It’s much more challenging to spend the time, energy and money creating a different reality: a life that you know you really want, but for whatever reason just seems too hard to get.
With a handful of experts to help make the first steps towards your ideal re-invention a little smoother, here’s a starter guide to help you create the life you desire.
MIND
Finding balance
If you think “finding balance” is about squeezing as much as possible into every day, think again.
There’s a lot of emphasis today on having a balanced life, and the concept is really failing people, says professional coaching consultant Belinda Corcoran.
“Telling someone to find balance without offering them practical tools to do that can lead to disaster. Often, what people hear is that they should be doing more; they should be able to work long hours, spend quality time with their family and friends, work out, play with the dog and spend time on a hobby, every day – if they don’t achieve all that, they’re a failure.
"In reality, however, if people do try to fit it all in, they usually end up overworked and exhausted, with little time to actually enjoy life.”
Corcoran says that when people want to overhaul their life, she usually takes them through her five-step process so they can actually achieve and enjoy what they’re trying to create. “Once they know the process they can use it for the rest of their life, because finding balance is a constant process as our needs and wants change,” she says.
Step by step
1. Recognition: Before you can make any changes, you
need to be clear about what life balance means to you. Life balance will mean something different to everyone and it’s necessary to be really honest about what’s important
to you at this stage in your life.
If it’s
getting into shape, that has to be at the top of your list. If it’s strengthening your relationship with your partner or spending quality time with your kids, that has to be your focus. Establishing your priorities is important because it will help you to manage your time.
2. Evaluate: Again, it’s important to be honest. This
step is about looking at where and how you spend your time and energy. It’s helpful to
observe and write down how you spend your time for a few days.
Pay particular attention to how much time you spend in front of the television, on Facebook or engaging in mindless chatter by the water cooler.
We all have the same amount of time. Where we invest it is how we differ.
3. Question: It’s easy to fall into the trap of yearning for society’s accepted goals when they’re not really your own.
“Some of my 'successful' clients have mourned spending a huge chunk of their life climbing the corporate ladder, only to realise it’s not actually what brings them joy,” says Corcoran.
“It’s a scary journey to forge your own path and not follow the crowd, but ultimately only you can live your life and it’s your responsibility to craft it how you want it. At this stage in the
re-invention process you need to be really clear about where you want to be, how you want your life to look, what’s irrelevant in your life and what your ‘musts’ are.”
4. Plan: It’s pointless just to wish for something, hoping it materialises ‘one day’. You need to formulate a plan of action to reach your goals.
If your priority is to spend more quality time with your kids, be clear about how to do that. It may mean you can spend only a few extra hours with them on weekends, but make sure you spend the time doing something meaningful, not watching television or being on the computer in the next room.
Planning often involves negotiating with others so that everyone and everything can support you to reach your goal.
5. Time: Achieving balance involves reviewing where you’re going in your life. Priorities change and you need to regularly make time to reassess your life.
“Re-inventing your life isn’t easy. It requires getting out of your comfort zone and making changes,” says Corcoran.
“An important aspect of the process is understanding that when you make a change to one area of your life, every other area is affected. If you choose to develop your career, you have to take time from another area of your life.
"When you acknowledge that, you can let go of guilt and pressure and be more confident in your goals. To achieve balance you need to live in the moment and enjoy life. Don’t always focus on what you have to do; engage fully in what you’re doing right now.”
FITNESS
Positive mind-set
Visualise the healthy body you want, one that feels good and enables you to move through life with ease.
If you’re one of the majority of people who are trying to tone up or get fit, it’s likely you’ve already tried a variety of exercise programs and many of the fad diets, says personal trainer Dan Clay.
“You probably know from experience that these diets don’t work and many of the exercise programs are just not suitable for the average person who is busy juggling their time and finances,” Clay says.
“In my experience, the only way to achieve a healthy, fit body is to focus on the basics: healthy eating, resistance training and cardiovascular exercise.”
According to Clay, his constant mantra is: “No matter how hard you train, you cannot out-train a poor diet.”
“Unless you have a specific health concern, there is no secret key to healthy eating,” he says.
“Eat well proportioned, regular meals that mainly consist of fruits and vegetables, with moderate amounts of wholegrains, nuts, olive oil and lean meats, and you’re on the right track.
"Keep your hydration levels up with plenty of water and steer clear of soft drinks. Eating at regular intervals (every three hours) will keep your metabolism burning strong throughout the day. You’re also less likely to binge on unhealthy foods.”
