a much better understanding of what you should be looking for.

You haven’t really been practicing self-discipline. Even though discipline seems like the opposite of balance, it’s one of the best strategies to make you feel at the top of things. Without self-discipline, we sometimes lose time, procrastinate, and struggle to carry it through. This makes us feel stressed, guilty, and utterly unbalanced. Think of the ways you might lack self-discipline. How are you going to make tweaks in your life that can help you keep up with stuff that you normally let slide?

You’re never going to be consistent with your actions. Consistency is an important part of balance, even though it does not feel like a lot of fun. Think about it if you just ate vegetables for one week as part of a balanced food strategy, then the following week your diet was 100% McDonald’s burgers. Lack of balance in our acts is one of the reasons that your life might feel all over the place.What places of your life do you lose consistency? Try to achieve consistency around the way you take care of yourself, particularly with food, exercise, sleep, and relaxation. These areas have the most effect on your overall balance of life.

You’re not looking ahead. If you neglect to schedule out the details of your schedule, it’s easy to get distracted by what you’ve got to do. Planning is a way to ensure that you can take care of your business and take care of yourself. Although balance can sound like a go-with-the-flow kind of thing, preparation is often the only way to make it work. Build a basic overview of how your week will look, including meetings, job projects, social/relationship time, and self-care. If you’re planning these activities on your calendar, it’s better to keep on top of them through the week.

You aren’t taking proper care of yourself. With everything you might be juggling (work, relationships, home life, etc.), the most important thing is to make time for is yourself. If you don’t take enough time to do what fills your soul with your commitments, balance will always seem out of range. It’s tempting to make excuses for not having time to take care of yourself, but even five minutes is better than zero. If you exercise self-discipline, be consistent, and plan accordingly, you can find that you will focus on self-care on your schedule.

What does balance look like to you?

I hope these tips will help you find aspects of your life where you can make some positive outcomes. Start by defining balance on your own terms, then focus on self-discipline, consistency, and organization. That way, you’re going to have more time for yourself and what’s important. I would love to know what balance means to you and how you respond when life is unbalanced. Please leave a comment below!