3 Way to Create Structure in Your Life
Sometimes, life can feel like it’s just passing through you. As if someone else is behind the steering wheel or you are on auto-pilot. Either way, the message and feeling is clear: you have no control. One of the causes of this is the lack of balance in your life. And as we’re moving into the month of May, we wanted to step into this new topic of discussion: ‘Balance’. We’ll be delving into what it is, why it is absent for some and of course, how to get closer to it.
To start off, we wanted to talk about one of the ways to achieve balance and that is structure! Let’s start with the first:
1) Creating Structure
Putting a structure onto your life is a good step to taking back control. When life has no structure, it will feel aimless and even meaningless. Does your life have structure? if you’re constantly bored and asking yourself what to do next, then it’s a sure sign that your daily life needs more shape. Though ‘structure’ can sound intimidating, it simply means planning out your day. This means, your hours of the day needs an imposed purpose and function. No worries, it doesn’t have to be meticulous! It just has to be allocated to a particular activity (even passive ones like leisure). If the majority of your day is for your profession, then maybe your late afternoons can be for exercising, your nights for your passion projects, your weekends for going out with friends and family. What matters most is plan out your days and have a balance of time for your profession and yourself.
2) Define Your Ideal Day
What does your ideal day look like? Is it more about what how much you have done or avoided certain things? either way, they are both valid personal achievements. For e.g. setting yourself a goal of reading 20 pages a day is good and limiting yourself to 2 hours of internet browsing is equally valid. Whether the action is small or big, the point is that something is achieved. And that alone will create progress and meaning into our lives. In short, setting a checklist for yourself is a useful tool for making your day feel worthwhile and meaningful.
3) Stick to It
To truly make a difference, you got to have discipline and stick to it. Don’t make this structure a mere phase in your life. Because once this structure is committed to, it can become almost habitual and can create a new life and identity.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be talking about other concepts that relate to balance like ‘Ikigai’, ‘Wheel of Life’ and etc. Stay tuned!