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10 Tips for Living a Balanced Life

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Pure Life Adventure’s field guide, Rachael Albright, shares her “Thoughts From the Field” on how to live a balanced life.  With knowledge, wisdom, and passion, our talented guide team forms the backbone of our program as they work tirelessly to help our students.

Maintaining a well-balanced life is not always easy. Responsibilities pull us in all directions and we compensate by making sacrifices. Balancing what we want to do with what we need to do is tricky, but ultimately, balance leads to a healthier life.

10 Tips For Restoring Balance In Your Life

Leading a balanced life means taking care of physical, mental and emotional health. When these areas are in sync, we reduce our stress, improve our relationships, and live invigorating, happy lives.

Here are 10 tips for restoring balance in your life:

Wake With The Sun

According to a study by the University of Toronto, a dose of Vitamin D in the morning helps elevate your mood. Early risers report increased levels of happiness and productivity throughout the day compared to snoozers. Consider taking a few moments on your patio to bask in the morning light, or take time to open your blinds or curtains and let the vitamin D pour into your home.

Acknowledge

What areas in your life are you focusing too much or too little on? What is drawing your attention? Acknowledge in what areas of life you’re spending the most time on, and seek to reset the scale and priorities. If you’re having trouble noticing where your time is spent, keep a journal of daily activities and review your entries after a few weeks.

Reflect

Studies show journaling is a great tool to help gain control over emotions, and help manage stress, depression, and anxiety. Journaling helps prioritize thoughts, goals, and hopes, and can help us recognize patterns of negativity. As a form of meditation, journaling is not about tuning out, but tuning in for a greater sense of awareness.  Awareness helps us to feel centered and calm regardless of circumstance.

Empower

Believe that in this very moment, you are enough. Stop the self-sabotage and start the self-love and support. Mental models are the core belief systems that define our personal realities.  Get to know what mental models you have constructed and reprogram them to be positive influences in your life. Instead of “I’m not smart enough” think “I have so much intellectual potential”. Changing mental models is the single most powerful thing you can do to change your life. 

Gardening

Get to know your green thumb. Gardening is shown to reduce stress, improve brain function, and promote relaxation through sights, smells, sounds, and tastes. Gardeners tend to eat more fruits and veggies than non-gardeners because of their accessibility. Having a home garden promotes organic, local, and seasonal eating. Even those limited on space or living in an apartment can garden in containers or other small ways.

Spend Time In Nature

We spend most of our time indoors, detached from the natural world. Stanford University studies show that a 90-minute walk in nature helps reduce rumination (a pattern of negative thoughts about oneself). Thus, unplugging in nature may help one have a healthier self-image and practice self-love. Engage the senses and observe how your body, mind and soul feel in the power of nature.

Reduce Clutter

Studies show that excessive clutter overloads our minds with stimuli, making us anxious and unable to relax physically or mentally because it signals there is always work to be done. Clutter-free environments lead to a clutter-free and focused mind.

Exercise

Exercise is shown to release endorphins good for our body, mind, and soul. Experts say it takes around 21 days to form a habit. Need inspiration? Here are some links: Yoga, Running, Strength Building

Laugh

The Mayo Clinic credits laughter as one of the best stress-busters around. Giggling boosts our immunity and infection-fighting antibodies making us more resilient to disease. The endorphins released by laughter promote a general feeling of wellness and can help diminish short-term pain.

Unplug At Night

Harvard University links a disruption in our circadian rhythm (biological clock) to artificial light at night. Research shows blue wavelengths after dark, like the screens on our phones, tablets and computers to be the most disruptive. Exposure to light suppresses the secretion of melatonin, making us more susceptible to illnesses. Limit technology use before bedtime giving your body and mind the rest they need to wake refreshed and well-rested.

4 Benefits Of Living A Balanced Life

The term “living a balanced life” is thrown around a lot in the health community. Whether it’s a self-help website, an article in a magazine, or possibly even a therapy session, odds are you have heard the concept of living a balanced life come up.  But why does it really matter? There are actually quite a few good reasons you’ll want to seriously consider living a more balanced life.

Improved Health

Constant stress and fatigue can do a number on our health and immunity.  If we are constantly putting our bodies in high stress situations, they will be working on overdrive. Heightened levels of stress can worsen symptoms of known medical conditions, as well as put you at a risk to abuse substances as you try to manage pain, stress, and fatigue. If you can create balance and bring overall stress levels down, you will get better sleep, have improved moods, have less muscle tension, an improved immune system, and possible weight loss.

Improved Personal Relationships

When our life is in a constant state of chaos, it is hard to allow room for anything outside of our survival needs. An incredible benefit of balancing your life and priorities is the ability to build and improve personal relationships. Reducing stress and chaos will help to improve your overall mood and energy levels. When we feel well emotionally, mentally, and physically, it allows space for us to share our love and kindness with others.

Freedom

Have you ever felt like a slave to your work schedule, school courses or household chores? When things are out of balance, we find ourselves constantly trying to prevent the next ball from dropping rather than enjoying life. By creating a balance in work, school, leisure, and goals you’ll allow yourself the freedom to choose what to focus on.

Self-Care

Living a balanced life provides you with the opportunity to more easily and quickly see when a problem arises.  When in survival mode, it becomes increasingly difficult to notice when your mental health or physical health needs tending to. A life of structure, organization, and calmness will allow for you to more easily recognize when extra care or attention is needed mentally, emotionally, or physically. It will also allow you the freedom and extra time to tend to those needs.

Lasting Change For Young Adults

A balanced life is a simplified way of saying that you are taking time to consciously focus, improve and appropriately care for your mental, emotional, and physical needs.  When learning how to live a balanced life, often we are implementing skills and concepts that are intended to positively impact the rest of our lives. We don’t want to live a balanced life just right now; we want to understand the process and steps of how to live a balanced life that will bring lasting change.

In order to create lasting change in young adults, it may be necessary to focus on specific aspects of life one at a time. For instance, substance abuse may require an initial assessment on physical needs, whereas others dealing with anxiety and depression may need to address their mental needs first.

Pure Life Adventure is committed to helping young adults sort through the chaos of life so we can help heal and teach healthy coping techniques, while also teaching long-lasting life skills so young adults can be successful, confident, and excited to continue living an independent life. While many young adults seek out gap year programs to delay the start of adult responsibilities, utilizing a wilderness adventure program during that gap year will allow them to see the world while also acquiring valuable skills.

To learn more about how Pure Life Adventure’s Adventure Therapy program can help your young adult combat the pressures of adult life, mental illness, and more, download our whitepaper “Lasting Change For Young Adults With Adventure Therapy”.

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