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Seven Effective Tricks to Balance Your Work, Life and Relationships


This is a guest article from Lynda Arbon. She is a passionate and enthusiastic health blogger. You can follow her on Twitter.

The modern lifestyle is all about finding the right balance. In order to succeed at whatever it is that you undertake, you need to strike the perfect balance between your work, your life apart from work, and your relationships, in order to lead a more meaningful life.

Let’s take a look at how we can achieve an amazing work-life balance that helps you excel in both your professional and personal life as well:

1.  Be Grateful For What You Have

Being grateful for what you have is quite evidently the first step in bettering anything. You have to realize that things could be a lot worse for you, but they aren’t. You hold a steady job, and have a person to share your deepest feelings with, which is far more than what most people have.

When you are more appreciative of what you have, you take slightly more efforts to express your appreciation, which goes a long way. Once you are able to appreciate the importance of all that you have, you can eventually prioritize better.

2.  Importance of Having Sound and Positive Relationships

Being in a positive relationship can be incredibly useful for your career and your overall well-being. The main aspect of a healthy relationship is finding encouragement in every endeavour you undertake. It is what pushes you to become better, and accounts for personal growth of character and skills.

When you have a partner that pushes you to be better at what you do, you willingly tend to be braver while facing challenges at work. This sets a positive feedback loop in motion, and helps you find success more often.

3.  Learn to Say No, Politely

Knowing when to say ‘no’ could save you a world of damage. When you realize that either your work or your relationship is becoming a negative influence in your life, you have to stand up for yourself and say “no.” In the end, you need to acknowledge what is working for you, and what is not. Honestly, there is no point making something last that isn’t paying back some sort of dividend. When this happens, you only end up wasting time and energy, which would have been far more productive if put elsewhere.

4.  Spend More Time with Family

In most cases, family sticks with you through the various ups and downs of life. Spending more time with parents or siblings gives you a different perspective on life, many times better. Watching how your parents manage to establish their own work-life balance, or how your siblings are coping with theirs, gives you an opportunity to reflect and manage your own time better. And learning to better manage your time now eventually leads to a better life tomorrow.

5.  Meditation

This is one of the most underrated skills that one can possess. Meditation actually stills your thoughts and allows you to choose the ones that matter. It enhances your ability to focus, increasing your overall productivity.

Meditation is the art of silencing one’s mind, a practice that is forgotten about with the busyness of life. Minds are often otherwise too cluttered with thoughts that bring about anxiety and fear, whereas silence brings reflection and clarity. When you silence your mind, you bring about a certain control of your actions.

6.  Prioritize Better

Many times, you probably find yourself conflicted to find what is truly important. And if you do not give it enough thought, you may end up working hard on the wrong decision, which may be the biggest time waster of all.

That said, prioritizing in no way means sacrificing or compromising. Rather, it is an adjustment you make to strike a balance between your work and your relationships. When there is an understanding between the two, you will eventually find the space needed to function. Communication is key, so make sure you use it to the full.

7.  Maintain Beneficial Hobbies

Creating a full life can take a heavy toll if not careful. However, having a life outside of your office and house is crucial to your well-being. Hitting the gym is one such positive experience that can help you cope with the stress that comes along with a career and family life.

Another beneficial hobby is playing a musical instrument. Scientific studies have proven that music alters the brain structure for the better. Be it solo or in a group, being involved with music can really turn on the positive vibes around you.

Apart from adding good habits to your lifestyle as stated above, the elimination of bad ones, such as any sort of intoxication or smoking habits, can also play a great role for your efforts towards work-life balance building. If you are a regular drinker and/or smoker, quitting such habits today itself can be a very tedious task. So rather than forcing your body to immediately quit smoking & drinking, the best way is to look for better alternatives which can curb your addictions without further harming your body and mind.

Consider non-alcoholic beverages as an alternative to your drinking habits or just motivate yourself to limit your alcohol intake to a bare minimum. Similarly, contemplate opting for nicotine gums, patches, or e-cigs to curb your ever dangerous smoking habit. Research even shows that switching to vaping is a safer option than traditional cigarettes.

