‘Circle of Life Balance’ is a depiction of your life. It is only up to you what dimensions you choose inside your circle that are important to achieve balance in your everyday activities, goals, living, and dreams.
To be honest, I knew this technique but I did not know until today that it is called ‘Circle of Life Balance’. When I was thirteen years old, I had emotional turbulences (probably because of puberty). I was curious why one week I feel happy and full of energy but another one I feel under the water and sad. I did not want to get into depression or anxiety. So, I started a diary where I indicated five different aspects and I was assigning them percentages every time my mood and emotions changed. These five aspects were:
- Family
- Friends
- School
- (let’s say) Love
- Health
I chose these five because they were the only aspects I did not feel good about when something went wrong, e.g. I got a bad grade, my friend stopped speaking with me, my mum was angry, my “boyfriend” did not want to hang out with me during a break at school (it was really serious trouble!) or when I was sick. The diary looked like this:
9/10/2010
- Family 80%
- Friends 90%
- School 100%
- Love 80%
- Health 100%
19/10/2010
- Family 20%
- Friends 0%
- School 10%
- Love 0%
- Health 20%
No words, only percentages. And it was continuing for maybe five inputs and then I realised that the sequence is repeating over and over again because they were related to each other. When I got a bad grade, my mum was angry, I could not see my friends and my “boyfriend” and my health decreased because I was not happy due to the poor balance of my life.
After successfully finishing secondary school, my dimensions and priorities in life changed – I wanted to travel, build a career, be happy, meet people, and see places. I started to recognise that each of the five dimensions is hiding another one and there can be possible development and exploration, for example, that health is not “based only on poor or good grades” but also on the frequency of sport.
Nutrition came later as a priority in my life, especially due to travelling, there was no time to invest in cooking or quality food – always on the move and eating anything that somebody offers me (for survival purposes – you can imagine, for example in Italy, pizza and pasta is a lifestyle, horrible haha). During my university studies, I realised that both nutrition and grades can connect because when you do not have quality fuel in your body, your brain just does not work, and that is a scientific fact! Therefore, I started to be more cautious about what I eat, what I do, etc.
Today, one of my connections on Instagram, Sofiia Shevchuk, shared a picture of ‘Circle of Life Balance’ and she asked who knows this. I looked at it, and it was exactly the thing I was doing during my puberty times! Just with better visualisation and more dimensions inside. Of course, I was then curious about what other people have as their Circle. Therefore, I was searching on Google Images, and decided to create my current ‘Circle of Life Balance’. It was definitely interesting to evaluate each aspect that I selected inside my Circle. However, I was more surprised in a positive way about my stability in Balance growth and what are my current priorities in life.
Family and friends 👨👩👧👦
This dimension made me happy the most as currently, I do not possess any toxic relationships, and with my friends, I have really close contact that I can consider them as part of my family. But where are networks? Family & Friends dimension is my base that I secure as much as possible. Networks have for me rather the meaning of professional and self-development.
Career & Education 👩🏼🎓👩🏼💻
Career and education are related to each other, even though a career has priority over education in my life now. I am keen on life-long learning and persistent development in terms of boosting my career. I consider my fundamental academic career as already done and available to use in practice. Therefore, the continuous education is just for my self-development and upgrade of skills. Here also come Networks from these two spheres (but they can become life-long friends).
Spirituality 🧝🏼♀️
I was raised as an atheist. Therefore, I have had the freedom to choose my own belief (if some). My parents were always here to explain to me different religions, their history, impact, and rules if I asked. My father is closest to Buddhism and my mum .. let’s say.. she just does not care, she believes in herself, her energy and the energy of people around her. She is really good at spirituality balance but she never affiliated herself with any religion.
When I was discovering my own spiritual belief that I feel the most comfortable with, travelling helped me a lot. I was always open-minded to all religions and I prayed in the church, mosque, and in front of some statue (really!). Even though I think I have already gone through a lot in a spiritual sense, I feel it is not yet a closed chapter for me and I want to improve my spiritual stability (to truly believe in my belief, and not just believe – sounds funny I know).
Sometimes I am thinking that it could be much easier to be born into a country where it is clear that you should believe in God or Allah or whatever. You at least know the big guy name above you – I did not have this privilege. Although I associate spirituality with a belief that does not have a name, I am pretty lucky and happy that I had a choice to freely choose without having religious smog around me – I never had a religion class, and nobody from my closest connection was ever associated with some another belief than Buddhism.
Finances 💸
This beautiful topic that everybody is interested in but nobody wants to speak about. I am currently developing my career like all other people who decided to do their postgraduate studies. This is the poorest dimension in my Circle because I do believe that I am financially undervalued for my skills and experience, and this year will be pivotal to work on it.
emotional Health 🧘🏼♀️
For a few minutes, I was thinking if spirituality and emotional health are the same thing or not. This thinking was because of my development in meditation and yoga that started one year ago as well as Wim Hof method. Before, I would probably have only mental health aspect and put there everything connected to my thoughts. Now, I have not only spirituality but also emotional health, which is connected to emotional intelligence, balance, and empathy.
Physical Health 🏋🏼♀️
I love to move and I like to be strong because it makes me self-confident. Being a strong woman does not mean that I have bigger hands than men, it is just not really physically possible without supplements or having it as a real goal. I have been quite a shooter (as we would say in Czechia). I enjoy trying new sports because it challenges my body to discover new techniques, it opens up new perspectives, and sometimes I discover that I have muscles that I have never felt before. I like to have fun during sport because it makes me alive, full of energy, and giving me adrenaline.
Creativity 👩🏼🎨
Now, I feel that I have a lot of spare time for creativity because I finished all exams and now just waiting for the second semester to start while working. Therefore, I am enjoying it as much as possible until next week. Then this dimension will significantly decrease but it is totally fine because inspiration is not coming every day and it is healthy to have a break from time to time. Creativity means for me not only drawing but also writing, cooking, doing things with heart, and to stop the world for a while.
Home & Security 👮🏼♀️🏡
To feel comfortable and secure in my own environment is crucial, this applies not only to the house or apartment where I live but also to the political stability in a country. To be honest, I moved from London because I did not feel secure anymore as people were quite frustrated from Brexit, Covid-19 was coming, I was affiliated to the Embassy of the Czech Republic in London, ambulances everywhere, attacks at the Embassy, murders around our house – I just had to move out – symbolically to the heart of the EU. The environment at home should be harmonic, it should be the place I like to return, I can re-charge my energy, and I can be myself – colours, smells, and cleanness.
conclusion
And that’s it. I really recommend it to everyone who struggles with, we can say, anything in life because, in order to solve the problem, you need to identify it first. There are also other techniques that you can then apply to properly find the solution to your troubles or maybe like me when I was 13 to realise that this is life and ups & downs will always be. It is just important to find the balance when we feel that our Circle is falling apart.
Love ❤️
You might ask, “where is love? You had it there when you were 13 and now nothing?!” Well, I was thinking about it for a while if I really need to add it there, and then I came to the conclusion that an intimate relationship does not contribute or affect the balance of my own life (it rather disturbs sometimes) – and so far, relationship is either there or not, which is not possible to measure on a scale inside Circle. Maybe one day, when I will be ready, love will be there, and maybe not – this is also totally fine.
