On Monday, I blogged about maintaining good mental health by treating yourself well. We discussed various things we do to feel better, destress, and practice wellness.
One thing that I didn’t highlight enough was finding BALANCE.
I fully believe that balance means different things to different people. Some people are naturally more active while others are naturally less active. I’m not talking Type A personalities versus lazies, but let’s face it, some people are hares and some are turtles.
Another way to look at it is some people are racers and some people are pacers.
For instance, I tend to be a racer. I work at something and work at it hard until it’s done. My dad is the same way. Whether it takes 1 hour or 12, we work at it and work at it and work at it…sometimes regardless of exhaustion or frustration.
My mom, on the other hand, is a pacer. She’ll break down a task into manageable chunks, do some one day, feel satisfied with that, and do another piece the next day, and so on.
Over the past months, I’ve come to realize pacing is much healthier.
Seriously.
Why?
Pacing forces me to:
- Take my time
- Give the task careful consideration
- Not feel the pressure of rushing
- Improve the quality of what I’m doing
- Enjoy the process and not just the finished product
- Avoid burnout
- Appreciate growth and learning
- Feel more content
- Feel more BALANCED
So, what strategies do you use to obtain balance? How do you know when you’re unbalanced?
Check out Deb’s response to genre crushing, the Sisterhood of the Traveling Blog topic for this month. 😉
Author Laura Diamond--Lucid Dreamer 
If something is out of balance it just doesn’t feel right to me.
I can be a little of both. I end up being a racer when I’ve procrastinated (which I always kick myself for). Good tips for balance!
Balance is so elusive! Forced, it’s just dressed-up boredom. Ignored, it’s the overlooked key to health, the lack of which does you in. I tend to go from one extreme to the other in my attempts to get a firm hold on balance (impossible!), but one thing that really does help is scheduling self-care routines that I DO NOT cancel: massage every two weeks, personal trainer once/week plus two gym workouts per week, acupuncture once a month. I used to think these things were a self indulgence. Now I know better. They’re what takes me out of myself and allows me to reset my balance meter.
At work I’m a racer pacer. I try to break my day down into a few tasks and then try to get them done as quickly as possible.
I always work full steam ahead. I learned something in the last few weeks though. I worked 25 hours straight (with 4 hour nap) to return my novella edits to my editor and after I sent them I realized how much more I could have added. The second round. I still worked hard but then I waited a couple days and worked on them again. I think it helped create a better story. Sometimes it is difficult to slow down.
i firefight to try to work through my list!
I tend to work quickly too which gets things done on time but may sometimes lack attention to detail. There’s pros and cons for both I guess!
I’d like to be a pacer, but I’m a racer. Wanna get what needs to be done finished so I can do what I want. Read. Write. Eat chocolate.
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Hm. I don’t think Type As are able to pace themselves. At least, I’m not!