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First, let’s define what I mean by a balanced life. It doesn’t mean spending an equal amount of time at work and at home. Sometimes, doing that can be impossible. What I mean by balanced life is having every part of your life under control. Why is this important?

For my example, I’m going to use the corporate world. Most big companies are broken up into different departments. There’s accounting, human resources, legal, and so on. When all these departments work efficiently together, then they produce impressive results. It leads the company to strong growth and success.

Your life is the same way. Instead of departments you have a number of areas in your life.You have the finances, career, family, health and so on. To lead yourself to strong growth and success, you need to make sure that all these areas are under control. When you are successful in all these areas, then your WHOLE life is a success. If you’re struggling in one area, then that struggle might bleed over to another area of your life and ruin it.

Let me demonstrate to you what I mean. There was a survey done a while back that showed 57% of divorces were because of financial reasons. Money problems (one area of your life) led to relationship problems(another area of your life). Also, take this example. You have a huge fight with your husband or wife tonight and you two stay up all night arguing. The next morning you have work and are feeling exhausted at perform poorly at work. See how relationship problems affect your career?

To have your whole life be a success, you need to balance things out. When you balance your life, things run smooth. You’re able to look at every area of your life and be happy about it. This leads to more and more success. It’s a snowball effect. It keeps building and building.

Make a list of every area in your life and make a plan to get everything under control. If you’re having money problems, figure out a way to make more money or save more money. If you’re out of shape, put on some running shoes and get to work. If your relationships a disaster, sit down and talk about where things are going and what you two need to do to fix it.

A balanced life brings more success. There is no doubt about it. Don’t think you can be truly happy being successful in only one area of your life. If you do that, that happiness won’t last. It will be a feeling that comes and goes and is hard to keep around forever. When your whole life is a success, then happiness comes and stays with you. It becomes a state of mind rather than just an emotion.

Does everything happen for a reason or do we give it a reason? I think we give it a reason. So I started thinking…why am I in debt over $60,000? Why am I  out of shape and eating whatever I can put my hands on? Why do I have days where I feel disconnected with myself and the world? Why have I become like this?

Here’s my reason to why…because now I have the opportunity to show everyone how to pull themselves out of the gutter and get their lives back on track no matter how bad it seems! I’m very excited about this!

Let me share with you exactly what the “Embrace Your Power Challenge” is all about. It’s about taking complete control of your life utilizing your full power. This challenge will involve setting goals, balancing life, taking action, getting organized, staying disciplined, and tons of other things we’ll all benefit from. I’m going to put a 110% of my effort into this and anyone is welcomed to join me. We are going to rock this thing!

Here’s how it works. I’ll update with results each week and share with you all the details on my progress. And when I say details, I mean full blown details. There’s no secret to hide here. I want to help you as much as I can. If you’re participating along, then post your results in the comment field below. It will be great to read success stories. If you don’t want to participate, you don’t have to. Just read and see how everyone is doing.

Let’s start by setting goals in each area of your life and coming up with an action plan. These are the areas I’m working on: Health & fitness, wealth & savings, relationship, family, career & business, and spirituality & mentality. You can take some out or add your own if you wish. Once you set goals for yourself in the areas you want, then write out an action plan to get it done. Deadlines are important too because it gives it sense of urgency. For mine, I haven’t set deadlines yet, but feel free to set them for yours if you wish. Take a look at my goals.

Health & fitness

In this area of my life, I want to lose fat and gain muscle. My target weight is around 150 pounds and I’m 165 right now. Remember, I want it to be all muscle now.

I will perform cardio exercises on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to lose fat. I will weightlift on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday to gain muscle. My diet will have from 2000-2500 calories to decrease fat and promote muscle gain.

You can see my workout routine here. Also, I used FitDay.com to track my calories. It’s simple and you can even input your own foods. It’s a awesome website.

Wealth & savings

In this area, I have two main goals I want to focus on. Having a positive net worth (getting rid of debt) and saving up money for my wedding.

To do this, I’m going to pay extra towards my debt, about 1% of the principal due and more when I can afford it. To save for my wedding, I’m going to save all the commission I get from work.

Relationship

My main goal in my relationship is to keep our dreams and goals the same. I believe when we’re both headed down the same path, then the relationship is healthier. I want to build a deeper connection between Michelle and me through open communication and understanding. To do this, we will both set out time once a week to spend with each other and talk about these things.

Family

My family consists of my mom, dad, and an older sister. We are close, but can be much closer. I want to plan activities where we do things together. Something like “family days”. I will do this at least twice a month. Friends are also welcomed along. The more people, the bigger the family!

Career & business

Right now, my day job is a Licensed Banker at a major bank. My goal in this area is work hard and be more productive. This will help me earn more bonuses so I can pay off my debts and save for my wedding faster.