According to Clay, if you really want to boost your energy levels and lose weight, focus on foods that are low on the Glycaemic impact Index (GI). Put simply, the GI tells you whether the carbohydrate in a food is fast- or slow-releasing.
To keep your body working well throughout your life, resistance training is a must.
“This will maintain your muscle mass and strength throughout your midlife years and reduce the likelihood of fat accumulation,” says Clay.
“Resistance exercise involves those with an anaerobic effect (burning fuel without oxygen), where you use muscular strength to work against a resistant load. The most common exercises either involve lifting an actual weight or using your own body weight.”
Clay suggests that if time is tight, focus on large compound exercises, such as squats, push-ups, lunges and stomach crunches, that simultaneously engage more than one muscle group. Train your whole body every workout and have 48 hours rest between sessions to let your body recover.
Cardiovascular or aerobic training (burning fuel with oxygen) should follow your resistance workout. This type of exercise helps you maintain weight, increases your lung capacity, keeps your heart healthy and reduces stress.
Try interval training, which, put simply, is short bursts of high-intensity exercise alternated with periods of rest, and repeated several times.
“The great thing about interval training is it will speed up your workout so you’ll get more done in a shorter length of time, plus you’ll burn more calories than you would from performing endurance-type exercises,” says Clay.
When it comes to exercise, “There’s no need to spend hours at the gym”, Clay says.
“You can simply get creative with your environment. Every city park, beach and coastal walk has benches, circuit stations, kids’ playgrounds and picnic tables that you can train on. A 20-minute body-weight circuit followed by 15 minutes of high-intensity cardio, three times a week, is more than enough to increase fitness and tone and lose any unwanted weight.”
When starting out on a fitness regimen, it’s important to have your end goal in mind. Write down your goal and set yourself a time frame; refer to these every day. Make sure your goal is realistic to achieve but tough enough to make you work hard.
Every time you reach a goal, set a new goal and time frame. This will keep you motivated and help you
maintain your results.
Having a positive mind-set will assist you to achieve your fitness goals. You are what you think you are.
Visualise yourself walking around looking and feeling exactly how you’d like to, then take the necessary action to make that a reality.
“Every time you look in the mirror, visualise what you want to look like and ask yourself what you’re going to do today to become that person,” says Clay.
“Things may not always go your way – getting into shape can be tough. If you think it’s too hard, you’ve already lost the battle. Stay positive and focused and you’ll succeed.”
For further guidance on compound exercises, visit ABC of Fitness. Consult your doctor or qualified health practitioner before commencing any exercise.
NUTRITION
Healthy eating
Simple tips and ground rules can help you overhaul your diet and leave you feeling light and energised.
If your diet is in serious need of an overhaul, nutritionist Janella Purcell recommends consulting a practitioner who really knows about wholefoods, where to shop and how to prepare fast, nutritious meals.
Purcell advises finding out what are
the best foods for your lifestyle, particularly if you’re exercising more, and eating in moderation. And don’t deprive yourself of food, as doing so will only lead to bingeing and attendant self-loathing.
Eat nutritious, healthy food that you enjoy and you’ll be able to maintain an optimum diet and improved health.
The ground rule for choosing healthy food is to keep it whole. Anything refined, processed or modified from its original form won’t contain as many nutrients. Eating seasonally is important too.
Buying grapes imported from Bangladesh isn’t doing anyone any favours. Shopping at local growers (markets and/or organic) means you’re helping the environment, your health and our farmers.
Purcell suggests that if you find yourself continually working late and arriving home ravenous, you can adopt some simple changes to steer yourself away from unhealthy eating.
Prevention is preferable, so being organised is the key. If you tend to work late, a substantial afternoon snack is a smart option, as it keeps you from craving overly fatty foods when you arrive home at night.
“Make sure you have food in your
fridge that’s ready to eat, and that lasts,” says Purcell.
“Try foods such as smoked salmon, trout or marinated tofu; pesto, hummus, olive tapenade or tahini dressing; roasted vegies, including pumpkin, kumera, mushrooms, beetroot, zucchini and corn; fetta and other goat’s cheeses; and green leafy vegetables such as wild rocket, baby spinach, witlof, radicchio, shaved fennel or endive.
"Make a quick salad or top a spelt cracker or mountain bread with some of those suggestions. Instant miso soup is always great in the evening, too. Avoid refined white carbohydrates, including pasta, rice, bread, noodles and crackers.”
A common food trap is eating when hungry and unprepared. It’s really hard to find healthy takeaway options, as they’re usually refined white carbohydrates.
