Creating Life/Work Balance
Too Busy Making a Living, You Have No Time to Make
a Life?
Essential Strategies to living a well-balanced life while
reducing stress.
With Marni Blythe Borelli, Life & Business Coach
Designed exclusively for:

Welcome and Introductions
 Marni Borelli, Life & Business
Coach
 Co-Owner, Dragonfly Health &
Fitness in Holly Springs, NC

Today’s Agenda
 What is work/life balance discussion
 What it means to be balanced
 How to find your balance
 10 steps to find your balance
 Possible obstacles
 Thank you for coming!

Why Do You Want Work/Life Balance?
 Let’s go around the room and discuss…
 Why do we want this? 
 What does work/life balance mean to you?

What Does it Mean to Be Balanced?
 To me, it means that you have a handle on the the various elements
in your life and your heart or mind aren’t being pulled too hard in
any direction.
 More often than not, you feel calm, grounded, clear-headed, and
motivated.

How Do You Find Your Balance?
 2 categories: internal and external.
 Often times, people focus on one more than the other.
 If you focus on external things too much–like work, relationships, and
activities, you may pay very little attention to what is going on inside
your heart and mind.
 If you spend too much time being self reflective (internal), you
sometimes miss out on the experience of living.
 Other people may be fairly balanced between the two but might want
to balance out some specific elements within each category.

Internal: Mind, Heart, Health
Element How it Relates
Mind Challenging yourself intellectually vs.
creating opportunities for your mind to
rest
Heart Giving love vs. receiving love
Health Eating, drinking, exercising properly vs.
resting and treating yourself to some
extra yummies

External (Work, Social, Family, Fun)
Element How it Relates
Work Pushing yourself to achieve goals vs. seeing the bigger
picture and enjoying the ride
Social Satisfying your social desires vs. taking time for yourself
Family Fulfilling your familial responsibilities vs. creating healthy
boundaries
Fun Allocating time for things you enjoy doing vs. making sure
you don’t overdo it

Achieving Balance
Let’s Begin Going through Our 10 Steps Now

Step 1: Acknowledge and Examine
Take a few minutes now, lets take a look at your life,
your state of mind, and how you’re feeling.
Be honest with yourself and notice the areas
of your life that you’re neglecting.
YOUR AWARENESS IS KEY TO YOUR HAPPINESS AND BALANCE

Step 2: Setting goals for ourselves
 Look at the outline to help you decide which ways you want to balance
your life. Make a list.
 What are some goals you might want to set for yourself?
 I want to create more
time for family…
 I want to create more
time for fun…

Step 3: Plan tasks
 Make a list of daily, weekly, and monthly
tasks that you will need to do to achieve
each of these goals.
 Time management comes into play here!

Step 4: Time Audit
 For one week, try keeping a log of
everything you do professionally and
personally, from washing laundry to
browsing Pinterest.
 Then go over the lists, pinpoint …what do I
need… to start doing? To stop doing?
 What do I want to do… more of? less of?
Differently?
YOU HAVE CHOICES!

Step 5: Prioritize
 We all like to be over-achievers! Someone
says, “achieve,” and we jump right to it.
 We even achieve multiple things at once.
 We make lists of projects we have to do.
Then each project becomes a collection of
to-do items.
 We add those to our to-do list. Pretty soon,
we have more to-do items than Imelda
Marcos has shoes 

Step 5: How to Prioritize
You can have it all… you just can’t have it all at once.
“We’ll never make it to every social event while also working extra hours and
making home-cooked meals
every night…. we have to prioritize!”

Step 5: How to Prioritize
Urgency and Importance Are Different
Urgent Important

Step 5: How to Prioritize
 When setting priorities, decide which quadrant your activity
belongs in. Then use the quadrant to prioritize the activity.
Quadrant 1 Quadrant 2
Quadrant 3 Quadrant 4

Step 5: How to Prioritize
 Quadrant 1 = OMIGOSH!

Step 5: How to Prioritize
 Quadrant 2: Quadrant of Becoming
Awesome!
 Most of the things we need to do to
become awesome are important, but not
urgent.
 Long-term planning, classes, time with
your significant other & friends, personal
development, rest and relaxation,
recaulking the bathtub…
 Visiting quadrant II will help you to create
the infrastructure that will handle
emergencies in quad 1 before they
become urgent.
BIGGEST
BOOST
QUADRANT
!

Step 5: How to Prioritize
 Quadrant III: Temptation!
 These are things that aren’t important, but
they sure are “urgent.”
 “Time suckers” – things that seem like they
urgent and important… give us a shot of
adrenaline and make us feel like we were
productive.
 Not-quite-emergencies often fall into
quadrant III.
 “My nails look terrible and everyone will
notice and will think terrible thoughts…this
is urgent.”

