Articles By Anne Warfield, Certified Speaking Professional

If I am so balanced, why am I off kilter?

As I sit here writing this article I have just finished burping my baby and reading stories to my 4 Ѕ year old. It seems that life is happening so fast around us that the big question today is, how do I balance it all?

Popular books taut that we should simplify our life, get rid of our clutter and go back to the basics. Easier said than done. Many of you reading this article work outside the home and juggle raising kids. This article is for you.

The following are some simple steps you can take:

1) Determine the lifestyle you want then build your career around it. This one thing has helped keep me sane. I started my business about 11 years ago and quite frankly the business drove me. About three years ago, I sat down and wrote what I wanted my life to be like—how many hours I wanted to work, what time I wanted to have dinner, how much travel I wanted to do and the income I wanted to generate. Then I started to look at how to achieve that and rebuilt the business from that angle.

2) Know the two or three things you need to do to keep yourself sane, and stick to those. For me, this means being home by 5 PM most nights and getting one hour alone time on Sunday. I stick to these as closely as possible and compromise on other things instead.

3) If you don’t enjoy doing it, figure out how to get rid of doing it. I hate cleaning. So instead of trying to come up with fun innovative ways to clean, I looked at what perks I would give up so I could put that money toward a cleaning person. Now I have a cleaning person come twice a month and I don’t have to feel guilty about not cleaning.

4) Find a way to express talents you don’t use at work. My work is a lot of mental thinking, not physical work. Gourmet cooking has become a fun thing for me to do to relax. I get to put ingredients together and see an immediate result. It is fun for the family and we often eat in the dining room to celebrate the good meal.

As you go through and create balance for yourself, please take your significant other in to perspective. Because what you do to create balance for yourself may throw the other person out of whack. For example, I find the more stressed I am the more I create lists and organize things. My husband is the exact opposite. The more stressed he is the more he shuts down and just wants to relax. Consequently we stress each other out more under stress! We have compromised by dividing duties so each person can handle them the way they want and not feel guilty.

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As the leading Outcome Strategist, Anne Warfield shows people how to present their ideas, products and services so people WANT to listen to you. Her communication formula is easy to apply and produces proven results. Fortune 500 companies around the world have utilized her expertise and her work is published around the world. She has been published in Business Week, Good Housekeeping, Forbes publications and has been featured on ABC, NBC and CBS. Anne speaks around the world about Outcome Focus™ Communication. To book Anne, contact her at 888-imp-9421 or check out her web site at www.ImpressionManagement.com. Check out her website to take the communication quiz for yourself! Books can be purchased from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble. You can also email us at contact@impressionmanagement.com.

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