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It’s all about balance!

This is one of my favorite quotes right there.
I strongly believe that we are our own masters and that we can find a teaching in many aspects of our lives. Be it in our behaviors, attitudes, beliefs and opinions amongst other things. One place where I personaly look to find much of my wisdom bits is in my everyday words as in the above quote. Your words can show you what you have to learn from them if you pay enough attention. Here, the matter is balance.

When The Avenues Don’t Meet

In fact, the above quote greatly illustrates this. Finding balance in everything I do has been, and still is, a challenge for me, and for many freelancers I am sure. This is especially true if you work in different domains that are not all interconnected with each other. I can definitely relate to that; My activities range from finishing off a wordpress custom theme in time for my last client, teaching a yoga class to bureaucrats who really need it at lunch time, going for a rehearsal with my band in the afternoon, coming back home and hopefully write an insightful post for this blog because I’m leaving for the rest of the week to play in Alberta (That actually happened last week).

Hey, I wont complain, my life is always refreshing and filled with variety. I can certainly enjoy all the shades of grey between the blissful feeling after doing Surya Namaskar and a shot of Jack Daniel’s at 2:15 am in a remote bar in High River, Alberta. I believe that things can actually work out all together as long your inner balance matches your outside balance. On the other hand, if you choose to stay oblivious to the voice inside you that asks for that very balance, that’s usually when problems start.

Define and Acknowledge the You(s)

Who are you? Most importantly, what are you?

If ask me, you are pretty much the sum of your thoughts. Oh but we will leave that for another post as there is much to say about all this. Let’s just say right now that what really matters is not really who you are but what makes you what you are. For me, it’s music, yoga, singing, designing, letting the creative juices flow, name it. Right now this is what I am, I don’t know what it will be in five years from now but I know that all these things are a part of me.

Being able to recognize and accept theses facets of you is critical when it comes to finding balance in all these avenues that make up your life and work. Even more crucial is to be open to reassess them and notice if they still fit in the portrait of your life.

Associate or Differentiate

In order to separate all the different part that make up who you are, you have to be able to focus yourself and get in the proper state of mind needed to accomplish all these various projects. You may want to avoid mixing em all up as it may not always be appropriate (Just had a weird thought of me shouting out loud some heavy vocals at my yoga students or talking php coding with my band’s fans).

Some Freelancers will find it easy to integrate several aspects of their business together like blogging and web design just like I do as these two go well together. This may not work as well if you work as a elementary school teacher from 9 to 5 and do lap dancing 3 nights a week. The idea is to judge by yourself if it’s healthy to associate or differentiate, not hiding yourself behind false identities and convice yourself you’re doing the right thing.

Let Go Or Transform

Having defined and sorted your multiple freelancing avenues, you may realize that some of the elements that you keep in your freelance life don’t really match with your core values or message anymore. Maybe you changed so much during the past couple of years that your skills don’t mean much to you anymore. Perhaps you’re trapped in a golden prison where you generate the necessary income without resulting in the desired outcome.

The letting go and transforming can occur in the same field over time. I have been teaching the drums for 7 years now. At one point I had about 23 students every week at a 18$/hr rate. It made me sick! I could barely remember the students name or where they were in their evolution. It became a job. I had to let it go and take a step back. That’s exactly what I did. Then, having reassessed my love for teaching and the commitment I chose to give to it, I got back to in a whole different fashion; I now have a few hand picked students at more than double my past rate. I liberated several hours for myself and increased substantially the quality of my teaching as well.

Stay In The Here And Now

This works all the time. Whatever it is that you do, if you do it in the present moment, it’s very likely that it makes much more sense to you to do just that. Living in the now is a huge topic in itself and for a good reason. When you experience things as they happen, without worrying about what happened two minutes ago and what might happens in five, you can relax and just be. When you are in the now, all the rest doesn’t matter, the only thing that is is now. That’s what I look for every time I give a yoga class, perform live or work on a wordpress theme and even as I am writing this post. This can truly make a huge impact on how you live your freelance life.

Are you projecting the outcome of what you do or do you really live it? Are you working on your blog with the digg frontage in mind (future) or by focusing on what’s to be done? Do you let a conflict with a client overwhelm your whole work day (past) or do you put actions in the now to change that or to move on?

How Do You Find Balance In Your Freelance Life?

Here is another very useful way to do it:
Look around you and find people who seem to have attained that balance in what may seem an eclectic freelance life. Sometimes you may be surprised how the very people you interact with everyday can have a hard time finding their own balance. Maybe you can help them then!

How do you manage all your different freelancing activities?

Zasta

Tags: Balanced Living, How to's