Implementing these good habits and kicking the bad ones can usher in a ton of positivity and will help you manage your career aspirations and family commitment better. Maintaining a healthy work-life balance can be tedious, but the above-mentioned tips should at least start you on the right path. What many tend to overlook is that things don’t necessarily work themselves out on their own, unless we help create opportunities for ourselves. Creating some sort of balance in life is a result of our actions, so producing the right actions is the only thing that will ultimately lead to the lives we want to live.

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7 Tips On Writing Effective Leadership Emails

Today’s guest post is from Freddie Tubbs. He is a communication manager and business writer at Australian reviewer.

Writing emails is an essential activity in our everyday life. So much so, that most of us can’t even remember the world before email and how everything worked. Well, it’s that much more difficult if you are spearheading a project or company.

Your emails need to express leadership. They should be powerful, effective, and informative. However, that’s not so easy to achieve. That said, here are some tips to help you achieve the best results: 

Keep it short and readable

Short emails work best because they can keep the focus of the recipient until the very end. However, shortness doesn’t always imply clarity and conciseness. Make sure that you have made your point in half a page at most. Also, be as clear as possible about what it is you want. Rambling on won’t get you anywhere. 

Use simple language without any jargon or slang. Make it easy for people to understand. For instance, highlight the most important areas and have enough white space in your emails so that people can rest their eyes. If you have a complex issue, separate it into bullet points. Write short paragraphs as well. 

If your email needs to be longer, create a “need to know” part at the beginning of the email, as an executive summary. 

Have a clear subject and CTA

Subject lines are important because they let people know how important your email is and what it’s about. This is why your subject line needs to reflect both of those things. 

So, for instance, when you need a response urgently, your email subject line would have to say “HOT” or “URGENT” in order to make the recipient aware of how essential a quick response is. 

Make it relevant to your topic as well–no mystery is necessary there. 

Calls to action should be the same: clear, concise, and relevant. The recipient should be clearly aware of what they need to do. 

Be direct and stay on a single topic

Rambling on, as mentioned, is not a good email writing technique. It bores readers, confuses them, and leaves you without a proper response. Staying on a single topic is crucial. For example, focus on one problem that you have or one idea that you want to implement. Talking about several different things in one email is just confusing and overwhelming. 

Use Online Tools

Editing and proofreading are essential if you want your recipients to take you seriously. You want them to act, not laugh at you over a typo, or bad grammar and spelling. This is why you should consider using some of the following tools to check the accuracy of your email:

– Study Demic and Resumention are email formatting tools that will help you make your emails readable by offering the best formatting tips. 

– Big Assignments is an email editing tool that will show you excess words or sentences, and also show how to remove them without tarnishing the context. 

– Academ Advisor and Elite Assignment Help are tools which offer grammar tips and checkers that you can use to improve your writing. 

– Academized and OxEssays are business writing tools which can help you find the perfect expressions for your thoughts. 

Reply on time

Just like you want the response to your emails to come quickly, your recipients want it too. Lead by example and answer as quickly as possible. Make sure the response is accurate and meaningful, but still send it quickly enough so that the other party can have time to act. There is nothing more annoying than doing something as quickly as possible, and then having your team leader not respond, or even notice the email for hours.

Don’t send emails when you are emotional 

When you get angry over a problem or a situation, wait before you send out an email. Being angry is normal, but it’s not a good behavior to show it directly to your employees or team members–especially not in an email. Wait some time, cool off, and then send an email that makes sense and influences people to take action and solve issues. 

Allow yourself up to two questions

“Too many questions leads to either poor responses or no responses at all. This is why you need to limit yourself to two meaningful questions with each email. Ask something that really matters and don’t get too caught up on the details.” says communication manager, Reed Trent.

Emails are your number one tool in communication when you are a leader. And it’s a good way to demonstrate good leadership by sending proper, meaningful emails. Hopefully, these tips will help you do so.

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How Business Storytelling Can Increase Customer Loyalty

This is a guest post from Elisa Abbott. She is a freelancer whose passion lies in creative writing. She completed a degree in Computer Science and writes about ways to apply machine learning to deal with complex issues. Insights on education, helpful tools, and valuable university experiences – she has got you covered 😉

There are many things a business can do to increase customer loyalty. Some companies rely heavily on offering conveniences and discounts to return customers, and others ask their clients to provide them with feedback at all stages of interaction. However, nothing seems to stimulate customer engagement as well as a well-written brand story.

