4 Ways to Use Your Strengths for Balance in your Life

Life-balance is elusive. By most accounts, it is completely unattainable. Yet, most will say they continue to strive for it.When I asked the Isogo community about what they consider their biggest challenge in work or life right now, 70% of us responded with a resounding need for balance.

So, over on Isogo TV, for the past several weeks and several more to come, we have been tackling this idea of “life-balance” and chatting through how our Strengths affect our own visions and realizations of BALANCE.

Today, we are zeroing in on 4 ways you can use your Strengths for balance in your life — to find a rhythm that works well for your work and your home.

1 :: Get Clear About What “Balance” Means to You

We all have a different idea of life-balance. When we chatted about this recently in our Facebook group, everyone had their own unique take on it, such as:

• Balance is being “able to be where you need to be when you need to be there — physically, emotionally, mentally present.”
• I think finding balance means letting go… There are far too many things to do on our lists and less time in which to do so well. So {balance is} prioritizing, sacrificing and letting go of perfection, preference, and expectations of others.
• Balance means I feel at peace in both places. Peace at work and home means I am comfortable with the progress of my checklists {even if they aren’t as checked off as I would like them to be at times!}, and that I am not absorbed by them either at work or at home.

A meaningful and effective work/life balance meets the needs of my family AND lets me continue to succeed at work.

As we chatted about in the first two episodes of our Balance Miniseries on Isogo TV, our progress in moving toward greater balance starts with ensuring we understand what our own definition of balance is and what it looks like when we get there.

The good news is that we can rely on our Strengths for Balance – to help us define and envision our ideal sense and state of balance!

Here are some Strengths-based examples to get your own mind flowing:

High Belief or Relator Strength :: Your ideal day or week rhythm likely has a high family or close friend focus.

Input or Learner Strength :: Your ideal rhythm leaves room for curiosity and the experience of trying new things.

Strong Harmony or Empathy Strength :: Your vision of balance likely holds consensus and peace, a sense that all is well/healthy

Trust the intuition of your own Strengths, knowing that every definition and vision of balance is different and that only a balance that is consistent with your Strengths will be richly fulfilling for you!

2 :: Know Your Talent Triggers to Overcome Overwhelm

As you grow in self-awareness through your Strengths — about the value you contribute and your ideal environments — you will start to notice the moments or events that send you into frustration or deflation — these are your “Talent Triggers.”

As triggers-expert Marshall Goldsmith says, we achieve success and change only by practicing every day, so let’s practice understanding the Triggers that send our Talents off course and destroy the balance in our lives.

Here is a question to help assess what one of your Talent Triggers might be:

What has happened right before you feel your Talents start to chart off course—when you feel the volumes exploding or shrinking away—and your Talents are no longer operating as Strengths {rather they are getting in your way or the way of someone else}??

Here is a Talent Trigger Prompt to help you own it and take the first step toward addressing it:

Often when I feel my {STRENGTH THAT GETS AMPED OR SQUASHED} turn up to Volume Overdrive or squash down to Volume Underdrive, it is because {TRIGGER EXPERIENCE} has occurred.

As you reflect, you start to narrow in on:

• What environment or situation sends your Strength off course?
• What happens once you are triggered?

As you gain more clarity around your Talent Triggers, and begin to change your environments to meet your needs {rather then send them into a fit or retreat!} you will begin to feel feel a greater sense of balance in your life.

3 :: Meeting Your Own Needs Immediately Calms Your Body and Mind

I have recently become a believer that we are wired to thrive as we find ways to meet our own psychological and emotional needs — each of which is defined quite clearly through our Strengths!

As you make a conscious and concerted effort to create environments that meet those needs, the more rest and balance you will feel.

Here are some examples of using Strengths for balance by meeting each Strengths’s needs:

My Discipline strength craves order, so when counter tops are cleared by the end of the night, life immediately feels more balanced — crazy season or not!

My Arranger strength craves time constraints, so when i start with just enough time to finish, the job gets done, and I’m energized instead of drained.

A colleague with high Intellection, Input, and Learner Strengths needs a lot of time to think, or life begins to unravel. So, he uses a long jog as his stress relief. By the time he steps back through the front door, his Intellection Strength is restored, and his stress is dissipated {plus he has usually come up with the answer to the question or crisis he was pondering}.

When our deepest psychological and emotional needs are met, a natural boost of energy occurs. We have energy to accomplish or face the looming events in front of us. When those needs are met, it creates mental and emotional breathing room that we had no way of accessing before.

We see more clearly that which had been foggy.

And life feels more balanced.

4 :: Find a Complement

Just like the best chili recipes add both a kick of spice and a drop of sweetness, your most balanced life takes form when there are others around you to complement your Strengths.

Other people — who think, behave, and feel differently than you do — are a key to using your Strengths for balance in your life.

Coming up on Isogo TV Episode 51 in a couple weeks — the sixth in our 8-episode miniseries on Balance — we are going to chat about what it means to pull in a partner to help with your balance.

In addition to accountability from a friend or a colleague’s ability to see truths about us that we cannot see, ideal partners will also complement your Strengths. They will bring Strengths that you do not, and as a result, they begin to help you find balance.

This complementary partnership takes more than the KNOWLEDGE of opposite Strengths, but rather the ACCEPTANCE of and COMMITMENT to thei genious and power that their Strengths can bring.

One more example from my own most balancing-partnership here, and we’ll close:

David’s Strengths are the cinnamon to my chili powder. I run firey hot — in execution mode, burning the midnight oil and rising early to make the most of daylight.

When he is gone, that firey energy overtakes my balance. I have accomplished a lot, but I am tired. {And I have eaten a lot of chocolate chips!}

When he is present, however, and I allow myself to see the power and wisdom his Strengths can bring, I slow down, rest, and {miraculously!} still get a lot done — all while maintaining sanity and rest!

The same can be true for you — use your Strengths for Balance in life by pulling in a partner whose Strengths complement yours and begin to allow you to walk the path to greater balance at home and at work!

So, this week, as you make strides toward your ideal rhythm in work and family, try out one of these 4 ways to use your Strengths for balance in your life!