The theme of April’s Stress Awareness Month, #LittleByLittle, highlights the transformative impact small positive actions can have on your overall sense of well-being. By taking manageable steps to lower your stress levels, you can make a significant improvement to your mental health.

A healthy work life balance will mean different things to different people. It’s not about dividing your time equally between your professional and personal life. It’s about discovering and managing the right balance for you at a particular time in your life. This balance is constantly shifting. What works for you when you are in your early twenties and starting out in your career may be very different from the balance you crave in your mid-thirties when you are trying to juggle the demands of work and family. You need to constantly calibrate your work life balance #LittleByLittle as you move through your 20s, 30s, 40s and 50s so you can actively manage your stress.

The Wheel of Life is a powerful tool to help you understand how to strike the right balance for you. It will encourage you to examine the eight facets of your life: business/career, money, health, friends & family, love & romance, personal development, fun & relaxation, personal & spiritual growth.  By prioritising which of these areas are most important to you at a particular time in your life, you can take practical steps to manage your bandwidth, sustain your energy and lower your stress levels. 

The Wheel of Life

Exercise:
Use the wheel of life to help you Identify the areas of your life that are most important to you:

  • Evaluate each area and give yourself a score out of 10 – ask yourself where you are now? (with 10 out of 10 being totally happy and satisfied with this area)
  • Choose one area you’d like to start working on and write down some bullet points describing what 10 out of 10 would look like to you.
  • Next, write down why it’s important to work on this area – what difference would it make to improve your score?
  • Identify the one action you could take within the next 24 hours to improve this area of your life. Then brainstorm all the possible actions you could take to help you move closer to scoring a 10 out of 10.
  • Finally, make a shortlist from all of your ideas and choose a couple of next steps you will commit to going forward.

You can then repeat this process by focusing on the next area of your life that you believe needs your attention.  I hope that Stress Awareness Month will give you the encouragement you need to make these changes #LittleByLittle so you can lead a happier, healthier and more fulfilling life.