Just because you’re in a relationship doesn’t mean you have to do everything together and you don’t have to love everything your partner loves.

It’s important to be appreciative and supportive of each others needs and interests but there will be times when you like to do things separately. This doesn’t have to mean that you love each other any less.

Make sure your time spent together and your own interests, hobbies and ambitions are in balance. Set them at the same time also. So when one is off playing sport the other is off doing their individual thing. Ensure you and your partner feel loved and supported even when you’re away from each other pursuing different things.

Often a little time apart can make the heart grow stronger but make sure you find time to do the things you both love together so as you stay in balance.

If you are feeling like your relationship is out of balance, stop and reflect and ask yourself do you need to make more time to be together or to give your partner some space or have a little break and alone time yourself?

Relationships need love, care and nurturing so make sure you are sowing good seeds into your relationship each and every day so it prospers.

For more information
Contact : Jacqueline Pigdon
Tel No   : +61 (0) 404 362 379
Email    : jacqueline@jinalife.com

What is instinct? Instinct to put simply is our body’s way of telling us something. I.e. it is sending us a message. Often your instinct is warning you that something isn’t quite right and you should beware. It’s an innate capability that helps to protect us from harm.

Now if you’re still not sure what your instinct is or even if you have it, the thing is we all have instinct within us, but if you don’t use it like if you don’t use your muscles they become weak so does your instinct. So the more you listen to your instinct the stronger it becomes, the louder it becomes and the harder it is for you not to listen to it.

Your instinct is a messages or little thing you say to yourself. E.g. I remember one day while I was getting ready to leave my house to go to a lunch function something said to me don’t take all your keys in case you lose them!

I had a bunch of keys as you do on your key ring, house key, gym locker key, car keys, work cabinet and office key and your list can go on. So I heard this little ‘voice’ telling me just to take the house key. But did I listen to this?

No I reasoned and said ‘I never lose my keys! Why would I lose my keys today?’ And I took the lot. And yes you guessed it I lost all of my keys!

Now if you can relate to this story or one similar or you find yourself saying – I knew I shouldn’t have done that!!! Then this is and was your instinct trying to tell you something.

I know this example is only a small thing but it did actually cause me a lot of trouble, time, effort and money over the next few days interrupting my life getting copies of all those keys I lost. So you can image the even bigger impacts to your life when you ignore your instinct over larger decisions that you make.

When you start to pay attention to first being aware that you have an instinct, a built in predictor of future harmful or negative events you can then look for the signs. It’s up to you to then decide to follow them or not. Often at the time your head will get in the way and try and reason with you e.g. saying ‘No, it will be ok that won’t happen’ but then what happened was you were really right in the first place that your inner instinct told you! You just refused to listen to it and thus lost out.

You can only trust your own instinct for its right for you however if someone else has a gut instinct then you have to trust that person before you agree to that person’s action based on that person’s instinct.

Once you start to act on your instinct you can free yourself from some unnecessary future pain and the best thing is that your instinct will then grow and strengthen. In turn helps you make much better decisions in your life and help you avoid pain both in your personal life and work situations.

It’s a powerful tool that if ignored can cause negative consequences in your life or if you listen to it a very positive tool to have with you where ever you go in your life.

For more information
Contact : Jacqueline Pigdon
Tel No   : +61 (0) 404 362 379
Email    : jacqueline@jinalife.com

Do you have work/life balance? This is a very common question now especially amongst executives and if you are one of them you might like to take some time to look a little more closely at your life to answer this. One often relates work/life balance to the amount of hours you spend at each but what I’d like to focus on here is how ‘effort balance’ is important to your work/life balance. Do you apply the same amount of dedication and thus effort to all of the other areas of your life like you apply to your work if you’re a hard dedicated and long hour’s worker? Often work and careers are shown a lot of dedication because so many people see you at work, you ‘have’ to go to work and not many people see what you do in other areas of your life. Are you often measured there! And due to these factors your efforts can very quickly and easily become out of work/life balance.

Sometimes you may want to and need to sacrifice time at home for time at work, time with your partner, family, children, friends, health, holidays etc. But what are you like when you get there? Do you dedicate the same amount of effort and energy into the other areas of your life once you get there such as when you’re with your partner, exercising, children, family, friends, health, holidays? If you answer no to at least one of these then you might want to start setting some goals in this/these areas for effort. For without 100% effort there is not 100% attainment and therefore you are not reaching your potential in that area, are neglecting that area and therefore simply out of work/life and effort balance.

Working on your work life balance is just as important as a business owner working on their business not only in their business. It’s easy to live our lives and forgot to work on our lives and where we want to go. Work/life balance requires planning, control, effort and sticking to your plan without ‘allowing’ another area of your life to get in its way!

Without work life balance and 100% equal effort in all areas of your life you can feel out of control and balancing requires control… Just as much as too much of one thing is bad, not enough of some things are when things are going to give. Life can be like a juggling act!! Managing all these things can become overwhelming and sometimes make you feel like it’s just too much and anxiety and stress hit you head on! If this sounds familiar here are 7 steps to help you gain more work/life balance in your life:

• Group together the different areas in your life such as work, family, relationship, hobbies, health & fitness, personal time etc.
• Next to each area write down how much effort you apply to each on a scale of 0% -100% and if not 100% write one point that would make this % increase.
• Write down the number of hours you spend each week on that area.
• See if your life looks in balance to you.
• If not, decide on areas that you can reduce time and give to something else and point out those that you are simply being lazy in and could provide more effort.
• Commit to the points that would increase your effort that you wrote down in point 2
• Then assess your results, if you’re applying 100% effort in all areas of your life and everything looks in balance then well done! If not, focus on applying more effort to the areas lacking in the next month and watch the results, your satisfaction and enthusiasm grow!

For more information
Contact : Jacqueline Pigdon
Tel No   : +61 (0) 404 362 379
Email    : jacqueline@jinalife.com