Life Balance: The Seven Musical Notes to Harmonize.
Life Balance starts with Life Direction: What do you really want?
Why is it so difficult to figure out what we want? Last week, I had a small group workshop about life balance with five of the most wonderful women you could ever imagine—incredibly successful healthcare providers. However, I was shocked to realize that these amazing women sometimes had a lot of trouble figuring out what they wanted. It’s very hard to do goal achieving, if you don’t know what your goals are.
So I want to invite you today to ask yourself that question: If you ran into a fairy godmother—or into Aladdin’s Lamp’s genie, or Bill Gates on an elevator—and this magical being said, “Tell me exactly what you want and I’m going to give it to you. You have thirty seconds. Go!” What do you want? Are you ready to tell this magical being what you want?
Life Balance begins with Life Inventory: Where are you standing now?
Well, let’s talk about it; take a deep breath. Figuring out what we want starts by figuring out where we are. First let’s acknowledge that there is a fine line between wanting more, and being miserable because you’re not happy with what you have. I want first to address that it is okay to be happy where you are. This actually is the key of happiness.
And if you ever thought life balance means you have to juggle career and children and husband—struggling to keep all these balls (or knives or torches) in the air, afraid of dropping one, please stop. I want to ask you to erase that image from your mind today. We’re not going to talk about killing ourselves, trying to have it all—that’s not life balance. We’re talking about harmonizing your life [like a symphony].
Obtaining Life Balance is like Playing Music.
Imagine your life is a song, written with musical notes. You’ll never play all the musical notes at the same time all the time. You’re going to be using a few at each time. You just need to make sure that they are harmonized in each other.
That is the problem that sometimes we run into: we devote so much time to make it money that we affect our health, or we devote so much time to our career that we neglect our romantic life or our children. And instead of that, we want to use each area of life to harmonize the others. And I’m going to invite you to use the tools we learned in the Video about reconnection to start creating a clear image of what we want by taking a clear look at our lives. right now.
The Musical Notes of Life Balance.
I’m going to share with you seven areas that I consider the seven musical notes of any super woman’s life. (Actually there’s 12 notes, if you count the sharps and flats, but don’t tell anybody). We are going to address exactly where we are. [But first, an example].
An example on detecting cognitive dissonance.
And to give you an example of what we’re going to be doing, I’m going to start with health. Health is something you cannot argue everybody wants and needs.
So when [I did the exercise we’re about to do] and I took a look at the seven areas of my own life, I realized that health was out of proportion low. I scored at seven out of ten, which for anybody else would be great. But for an overachiever like me who scored a 9s and 10s everywhere else, that grade was bad. Why did I score myself at seven?
Warning: Don’t be too hard on yourself:
When you think about health, you probably think about fitness and getting in shape. That’s perfectly fine, but don’t be too harsh on yourself. As long as you’re alive, healthy and in remission from bad illnesses, give yourself at least as 6. Don’t give yourself an F.
So in this case, I gave myself a six for being alive, healthy and in [cancer] remission. [Then, I rose the grade to] a seven, because I’m not overweight and have a healthy BMI. But then [I had to admit where I’d missed the mark] “I am not really exercising—I walk on the beach every day for my pleasure, but that’s not really cardio. I don’t do any weight training, and I have to start preserving my muscle mass and my bone mass. Also, I do not eat as healthy, organic as I should and I don’t drink that much water.”
[This reflection] made me realize my cognitive dissonance. I knew better than what I was doing, especially considering I’m a cancer survivor and have to be extremely attentive to my health.
Life balance is detecting cognitive dissonance and transforming it to cognitive harmony
So, realizing that inspired me. I joined a gym and started weight training. Also, I’ve started to clean my diet from unhealthy food. So, the advantage of taking a hard look at each area of your life is that [it may lead to steps toward cognitive harmony].
Okay. Here are the Promised Musical Notes.
Ready? These are the musical notes to harmonize for Life Balance
1-Health
So I already told you area number one health, please go ahead and rate yourself from one to 10. What grade would you give yourself? ([If you need help], at the end we’ll give you a few hints of how to do it).
2-4 Relationships.
And I’m going to clarify here that there are three different aspects here. So I’m going to call these areas two, three, and four. [And it pertains to the two main] different type of love: Eros and Agape.
Eros:
Eros is romantic love, passionate love, relationships with your significant other. But before anyone protests, claiming that [ seeking romantic love] is not feminist, [allow me to clarify]. Everybody needs that type of passionately love in their lives. And if you choose not to have a romantic partner is okay, but you just need to make sure that that this area of your life is being fulfilled by a passion— something you’re passionate about, a mission in life, something that really drives you.
Agape:
Agape is the type of love we have for a relative, such as children are brothers and sisters. I go ahead and divide that in two subtypes because [they’re slightly different].
Agape type 1 (or regular Agape):
Here I place the love for my children, [relatives, clients, students] when I am the nurturer and they are the receiver of love.
Agape type 2 (Sisterhood Love)
I have a different category for sisterhood type of love. And this is not only for my biological sisters, but also my girlfriends, the girls from my support group, they, and some of my clients—the women I love in my life. In this type of relationship, I am the supporter and the nurturer half the time, but the other half of the time, I am the one who’s receiving the nurturing.
