Ep 48 - Living A Balanced Life

Feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, stressed, and burnt out can come from an off balance life. When one part of your life is taking all of your attention or energy, the rest of your life often loses out. By finding which parts of your life are going well and which parts need attention, you'll be less stressed and overwhelmed, have more energy, and more fun. I can help you find the parts of your life that need some TLC on a consultation call.

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Transcript

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito, and I'm a life coach for stressed out and anxious women who want more out of life. I'm here to help you create a life you love to live, where anxiety is holding you back. Get ready for a light hearted approach to managing anxiety through actionable steps, a lot of truth talk and inspiration to take action so you walk away feeling competent, calm and ready to live. Let's get to it.
Welcome to Episode 48. It is so good to have you here with me today. I'm recording this episode on the last day of July of 2023, which apparently is the hottest July ever on record on the whole planet. So if you are listening, when this episode airs, welcome; I hope you're staying cool and that you're safe and comfortable in this super hot summer, at least maybe for my friends in the south. And if you're listening in the future, I hope that we're really far past this dangerous heat that's been carrying on for over a month now. For some of you, I just heard that it was 47 days in a row of above 100 degrees in Texas and that is insane. But I can't really complain where I live because it's been a nice summer here in Indiana so far, but I know my friends in the South and in the Europe and in Europe aren't so lucky, so I hope you're staying cool, I hope you're staying safe. And I just want you guys to know that I put it out into the universe every single day that I know there is some brilliant mind coming up to a solution to this kind of climate change catastrophe that we're all living through because somebody somewhere is working really hard on this. And in order for this person to make magic happen, I'm going to offer some advice today on this episode, not just for the person that's going to help bring back the polar ice caps. But to each of you who are struggling to find your creativity and your energy because you're burned out at work. I don't want the person trying to save us from climate problems to be burnout at work. I want them to be inspired and creative. So we're going to talk about that today. So let's go ahead and get started.

When one part of your life is being ignored, and you're putting all of your time and energy into work, like maybe on the climate, or maybe on your business, or all of your energy into your kids any area, when you're only focusing on one area of your life, it doesn't take long before you start to feel stressed out or overwhelmed or burnt out. And when you're stressed and overwhelmed and burnt out, it doesn't take long after that for you to start feeling anxious. And in this episode, I'm going to talk about how you can find out what areas of your life might need a little extra attention and how I can help you find out how to balance things out so you're not focusing all of your energy in one place, even if you're trying to save the polar bears. So you're not killing your creativity or your energy or stressing yourself out and you actually get to enjoy your life because we're here, and the more we can enjoy our life, the more motivation we have to make it better and better and better.

So I know that for people that I work with, it's sometimes really difficult to see how overworking or feeling overwhelmed or thinking too much influences, like your thoughts or your habits and all the other different areas of your life. Especially if you're focusing on one thing that you're anxious about; maybe something like your health, or going out in public, or whatever else that might be. It might feel very focused on one particular issue. If you are working specifically on the climate, I'm just going to stick with this example, because I'm thinking on the fly. If you're only focusing on the polar bears, what about the rest of your life needs attention that could help you focus and be more productive, that could actually make you feel better about the rest of your life and better about your work. That's where we're gonna go.