Your best bet is to think ahead. Take your lunch to work or find out where you can get a healthy wholefood meal.
A simple thing that can really transform your digestion is to eat slowly. According to Purcell, shovelling down food not properly chewed is one of the worst things you can do for your health.
Digestion starts in your mouth, then the transformation and transportation of food happens in your stomach/spleen. Food must be thoroughly chewed before it gets to your stomach, or it won’t be assimilated and will be pushed into your colon almost whole.
This can result in all types of digestive disorders. Make an effort to chew your food slowly and enjoy it.
Inner peace
Life can seem hopeless when you feel dispirited. Thankfully there are various paths you can walk to develop a
deeper spiritual life.
Living a “spiritual life” doesn’t mean just performing spiritual practices, such as yoga and meditation, says Meggan Brummer.
“When we realise that life is sacred, when we celebrate life, care for others and share whatever we have with those less fortunate than ourselves, our vision broadens and our life becomes spiritual,” she says.
According to Brummer, if we can see the Divine (or spirit) in all forms around us – in air, water, fire, trees, people and animals – we will also be able to see it in ourselves. However, the general tendency is to negate the Divine in the world and to try to ‘find’ it elsewhere.
In Sanskrit the word sadhana means spiritual practice. We’ve all experienced what it’s like to be calm and peaceful, to
have moments of stillness, but while they may otherwise occur fleetingly, daily sadhana keeps returning us to this peaceful state of mind. This eventually permeates everything we do and say, bringing focus, clarity and peace to our life.
You can’t learn any art, be it guitar playing, sewing or tennis, without consistency. Anything in life that is worth any value will take some time to cultivate. If real benefits are to be experienced from a spiritual practice, it’s important to be consistent and to perform your sadhana with a sense of honour and respect.
It’s also important to balance the spiritual work you do for yourself and for others. If you look around at those who are doing seva (unconditional service) for others but have no personal spiritual practice, their work becomes very dry.
Similarly, if you were to have a spiritual practice but not do any seva, you would quickly find that your practice would start to lack that juice, that essence, that would otherwise take you deeper.
There are many pathways to developing a deeper spiritual life. Spirit loves diversity. There isn’t just one type of fruit, one type of person or one type of animal in the world.
Similarly, there are many spiritual practices to choose from and every individual needs to find what works for them.
A spiritual practice could typically include physical yoga postures, breathing exercises, meditation, chanting, prayers and rituals, but, as Brummer says, it can be defined as “any personal practice that cultivates the expansion of consciousness; any efforts made with the body, mind and intellect, on a regular basis, that direct and inspire us towards fully realising the Divinity that we are.”
WEALTH
Financial freedom
Sensible advice for taking control of your money.
When it comes to money, many people feel a sense of disempowerment, says financial planner Susan Jackson.
“You need to make a conscious decision to take back control of your money and take responsibility for your financial future. It’s important to accept that change doesn’t happen overnight. If it took you five years to create that level of debt on your credit card, it will probably take the same time to get out of it.”
The next step is to take stock of where you’re at and identify the areas you need to focus on and the behaviours you need to change to reach your financial goals.
“Taking back control of our money often fails because we draw up the budget and list our debts, which really just tells us what we already know – we overspend,” says Jackson. “So we vow not to overspend, we’re on good behaviour for two weeks, then we revert to our usual habits. This type of behaviour can go on for years, creating an ever-increasing debt burden.”
The biggest hurdle for many people is taking control of how they spend their money. If, for example, you overspend on takeaways because you get home late at night and don’t feel like cooking, you need to find a way to change that behaviour.
Any form of spending is spending. “Whether you buy things for the house, the kids or friends, or stationery for work, don’t fool yourself – it’s still spending,” says Jackson. “If you don’t know where your money goes, keep a money diary for six weeks so you can keep track of every cent you spend.
“The spend-devil lives in all of us, and while you can never banish it completely, you can limit the damage. Always keep a list of things you need to buy, then when you feel the spend-devil taking over,
get out the list and buy something on it.
"By the time you’ve made two or three purchases, you’ve appeased the spend-devil without buying something you don’t need. And you’ve avoided those costly impulsive purchases.”
If you’re struggling with your finances or don’t know what to do with your money, consider getting professional advice.
***
SET FOR LIFE
20s
Get into the habit of saving before you get into the habit of spending.
30s
Keep debt under control and start building up some investments.
40s
650 pay packets until retirement. Get serious about financial strategies.
50s
Super is your best friend when making the transition to retirement.
60s
Start investing your retirement options well before you retire.
