Just learning some cool stuff over here!

September 16, 2013
by Ryan

School/Life Balance

There was an interesting article that I read this weekend for my OT 504: Health Promotion and Wellness class called “Exploring Balance as a Concept in Occupational Science” by Penelope Westhorp (2003). Westhorp discusses the concept of “balance in lifestyle” through an occupational perspective and suggests that research should be done to look at the many aspects of balance. Throughout the article I kept thinking, “What is lifestyle balance, really?”, especially for me. When I think of balance, I think of equal parts sharing the weight. Is that what I need to do to have a balanced lifestyle? Make sure that I do the activities throughout my day equally in relation to time, energy, and attention? But that doesn’t make sense to me. How can one do that, truly?

When I think about a typical day for me and the things that I do, maybe I could separate my time so that each activity throughout my day had the same amount of time and was balanced (i.e., one hour of house work, one hour of school work, one hour of television, etc.). But when I think of the things that I do that are meaningful in my day, I just don’t imagine that I could actually sustain a lifestyle balance of putting a certain amount of time on something like, spending time with friends and family. Or that I could do a craft or looking things up on Pinterest for an allotted amount of time. Personally, I don’t do well with that type of restriction and would not be able to maintain that type of routine.

For the sake of really trying to think about living a balanced lifestyle, it would be better for me to balance my day in a more simple way. To break down a day for me in its simplest form would be the things that I like to do and the things that I have to do. When I think of days that I feel really balanced it is because I have done productive and fun activities throughout my day. That is what I think I need and, after reading this article, it just confirmed what I was thinking.

This also confirms why we need research on occupation as well as occupational balance so that we can understand each individual’s perspective on his or her occupations and what is meaningful in order to help balance his or her lifestyle. It is a really cool experience to read something that seems so simple like this, but that can then open your eyes in such a big way . . . even as you are reading it!

😊 Ryan

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