Step 5: How to Prioritize
 Quadrant IV: Time Wasters!
 Stuff that’s neither urgent nor important.
 Watching Real Housewives, some
meetings, many emails fit in Q4, checking
your Facebook.
 Next time you feel tempted to do
something in quadrant IV, do something
useful instead, like something in quadrant II
– like make plans with a friend or family
member!

Step 6: Reflect
 What is the most important thing you’ve accomplished in the past?
 How did you stay focused toward this goal?
 How did you handle your fears, doubts, anxieties, worries, and negative self
talk?
 How does it feel to know that you accomplished the goal in spite of these
parts of yourself?

Step 7: Prepare
 What is your inner “stuff” that will try to
keep you from sticking to your plan? (i.e.
fears, worries, doubts, negative self talk
etc.)
 Can you specify the things you will say to
yourself to push you off track? (i.e. “just
one more bite, I’ll start eating better
tomorrow”) Make a list.

Step 8: Empower
 What do you need to remember in those
times?
 What are things you can say to that self-
sabotaging part of yourself?
 Be kind to yourself. Balance won’t feel
good if you’re cruel to yourself in creating
it!
 Be aware of the obstacles!

Obstacles to Overcome…
 Check your engine light!

Obstacle: Create Healthy Boundaries
 When our boundaries are weak, unguarded, or unclear, we let in all
sorts of stuff that isn’t actually our stuff, and we give away our own
personal energy unconsciously.
 Breach of your energetic security system and a leak of your own
personal energy.
 You’re looking at warning signs indicating that some work needs to be
done, some boundaries need to be shored up, and you need to return
to center.

Obstacle: How to Create Healthy Boundaries
 Grounding is akin to the way a tree sinks her roots to stay secure in a
storm. It’s the first tool in creating healthy boundaries—nurturing a
connection with ourselves, our centers.

Obstacle: How to Create Healthy Boundaries
 There are as many ways to ground as there are people. I like to take
five minutes to actually imagine my root system connecting me into the
earth, like a giant oak tree. Here are some other ideas (all these are
great stress reducers!):
 Meditating
 Saying a prayer, affirmation, or mantra in the shower in the morning
 Offering a blessing over your morning meal or beverage
 Chanting or repeating affirmations in your head as you walk to work
 Try different ways—you’ll find the one that works for you!
 Get an “anchor” to bring you back!
 Come back to this anytime you are feeling “off balance”

Obstacle: Notice the people and places that
tend to drain you
 Before engaging, take a few minutes to
imagine breathing a bubble of
protective energy around you.
 Think of it as a space that will only
allow love and positivity inside it,
deflecting anything else. Really see it
and really feel the force of it around
you. Then recognize what you need to
do to maintain that space.
 Building boundaries is like any muscle
or practice—the more you work with it,
the better it serves you!

Obstacle: Overwhelm, Take it One Day at a Time
 One clever tip is to combine your
work and personal calendars so
you don’t necessarily prioritize one
set of responsibilities over the
other in advance.
 Each day, you can decide whether
the staff meeting is more important
than getting lunch with an old high
school buddy, or vice versa.

Step 9: Connect
 Is there a person or a tactic you can use to
keep yourself supported, motivated, and
focused in those hard times?
 Connect and share your inner process with
someone who can help you challenge your
inner demons, and celebrate your little
accomplishments.
 Ultimately, work-life balance is about
finding a way to juggle all the different
kinds of relationships in our lives.
 Don’t be shy about asking other people to
help you manage your responsibilities.

Step 10: Plan
 Just like accomplishing any goal in life, it
takes time and effort to overcome your
habitual patterns and create new ones.
 If you stay on track with this detailed and
intentional process for three whole months,
then there is a good chance you will create
new habits to enjoy a more balanced life
going forward!

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Need extra help?
 I specialize in helping people: reach a goal, make a change in their
life or figure out how to get “unstuck.
 If you are frustrated with an aspect of your life, not sure how to stop
making the same choices you keep making or just want to have more
happiness, peace of mind and passion — life coaching can help you.
 Professional coaching brings many wonderful benefits: fresh
perspectives on personal challenges, enhanced decision-making
skills, greater interpersonal effectiveness, increased confidence,
improvement in productivity, satisfaction with life and work, and the
attainment of relevant goals.
OFFERING A FREE 45 MIN STRATEGY SESSION
FOR ANYONE WHO IS INTERESTED!

Marni Blythe Borelli Contact Information
 www.marniblythe.com
 646-413-4872
 marni@dragonflyhealthfitness.com
 121 Quantum Street Holly Springs, NC
27540