My love and passion is this website and helping people. I want the whole world to know about this site (don’t think it’s impossible, take Coca-Cola for example). How can I get more people to come here? I will write at least 4 new articles a week, write 3 articles for other websites and blogs a week, and promote my website through any other means possible.

Spirituality & mentality

This is a HUGE one for me. I love being connected and in harmony with myself. It gives me peace of mind, more focus, and brings my joy. After all, I am the most important person that I know because anything I do, effects me directly.

What can I do to achieve success in this area. I got it summed up into 3 things. Visualizing for 15 minutes a day the life I want to live, focusing on my intentions and feeling good about it, and positive thinking.

Bringing it all together

Now, what you and I have to do is make a daily planner and schedule time for each activity that we need to do to bring us closer to our goals. How we use our time is crucial to achieving success!

Next week, I will post my results, how I overcame challenges, and get a copy of my planner up on this site.

I want to help you or answer any questions you may have. Please leave a comment or just e-mail me at: FaizalNisar@FaizalNisar.com

Here’s some good articles to help you in this journey:

1. Be in Awe of Yourself

2. How to Use Your Time

3. Get Yourself to Take Action

4. Let Your Actions Define You

5. Start Making Better Decisions

Too often we look at other people for motivation. We want to learn everything about them. We want to hear about the struggles they’ve faced and how they prevailed. We hope to learn their “secrets” and apply them to enrich our own lives.

Are you guilty of this? I certainly am. I used to always look at everyone’s accomplishments to give me motivation and guidance. Now there’s nothing wrong with this, but then I realized I’m only looking up to them when I should be looking up to myself too! We all should.

We each have so many things that make us great! We catch ourselves measuring success by tangible materials like money, houses, cars…..but success is intangible. What do you have right now that makes you great? You have individuality. You have your own ideas and your own way of thinking. You have the ability to do this according to how you want to do them. That’s why you should be in “awe” of yourself. You posses the greatest power in the world.

What inspired me most about other people were their life stories. Reading about their ups and downs. Their battles and victories. But then I realized, my very own story is being written right now. I’m creating my own world as each day passes by. I have a great power and so do you. We are in control of where we go! We are creators of our own destiny.

None of us have to do the exact same things others have done. There is no creativity behind that. We have to try things our own way and see what works and what doesn’t. Learning from others gives us more experience, but we shouldn’t follow them step by step. We should create a different path according to what we believe. That’s how new ideas come about. It might be harder, but the harder the challenge, the greater the success.

Life is what we make it. Because of this power we posses, we should be in awe of ourselves. We are in control. We always have been and always will be. We choose what to listen to, what to see, and what to do. Every decision is based on us.

We can create wonders if we put our minds to it. We should dare to be different and dream about the impossible. Do you think a thousand years ago, humans would’ve thought the world we live in today would be possible? No way! But someone somewhere wasn’t afraid to dream. They set out to create something and they did just that. Others learned from them and created even bigger and better things. They created their own paths. We can do the same! Each one of us has the power. Dare to dream or else you might end up living your worst nightmares.

What do you spend most of your time doing? Are you using it wisely or wasting it carelessly?

Time is the most valuable thing we have. Harvey MacKay better explains it with his quote:

“Time is free, but it’s priceless. You can’t
own it, but you can use it. You can’t keep
it, but you can spend it. Once you’ve lost it
you can never get it back.”

Time just keeps ticking away every second of the day. Based on that, you have to make sure you’re making the right moves with that time that you have. Here’s how to do that.

1. Figure out your purpose: What do you want to do in this world? Where do you want to be? Figuring this out is the first step towards achieving success and learning to use your time wisely.

Write down a goal for every are of your life. Family, financial, relationship, health, contribution, and so on…

2. Make a plan: It’s good to have a plan. If your goal is closer family, your plan should include having family meetings. If you want more money, your plan should have saving money in there. Make a solid plan so you can realize all the actions you’ll need to take to get there.

3. How to use your time: Once you have a plan, then you can start using your time wisely. Every move you make, should bring you closer to your goal. Let’s say you want to be healthy. Then you should spend your time eating healthy food. If you’re eating fatty foods, then you’re wasting your time.

Your whole day should be based on where you want to go. Most people want things but they waste so much time making the wrong moves. Let me give you some examples.

There’s the overweight person who wants to be in shape but spends his time watching T.V. and eating fried chicken. Or how about the salesman who wants more sales but spends her time talking to co-workers about their life. Ooh, how about the guy who wants to stop smoking but spends his time smoking!

Use your time wisely. Make solid goals and set up a plan. That way you know where you’re going and what you need to get there. After that, use your time wisely by making sure every move brings you closer to your goal.

Here’s some related articles that should help you with this process:

1. Take Action

2. Let Your Actions Define You

3. Start Making Better Decisions

I found this great video that I think is worth sharing with all of you.

It takes a look into the mindset of Will Smith and what makes him the great success he is today.

He speaks words that will benefit every individual greatly when applied and used in their own lives.

Enjoy!