So one of the tools that I use in a consultation call, even before I ever start working with someone that is really eye opening is called the wheel of life, or the life wheel. And there are lots of different versions of this tool and a lot of coaches use this. It's about a me specific thing. There are lots of different people who do this, because it's so fantastic. So I assume most coaches use this method of this because it really is that helpful and finding all of the different areas where you already feel really, really good. Because this is so important to know. And I also use this to help you see what's not going so well, that doesn't feel good. It helps us find what would have to happen for you to start feeling good in the other areas that feel pretty crummy right now. And it gives you a great starting point to know what needs attention and how to set those goals and make those changes to move you towards what you actually want. And my job as a coach is to help you get what you want.
Let's get back to the subject on hand. Okay, we were talking about consultation calls. We were talking about the wheel of life and finding out what is out of balance so that you can really accelerate the things that you want to focus on and have fun in all other areas. So this wheel, since this helps you see the areas of your life that needs some love, or some attention, it can also be really fun to come up with ways for you to give that part of your life some focus because sometimes those things fall out of balance for things that we think are more important. So we go through periods of life where certain things are definitely more important at one point in your life than another. So if you're raising a newborn baby, it's pretty important that you're focusing a lot on the baby, and maybe not so much on your business, or whatever it whatever that is for you, right? Maybe you need to focus more on your business at some point, and you need to focus less on creativity. But all of these things are all tied together. So this happened to me a while back. Not too long ago, I used to love to watercolor paint, and I'm okay at it, I'm definitely not going to be like setting up shop at an art show or anything, but I enjoy it. It's relaxing, and it's creative. And it's a really great way for me just to unwind, and to play.  I have put nearly all of my focus into building my business, and coaching for over a year now. I mean, all of my focus, very rarely is there a day where I don't stop to do something for work. So it dawned on me that I really miss painting. So this is really a long story. And I'm gonna keep it simple, but I went out and I bought some cheap canvases and some acrylic paints. And it felt so good. And my creative side just needed a new focus outside of my business. And doing this one thing has given me more space to relax and to come up with new ideas about what to make for dinner, or I've got more patience with my husband and my kids right now. This is life balance, and mine was definitely off. I also bought watercolors and I painted again, like a watercolor for the first time two days ago and it was so good. And yes, I need to practice because it's been a while. It felt amazing. Let's take this back to the idea of the wheel of life and what the heck this is, I told you a little bit about what the what wheel was, but there are a lot of different areas that the wheel covers everything on this wheel gets divided into different areas of your life that need to stay in balance, and what I can do is I can help you find what areas are flat. So I want you just a picture, maybe one of those old like covered wagon wheels, or the wheel with the spokes in it, or maybe even a bike wheel, something like that. And I want you to picture it being divided up into sections, almost like if you were to cut a pie, so you're going to divide it into different sections. Every section is the same size, because they're all equally important. And what we do is we rate these. And what we want to try and picture is if you were rating them all the way as high as they could be, everything was great, it's a 10, all of your ratings would be towards the outside of the wheel like along the tire. And if they weren't, if they weren't so great or something was like struggling or it needed more focus, or you felt like 'oh, I don't really like that part of my life', then you would think more about towards the inside of the wheel would be pulled towards the center. Your goal is to have a nice round wheel, so you don't have a flat tire. And there are different areas on this wheel that we look at. And like I said, lots of coaches do this in different ways. We all have our certain niches and things like that so we look for different areas on how, for me stress and anxiety might be causing these problems in your life to be pulled towards the center making you have a flat wheel.

So we will talk about your personal life. How is it going in your personal life? Like, how do you feel about yourself? How do you feel about what's going on around you in your like inside your person? How do you feel about your career or your job? If you're a student, sometimes I coach teenagers, how do you feel about school? Which is how do you also feel about your education? About what you're learning? And if you're an adult? How do you feel about the education that you have? What do you like to do for fun? This is an easy one. "I can't have fun right now. I've got so much work to do." Oh no, no fun, makes more like fun makes you better at your job. And I think that especially in America, we're so focused on work, work work all the time, that sometimes we push that fun to the side. How about your relationships with your family? Or your spouse or your kids? What about where you live your location of your home and maybe like your home environment? Are you safe at home? And then we can look at your health, your mental health, your physical health, even your emotional health. We can look at food we can look at exercise that all falls into health. We can look at money. This is a fun one to tackle when we coach because it's it kind of leads into like the there's always this taboo talking about money, but also the next one which is spirituality. What do you believe? Do you believe in anything? How do you feel about something bigger than yourself? Is that something that feels low for you? Is it something that feels high for you? Is it something that doesn't even matter to you? So all of these different categories of your life need to be present to have a full and round wheel, whatever that looks like for you.
So what what I do is I help people look at each area of their life and let's say "Okay, tell me what it's like for you like when you say,' I'm not smart enough to do anything.'"How do you feel about your education? What are you smart about? When you tell yourself you're not smart enough about something? How is like, what are the emotions that come up. So I talk about all of these different areas of your life with you on a consultation call, just to find out what it is inside your life that is keeping you from being less than your best. Because when the wheel is round, when you feel good about your career, you feel good about how smart you are about your education, when you go out, and you're able to have fun, you have a good relationship with the people in your life, you feel safe in your home, you like being at your home, when you are taking care of your body and eating and moving. And your mental health and your physical health and your emotional health are on track. When you feel good about spending money, and safe with your money, and about earning money. And when you believe in yourself, or you believe in a higher power, or you believe in the universe, or energy or, you know, Jesus, or Muhammad or whatever that is for you. When those things all feel balanced, then you're in a really solid place. And we start seeing more satisfaction in your life. And we see more enjoyment, and more motivation. So this is how I use that wheel of life.

