How to Use Blogging to Improve your Life Balance

Today I’m going to share with you a way you can use blogging to improve your Life Balance.

You see life is really short, and if you’re not living it then what gets you up in the morning?

I started blogging a few years ago now to improve my Life Balance and was moving ahead, kicking goals and generally getting ‘shit’ done and then felt confident enough to start growing a few YouTube Channels.

Unfortunately, this action took me down another path where I was neither having a ‘Life’ or felt like I was ‘Balanced’.

I pushed too far in the one direction and now I need to recenter myself, to find my Life Balance again.

And not surprisingly I find myself turning back towards blogging as a way to feel like I’m kicking the ball in the right direction again.

Use Blogging to Improve your Life Balance

Life can’t be all work and no play and often people head down the blogging path to improve their Life Balance.

The dream is, to find a way to work from home, avoiding the lengthy commutes, and be more available for family and friends, in the hope, you can really start to enjoy the ‘ONE’ life you’ve been gifted.

However, the reality is unfortunately often a little different.

Instead of finding a life balance, you’re faced with new challenges, such as fighting your inner demons, which try to convince you that your work is ‘rubbish’ and the ever-pressing challenge of earning the level of income you may have enjoyed in corporate life.

Trust me, ‘Work’ is easy compared to wrangling these challenges, but unlike ‘Work’, if you get on top of them, you’ll find life to be more rewarding that the 9 to 5 humdrum of working towards someone else’s dreams and goals.

Yes, working for someone else is helping them to realize their dreams and not necessarily your own.

Publishing Something is Better than Nothing

One of our basic human needs is the feeling that we’re moving forward and not backward.

In fact, the moment you feel yourself ‘treading water’ is usually a sign you’ll soon be heading backward rather than forwards.

Fear is the recognizable sign you’re about to continue your journey forwards.

And fear is also the feeling that makes us so uncomfortable, so much so that we procrastinate which often leads to a feeling of standing still.

Yes, it’s a vicious cycle and if you’re not aware of what’s going on it’s easy to slip backward.

I think this happened to me as I took on the new challenges of growing a YouTube Channel. Often wondering if my work was good enough, despite the positive feedback from the community that suggests it was.

And as I’d lost focus on my blogs, I rarely published anything meaningful, most days.

Which in turn made me feel like I hadn’t achieved anything for the day, which wasn’t actually true. I’d just been working on something a lot bigger which took a little longer to complete. None the less it still gets to you after a while.

So what’s this got to do with Life Balance?

Well as a result of being down, and feeling the pressure to create something, I would often punish myself by sitting at my computer until I did, which only ever resulted in excessive surfing of the Internet for most of the day.

No playtime, no social interaction, but rather pointless website visits.

Clearly, this wasn’t constructive or even helped my long term goals in any way, so I decided to use blogging as a way to find my Life Balance again.

You see, just by completing a task for the day, such as writing and publishing a blog post, your day suddenly becomes brighter as you’ve already ticked off a goal for the day.

This then leaves you more mental energy for more creative things that help you reach your long-term goals, which may not be related to your blog, such as skills training, or even starting your own YouTube channel.

And with a piece of published content in the bag for the day, you’ll also feel less pressure when spending time with your kids or family and friends in general.

So try publishing something each day and as early as you can, to ensure you’re not holding yourself back from working on bigger things.

What about The Elephant in the Room

Another key to finding a good  Life Balance outside of the corporate world is probably the most important one you need to address, money.

Without a steady income, you’ll soon find yourself worrying about money rather than enjoying life, and when you get to this stage you might as well just return to a paid job, as it’ll certainly be easier.

Unfortunately, for me, I left the transition to blogging, much too late and felt the need for a sudden exit from corporate life to ensure I actually made the leap.

But the smart move is to start your blog while you’ve still got a steady income so you’ll have none of these financial pressures which can severely impact a good life balance.

That way you can take your time and focus on building your blog rather than looking for ways to put food on your table.

Here’s something you won’t always be told.

A good blog takes time to build, and a good blog will always make you money.

However, a crap blog can also make you money, but usually, you’re just selling hopes and dreams like someone may have sold to you.

I’d rather see you make a solid contribution to the Internet rather than chase quick dollars by trying to game the system.

But regardless of your path, a blog is still one of the best ways to improve your Life Balance, because once you’ve nailed it, you’ll realize you’ve got more time than you know what to do with it.

And it’s this combination of Time and Money that is truly the key to improving your Life Balance.

Money will keep the roof over your head and food in your tummy which are some basic physiological needs.

Whilst Time will allow you to look inwards to discover the real you that might have been lost so many years ago, which is the need for self-actualization that we all eventually strive for.

As can be seen in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs these two needs are actually at different ends of the needs pyramid, and yet a path of blogging can actually help you meet these needs over time.

If you’re ready to improve your Life Balance and think blogging might be the path forward for you then here’s some more information that’ll help you get started.

And now I’ve completed this blog post, I’ve freed up the rest of my day, to be more creative and I might even go for a long river walk or catch up with friends.

Surely I’ve earned it 🙂