And that is something, every woman needs. Trust me, your children [and other people you nurture] will appreciate it. Your significant other will appreciate it even nore, because we don’t want our man to feel obligated to take us to manicures and pedicures and to go shopping in the mall. We want to have that source of love in our lives, our sisters, because that frees our significant others from that [obligation].
Now it’s your turn: Score yourself. Take a look at those hree areas of your life regarding love. Eros (romantic lovenor a passion) Agape (your relatives, your children) and your sisterhoods, (biological or not, the girlfriends in your life.) How do you score yourself in those three areas?
5-6 Career and Money
I separate career and money because what fulfills us, gives us purpose and allows us to contribute to the world—our career —may not necessarily be what brings us money. The money may is something different, like your investments, or the day job that allows you to follow your passion in the evenings, or other different ways that you bring money into it, your life.
So I encourage you to look at those two different areas of your life. How happy are you with your career, your mission, what you were born to do for the world, your contribution? Versus how happy you are with your finances?
7- Spirituality.
And then, life area number seven is spirituality and growth. And I left it for the end because it’s really the number one, the most important; that one feeds everything else. And if we tended only to that one, everything else will get better. For some people, that is religion; and for other people, that is a more vague spirituality. And for some other people, that is self-help, growth and personal development.
A variant of #7: Art that becomes religious experience
For some people, this area overlaps with Eros and passion in the form of art: your creativity [is a gateway to the Divinity].
Life Balance Inventory
So I want you to take a hard look at these seven areas of your life. That’s because by figuring out exactly where you are, we are going to figure out what’s missing.
What’s the area of your life you’re so happy with you can celebrate every day? Which area needs improvement? Where is the gap that needs to be filled?
And that takes us to the homework for next video.
Homework: Life Balance Inventory gone deeper
You’re going to take those seven areas that we talked about, and you’re going to score them by going deep. You’re not going to score them with your brain; you’re going to score them with your heart. How? By using the exercise of Reading the Thermostat.
Step 1- Reading the thermostat:
In this exercise, we close our eyes and imagine that our body holds four compartments: Joy, Sadness, Fear and Regret. Inside of sadness, I include shame and guilt. We’re going to imagine/feel those compartments in different areas of the body, (where you feel them) and then we’ll score each one of them and realize which one is the dominant in our lives. After getting in touch with those feelings, ask yourself, “what is the real score I am giving to this particular area of my life?”
Step 2-The Truth Serum
After you have done that for all seven areas, take the two areas that scored the lowest and apply to them the exercise of the truth serum.
To refresh your memory, the truth serum is the exercise we did in the previous video. Here, you’ll imagine you drank a magical potion that doesn’t allow you to lie; and you have to say exactly, what’s in your mind—no filters. Then [take a page on your journal] and write: “The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” And go to town.
Pour onto the page exactly what is going on in that area of your life. What makes you happy about it, what makes you sad, what makes you angry? Do you have any regrets? Is there any guilt or shame associated with this area of your life?
Step 3- Decide what needs to change.
And then when you are done with those two areas, [I recommend you watch the video about Clarity]. There, we use this map of where we are in our lives to bridge the gap [to where we want to be]—to really clarify what we want. Then it will be time to attack, any blocks that we have in our life to manifest this.
Closing Words:
I never have enough time to tell you everything I wish I could tell you. Please feel free to comment in this video. I would love it if you could share it with people you love. Please re- post, share it, and comment.
And please. If you need help with this exercise or any other of your life, let me know. I am offering clarity sessions. Those are free-of-charge, one-hour long sessions where we explore all those those areas of your life. That helps you decide what you want and whether I can help you.
Thank you so much, girls. I can’t wait for the next video and I’ll see you soon. Bye .
If you’re just joining us today
Hi, I’m Dr. Diely Pichardo-Johansson, Board certified physician, life coach and author of eleven books. I’m also happily married wife to my soul mate and mother of four children, including kids with special needs and a cancer survivor. The topic of this video series is self- re-invention and none of those multiple titles will tell you that, but I happen to have a PhD or honorary degree on self-reinvention. Starting from moving to a different country and starting a new life to finding my soulmate against all prognosis when I was a divorced mother of four, including kids with special needs. To most recently being an oncologist who became a cancer patient and using that not to destroy me, but to inspire me to find out, what I really wanted to do with my life in this fulfilling career as life coach.
If you’re just joining us today, don’t worry. Every video is designed to be self-supported, so you can learn something from it, even if you didn’t watch the previous ones.
But to refresh your memory.
In video number zero or “A love letter to all super women in the world.” I introduced myself and told you a little bit about my story as a divorced mother of four children, including kids with special needs, who re-invented herself by finding her soulmate. And about my most recent self-reinvention: quitting the career of oncology to become a life coach.
In video, number one, we talked about our ability to reconnect with ourselves and with our own truth.
In video number two, we talked about crystal clarity: how to know exactly what you want.
And in video number three, we talked about removing blocks to success.
Check the #1 Amazon Bestseller Bouncing Back: A How-to Manual for Joy with Minimal Energy expenditure