So when you spend all of your attention on only one part of your life, maybe you were like me and you were only focusing on work all the time, and you didn't take time to have fun, or to be with your family, there's going to be an imbalance and it's going to cause you to stress. So when you spend all of your time playing on the flip side and you don't work, there will also be stress, just like your body where you spend your time and your energy works together. And if you're working a ton of overtime, you might think you have money. And you're really happy because you feel financially secure. But you're also miserable, because you're not having fun. Or you might think that you'll never have enough money, and you'll resent your job. So then you start to not show up or you don't do a great job, or you just get angry about it. Every part of your life shifts every other part of your life. And when you know which area needs attention, this is how the wheel is helpful. Because you can start to figure out what's keeping you from working on that one little piece of the puzzle. How do you feel about spending more of your energy on eating? Well, how do you feel about spending some of your energy on maybe a class or some sort of certification? What do you want to learn about? Maybe it's just learning online, there's so many awesome free courses out there. We also want to take a look at the emotions that come up for you. When we talk about the areas of your life that are kind of flat. How do you feel about that, when you know that going back to school makes you feel anxious or angry, we can figure out why and get to the bottom of what's going on. What is it about this particular area of your life, whether it's education or your job, or your relationships with people that make you feel a certain way?
I help people create these new boundaries on what they will and won't do. And sometimes to do new things. And sometimes to stop doing things, we have to set those boundaries and we have to find new ways of thinking. When we find ways to help you feel less anxious and stressed so that you can entertain those new ideas without closing off to what you might need to take care of, even if there's some resistance, because that's pretty normal. You have resistance there because of what you think about it, or how you feel about it. And those two things are always tied together. And it's okay to have that resistance, and also to find ways to work through it. So when you're thinking about where you think you might have a flat part of your wheel, something that's calling for your attention, I want you to take your time. And I want you to give yourself the opportunity to think about each area, especially when there's part of that wheel that you love, that feels really sad. And like things are going really, really well. Knowing what's going really well for you and appreciating it is as important, if not more important than paying attention to the things that are not going well. Knowing what you love about your life and where you can focus your thoughts to that helps you in some of that stress and resistance or that causes you anxiety is a great thing. It's what you can go to when your brain starts to overthink when your body starts to feel anxious we can refocus on this is what's working. 'This is what I love about my life.' 'I'm so grateful for these things that are working.' It's also helpful to spend some time pointing out when you have good feelings about the area that might feel really awful in your life.

So maybe you feel really gross about I just keep going back to education. Maybe you feel really gross or bad about your level of education. You're like, 'I don't know, I mean, kindergarten was amazing. And then it all fell apart.' Okay, what did you love about kindergarten? Was it that you get to play and take a nap? Was that your teacher? Was it that you got to play In a sand table? What was it that you really loved about kindergarten, if you can find areas, even in the parts of your life that feel a little flat that you like, that gives us a place to build on. We can work with that.
If you want to do this exercise with me to find out what's making you feel off balance, and this means you're really tired and burnt out, or you're stressing over things, or you're anxious about people being around you, or you're anxious about your health, or anything else, we can do that on a consultation call. I'll walk you through the different categories over the phone, and you'll get some great insight on the good parts of your life. And you'll know what could help make that wheel round again, so you're not moving around on a flat tire. And you can schedule that using the link in the show notes, or you can go to my website, it's megandevito.com and you just click the schedule a call tab.

And if you're wondering if a call is for you, I'll tell you what it's about a consultation call is to learn what's keeping you stuck, and what you're doing now to try to fix the problem. It can also help you find the real problem and the real solution because it can be really hard to see our own thoughts and habits, because we think they're normal. And we don't really hear the words that we think. Because what we think is true, isn't even if it feels true to you. It isn't really usually. So one way I help you do this on the call is by using the wheel of life, of course. And another way is just asking you lots of questions to find out what you want to feel or what you would rather do. Instead, I ask you why you think or why you do the things you do. So you can get clear on what's really going on the columns big deal, and it helps you see yourself and your thoughts more clearly. And of course, we'll always we'll talk about how I can help you get what you want, if you decide that coaching is what you want to do. So we can use the call to get a start date and a time set up and to create goals and get to work.

All right. So a quick review. When one part of your life is out of balance, all the other parts are affected. When you're out of balance, you are more tired, you're more stressed out and you're more anxious. And to feel less stressed, you have to balance the wheel and take care of your whole self. And to do that, you have to know what's not working and you also have to know what is working. You can find out what needs attention in your life on a consultation call with me. The link to schedule the call is in the show notes or it's at megandevito.com. You can go do that right now...unless you're listening to this in the car, of course, and then you can pull over and do it right now. Or you can do it when you get home. But don't forget! So I'll be back to talk to you again next week, if not sooner. Take care. 
I hope you enjoyed this episode of The More than Anxiety podcast. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And of course, if you're ready to feel more relaxed, have more energy, more confidence and a lot more fun. Go to megandevito.com/workwithme or just to the show notes to talk to me more about coaching. See you soon