The Key To Achieving A Balanced Life For Professional Women And Women Entrepreneurs

Life and business coaching for women entrepreneurs has become a service in high demand and there are good reasons for it.65% of entrepreneurs state that their life is out of balance, and even more feel worn down, stressed and as though they are unable to keep up with everything that they would like to do for those closest to them.

A 2005 study by Andrew Oswald, Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick in England, shows that 85% of Americans want more time with their family, and 46% say they want much more.

So where does one begin the journey towards a life of balance? Well, studies have shown that re-training the brain, something that good coaching can help you do, is key to finding balance and joy.

Our brains’ neurons fire in habitual patterns. That’s why it’s so hard to break an addiction. Neurons learn a pattern of response, and when a similar situation occurs, they begin to fire in that routine pattern. That’s why we tend to respond so quickly to most things… the firing happens before we can really even process what is going on.

The movie What the Bleep explains that "the brain is made up of tiny brain cells called neurons. These neurons have tiny branches that reach out and connect to other neurons to form a neuronet. Each place where they connect is integrated into a thought or a memory. The brain builds up all its concepts by the law of associative memory. Ideas, thoughts and feelings are all constructed and interconnected within this neuronet. And all have a possible relationship with one another.

Further... Nerve cells that fire together, wire together. If you practice something over and over again those nerve cells have a long-term relationship. If you get angry on a daily basis or give reason for your victimization in your life on a daily basis you are re-wiring and re-integrating that neuronet on a daily basis and that neuronet now has a long-term relationship with all those other nerve cells called an identity. We also know that nerve cells that don't fire together no longer wire together. They lose their long-term relationships. Every time we interrupt a thought process that produces a chemical reaction in our body those nerve cells that are connected to each other start breaking a long-term relationship."

So what do you do to create a perfect balance between work and home when your belief system tells you that it’s not possible? Well, you do it through working on new patterns of thought and building new perspectives on your current situation. It’s not quite as simple as what some call affirmations, but that can be a part of it. Affirmations are statements we tell ourselves to build new beliefs like “I am a worthy person.” The problem with affirmations is that if we’re stating something we have yet to believe, and then other thoughts come up that argue with the affirmation.

You may have heard the arguments before. You say, “I am able to find a perfect balance between work and home” and a little voice says, “You can’t spend more time with your family. If you do, your career will suffer and then who will pay the bills?” That’s where the affirmation, by itself, fails — because the second voice is the voice that wins. It is the voice that closes the discussion, and the change of belief, down to your core (or all the way to those neuronets), never happens.

So there’s an extra piece that has to happen in all of this. The extra training has to do with action and very small steps. If you’re trying to make change, then you have to begin to take small steps towards that perfect balance (or your precise desired outcome). It might be that you begin to set one night each week aside only for family (letting nothing else interfere) and that one single small change is all you do to start. You make it something so manageable that you can hardly make the argument that it can't happen. Whatever it is, you begin by taking that small action. Then by witnessing one small thing that supports the idea that you can, indeed, find balance… you change your patterns and your beliefs. And little by little you build on it.

The building takes time, after all, it took years to get you to your current beliefs. But it does work. And one day, you will look in the mirror, say “I love the balance I’ve found” and the little voice will say, “Yes, yes I do.”

It really will.