The Balancing Act challenge 

Balancing personal life and work priorities can be a difficulty in the 21st century with the blur between time spent on personal self and professional work.

The ability of modern technology allows us to stay in contact and get more done, however it can also mean we can find this a distraction from our personal time.

The mobile phone for example is a device that allows people to contact you when you are on the move.

Before mobile technology if your boss wanted to ask you after hours to work at late notice, they would call your home number.

Now with the mobile all the employer requires is to send a text message.

This purpose of this blog is for myself to manage my journal on balancing life and work balance.

This is a fortnight plan where I set myself personal goals and professional/work goals.

Every second day of the fourteen day challenge I will create a post reflecting on my progress so far.

My first day started yesterday I set myself some small tasks that I believed to be achievable.

I devised these goals on my mobile while on the train to work.

Day 1 - 24/02/2016

For the personal goals I set myself these four tasks for the day.

To prepare  dinner for my family	Write a small love letter for my wife	Wash plates and dishes	clean baby bottles

Our found that the goals for the day did not go as planned.

First of all when I got home I found dinner was already being made, therefore my first goal was already taken care of by somebody else.

My second goal I didn't get around to, it is easy enough to send a message saying I love my wife, but finding a pen and paper, then making the time to write it in secret I did not get the chance.

As for the plates and dishes this goal I didn't have to worry about.

Everyone at home now knew to rinse their plate and put it in the dishwasher.

Even I myself was surprised by this.

This gave me one last goal to achieve and that was to clean the baby bottles which I did without hesitation.

Therefore I can say I achieved one out of four personal goals.

Two of my goals turned out to be not so necessary because of others stepping in to help out, but I did feel bad that I did not take the time to write that love letter.

Ok now for the professional goals.

To revise sales training notes Begin application for youth allowance study	Gain another six sales by the end of the week

So I briefly skimmed over my notes that I took during training yesterday.

Hopefully this will help when I get back to work tomorrow and push to develop more sales.

The goal to gain another six sales before the end of the week I will find out tomorrow.

I did not begin my application for study youth allowance but I did speak to my partner about it.

I followed up on this goal by getting some advice from a centrelink adviser when I visited a branch today.

Overall for the first day I feel I let myself down on a personal level and professionally.

There is more I could have done yet I still had a reasonably happy day.

Day Two - 25/02/2016

Today I have taken a different angle and looked at other areas of my personal and work life that I could improve on.

For me its been a big year with a number of large obstacles.

This time last year my partner was just over a month pregnant with our first child.

I felt at the time I was doing what I could to support her, but I gave up on myself in several personal and professional factors of my life.
This put pressure on our relationship because I had decided to unbalance myself and become unhealthy by being one hundred percent focused on the circumstance.

By becoming obsessed with wanting to look after her I forgot to also look after myself.

I was not grooming myself properly or washing my clothes, I had minimal clothes on me because I couldn't live at home with my parents due to the tension and anxiety I was experiencing by living there.

I was not on time for my  shifts and was quitting much earlier than usual because I was depressed and didn't like leaving my partner at home by herself.

I didn't know who to reach out to and I feared losing her.

It was around that time I decided to make a big decision and leave my small town.
I would set off with my partner and live with her family in Melbourne.
This turned out to be one of the best decisions I have ever made.


For Day Two my focus is to keep myself neat and tidy both professionally and personally.
I can do this by keeping my area clean, give myself the energy to stay clean with regular exercise and by ensuring that my work uniform is neat and presentable for work.

Day 2	25/02/2016	To clean bedroom Spend 30 mins exercise	To spend 3o mins reading	Prepare work uniform	To get in the right mindset to close sales tomorrow

Tidiness is an  area I have struggled with a fair amount over the past twelve months.


I have also struggled with depression and sense of apathy since the time I had to deal with my parents and my partner's parents over the pregnancy of my first child.
I felt an overwhelming sense of shame and judgement for the pregnancy occurring outside of marriage.
I was not a child and neither was my partner, yet this is how we were treated by our parents when they found out.

This is my life, my partner and my child, you will not tell me how I should be married, what religion I should follow or how I should raise my children, this is my journey, my discovery.

I made my best efforts to focus on what I believed to be my priorities despite the many nagging disagreements I had with my parents.
I now feel much stronger to declare who I am since leaving home and even more so since marrying the love of my life.

I accomplished what I set out to do, marry my partner, help look after my child, while also providing an income for them.

In my spiritual journey I have taken myself not as seriously and not let it stress me.
Many bitter arguments I have had with family members over this subject.
It is very easy to get worked up over the theory of what we believe in, but it should not be placed above the practical reality of showing love to others.
If you force your religion down other people's throats they will never see the love of God, all they will see is a very controlling person who must always win an argument.

My ability to stay on chart with this fourteen day program should be a reflection of my new life with my spouse and the burden that has lifted off my shoulders since living outside of my parent's influence.
I am the captain of my own ship, never again will someone speak on God's behalf to me without my own determination, yes I am a thinker not an order taker.
You will find many people in life who will ask you to have blind faith in their advice and in their religion.
God has given you a brain for a reason, and neuroscience shows that there is a part of your brain that is used for reasoning and judgement.
The brain is a muscle, like any other part of your body the less you use it, the weaker it is.
The frontal lobe, a major part of the human brain is responsible for reasoning, decision making  and self control.

Therefore if you live your life based on the beliefs and opinions of others, your giving up the ability to practice reasoning and making decisions for yourself.
If you continue to live by others opinions you also lack self control, because you have placed the control into someone else's hands.
As such you will blame them when something goes wrong and you never learn to take responsibility for your actions.
The worse result of all is that you may contract early Alzheimer's because you do not have the boldness to think as an independent human being.

Clean bedroom Perform 30 mins of exercise	Make uniform neat and tidy for work.