And there’s no psychological trick behind creating enticing storytelling, either. It’s all about good writing and a well-crafted narrative. Furthermore, people are really passionate about other people’s personal accounts. When being exposed to great stories, numerous regions in our brains activate, followed by a short-term change in our hormone profile. In this article, we discuss why you should invest some time and effort into business storytelling.

It makes your business more human

The reason storytelling matters for businesses is that it’s an essential medium for our customers to create an emotional bond with the service or the product since they have a narrative to relate to. Needless to say, the world’s most successful companies are well aware of the importance of providing something beyond just a product but instead letting their customers share their vision and be a part of the company’s success. 

People all over the world have slowly started shifting towards more locally-sourced, artisanal products made by small-scale businesses, due to the fact that they slowly started losing trust for large corporations and marketers. People crave doing business with people.

Having a human story behind your brand will change your approach towards business and the way you’ll handle customers. A great example is MailChimp. This company has developed a fantastic style guide, which shapes all of their writing. They not only have a brilliant story behind their brand, but they also take a human approach: 

“At MailChimp, we’ve walked in our customers’ shoes, and we know marketing technology is a minefield of confusing terminology. We treat every hopeful brand seriously. We want to educate people without patronizing or confusing them.”

This is how a brand can convert empathy to loyalty. By having a more holistic approach towards your service and not just providing it on the books, but actually connecting emotionally with your customer, you’ll be able to build a user/customer base founded on loyalty. 

Stories change the way we think

We are social creatures and our behavior is deeply rooted in this principle. We connect with people around us, even if they’re total strangers to us. People engage with other people’s stories, simply due to the fact that they can relate to them. Maybe they haven’t necessarily been in the exact same situation, but they’ve most certainly been in hard situations, having to make sacrifices and difficult decisions. Our instincts tell us that there is a lot of wisdom to be extracted from other people’s reports. 

Staying focused on another person’s narrative has an impressive effect on our bodies, especially our brains. An exciting narrative raises our oxytocin levels, according to Paul J. Zak’s research, published back in 2013. 

Stories make us feel safe

Elevated oxytocin is normal when we are around people that we love and care about. Higher levels of oxytocin are also very common during physical, social interactions like handshakes, hugs, pats on the back, and so forth. Similarly, oxytocin levels, as research suggests, increase when we are exposed to stories, both written and narrated. 

This hormone signals our bodies that there is no imminent threat to our safety and that everything around us is fine, which suggests that it is okay to interact with anyone around us. 

Brands that have taken the time to craft exciting story ensure that their customers have more trust for their company and thus are more loyal.

Stories give your business an extra dimension

By not tapping into storytelling, you might be limiting your business to the platitude of simply providing your customers with a service, thus not leaving too much space for your clientele to bond with emotionally. Whereas allowing your customers to engage with your content will enable you to showcase your company’s authenticity and transparency. 

“When it comes to content, authenticity is one of the crucial aspects that allow customers to connect with a business emotionally. “— Dina Indelicato, writer at PickWriters.

There is now a growing body of research that suggests that brands that have an authentic voice generate much bigger returns, compared to companies that refrain from doing so. Once a content strategy is built on the basis of authenticity, it will by default add much more to the business’s customers.

Similarly, companies that are open about their operations are also much more likely to generate more significant revenue. Customers find it impressive when a business takes responsibility for its mistakes, instead of just acting that it never happened. Slack is a great example, they’ve recently published a post where they bring their apologies to a number of customers for having deleted their accounts. 

Here are a few things you can do to ensure transparency:

  • Be transparent about where you source your materials from.
  • Be transparent about how you price your products or services.
  • Be transparent about your customers’ experiences. 
  • Create content that aligns with your mission and your customers’ goals.
  • Create content that makes customers feel comfortable about doing business with you.

Business has changed its shape throughout the last hundred years. It’s safe to say that companies that do not focus on the customer in terms of services and content find it harder to excel in the current ecosystem. 

People now care about a multitude of things, when choosing a company to take their business to, far beyond just the price tag. Customers are also very selective about the company’s “personality,” thus we need to focus on maintaining the same set of values and tone throughout our company’s lifecycle.

Considering the insight we’ve collected over the years in understanding how storytelling affects our brain, it is most definitely one of the essential components of a successful branding and content strategy.