2015 – A year of balance

At the beginning of this year, inspired by Sahaj Kohli, I chose the theme of balance for the year ahead. The idea of choosing a theme rather than making resolutions really appealed to me. Specific resolutions are, lets face it, almost always broken and usually focus on depriving ourselves of something. Setting a theme felt more like a vision for how I’d like my year to be. A theme also leaves space for the year to unfold and, as it does, to uncover different ways for that vision to be realised – in the form of things you may not have come up with on the 1^st of January.

Why balance?

2014 was an incredible year for me involving getting married, exploring Japan on our honeymoon, my husband being made redundant then finding a great new job, and an epic holiday in the USA. It followed another huge year in 2013 involving buying a house, planning the wedding, and starting a new job after 5 years in my previous one.

These were all positive, exciting things, but they also involved stresses and anxieties, and lot of energy and planning. By the time 2015 came along I was pretty exhausted and needed to settle for a while into our new life after all these changes. I wanted to balance the excitement with some calmness, the busyness with some down-time, the tiring commute with some energy, and evenings of collapsing in a heap on the sofa with some quality time outside of work.

What did balance look like?

I didn’t have a clear idea in my head at the beginning of the year as to what I would do to realise my vision of a balanced life, but here are some of the things I incorporated as the year progressed:

• A couple of online courses to do on the train, to maximise the time on my long commute.
• One of these courses was ‘positive psychology’ where I learnt about the science behind positivity and ways to change my mindset when I get lost in low moods.
• An 8-week yoga therapy course for the mind, to take care of myself and reconnect with my body.
• Finding a yoga class that I love, right around the corner from my office (after a year or so of trying a series of big central London classes that really didn’t work for me).
• Starting and maintaining a regular yoga self-practice at home.
• Planning my evenings out with friends so they coincided with the following day working from home, to help manage my energy.
• Researching, registering and finally beginning my yoga teacher training course, aiming to build a balanced life in the long-term by combining my office-based day job with yoga teaching for a more holistic approach to my career.

So did I achieve balance?

Well, like I said, I set balance as a theme rather than a resolution. I’m not convinced you can ever ‘achieve’ something like balance – it’s more of an on-going process, a conscious movement towards a vision. What I achieved was the ability to prioritise things that make me feel balanced. There’s certainly more I could do to create balance in my life. The things that come to mind are more time in nature, reducing the hours I spend in my office job, more date nights with my husband, and seeing more of my close friends. So those are a few things for me to bear in mind in 2016. But I’ll be choosing a new theme for the coming year. I haven’t quite decided what it will be yet – I will wait until New Year’s Day and choose my theme then.

What word comes to your mind when you think about a vision for the New Year? I’d love to know how you get on if you try this for 2016.