Finding balance in a chaotic life

So many jobs require a degree of multi-tasking to carry them out as efficiently as possible. Add to that juggling your work with your personal life; family, children, even pets, and you have all the ingredients for a tough time with your mental health.

There are only so many hours in the day. Filling them all with as much work and tasks at home as possible will catch up to you eventually. So, how can you find balance when you’rebeing pulled in six directions at once?

The best ways to maintain balanced mental health:

Be realistic

Setting realistic expectations is often the first step to ensure you cultivate a healthy mental outlook. It can take work; we ask a lot of ourselves and often hold ourselves to a much higher standard than we would expect from others.

This doesn’t mean you should settle for mediocrity, rather it’s about modulating how much you ask of yourself before you consider a task done.

Perfectionism is great in some areas of life, but it is often counterproductive. Knowing when something is ‘good enough’ takes skill; by reducing the weight of expectation on yourself, you alleviate stress and free up time for other activities.

Prioritise tasks

Taking stock of all the activities you carry out daily will help you to separate the most important tasks from those to delegate. Prioritising your tasks brings order to the chaos, allowing you to see through the never-ending list of jobs and tackle each one according to its importance then and there.

This is also true for your personal life. Sometimes choosing reflection, instead of action, will help to bring things into focus so you can discover what really matters to you. Time and energy are the two biggest resources we have to draw upon; learning how to apply them effectively, instead of trying to deal with everything at once, leads to a more balanced outlook and better mental health.

Ask for help

This can be hard, especially if you’re used to being on top of everything and multi-tasking your way through the day. We’ve also been conditioned to think of asking for help as a sign of weakness, but this isn’t true.

Seeking help from friends, colleagues, or family, whether it be at work to delegate tasks, or in the home to share an emotional burden is perfectly acceptable, and many people will be happy that you reached out to them for a helping hand.

If you don’t have anyone you feel you can reach out to, there are many online resources to help you find a way of unburdening yourself. Mind offer resources for every aspect of mental health and the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) offers a way to find therapists in your local area.

Don’t forget about yourself

Caring for yourself helps to maintain a more balanced outlook for your wellbeing and mental health. It’s important to make time for yourself, no matter how hectic your schedule may be.

Ensuring you get a good amount of time for rest and relaxation into your day will give you extra energy to deal with other tasks. It can seem counter-intuitive but by slowing down and engaging in hobbies, exercise, or mindful meditation, gives you the bandwidth to deal with more outside of these activities.

Going with the flow, not trying (or needing) to control every situation is a skill worth pursuing for the benefit of your mental wellbeing. Being open to change allows you to diminish the amount of stress in your life. Having a busy life usually means you need processes that are set in stone to allow you to carry out multiple tasks at once. The problem is, this strategy leads to blindness when one of these processes is no longer necessary or is needlessly convoluted.

Finding ways to embrace an attitude of adaptability and make yourself open to change allows processes to evolve over time, even the process of finding the right balance between work and home. It all helps develop a healthy attitude to maintaining mental wellbeing.

There are many resources online to help with maintaining effective mental health. If you think you could benefit from discovering more about how your mental health is affecting you, take a look at Mind UK for support and advice, the Samaritans if you need to hear a supportive, compassionate voice, or the UK Council for Psychotherapy (UKCP) to find a therapist in your area.