As you get older, you begin to cultivate interests and spend your time on activities associated with those interests. But it’s important for you to be able to take a step back and analyze what is needed for an optimal life outside of your hobbies, purpose, passions or leisure activities. Here are 5 negative consequences of an unbalanced life:
Exhaustion and Burnout
This is for those who are more temperamentally conscientious, compelled to stay busy and work for crazy long hours. Whether it’s for a career-based job or purpose-based work, it’s imperative that you find the time to also focus on the basic health pinnacles of eating nutritious foods, exercising, getting enough sleep, meditating (or some other related mental exercise) and exposure to nature and sunlight.
Otherwise, without those breaks, you’re prone to burnout.
Burnout is considered a mixture of mental, emotional and physical exhaustion, and could lead to serious health problems.
Brandon Gaille, host of the Blogging Millionaire podcast, admitted that because he was so fixated on his SEO and email marketing companies and neglected his sleep, he ended up in the hospital with heart issues. His burnout affected his ability to engage in everyday activities like driving, and so his life had to be temporarily put on hold.
You don’t want to end up in a situation like that. Be aware enough to step back and analyze whether you’re leading an unbalanced life and if so, make changes accordingly. Health is wealth.
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Poor Brain Health
If you spend much of your leisure time scrolling through social media, your attention span will decrease. If you work 11-12 hour days with few breaks, you’ll eventually go through burnout – as described above. If you consistently consume alcohol and drugs, you’ll damage your dopamine system.
In all of these scenarios, your brain health takes a hit when too much time is spent in one area.
If you then factor in the neglecting of vital life components like health, social connection, or purpose (depending on what it is you allocate majority of your time to), you’re also risking depletion of neurochemicals or cognitive markers that aren’t already depleting from the chosen activity. It’s a serious consequence of an unbalanced life, but definitely preventable.
Using one of the examples above: if you’re putting in 11-12 hour days at your job with very few periods of rest, you’ll suffer from burnout, and this – among other things – will affect your speed and accuracy when performing cognitive tasks. If you’re also getting very little morning sunlight exposure, healthy levels of cortisol will drop, too.
Wasted Time and Opportunities
The distinction between devoting majority of your time to something beneficial, like a business, or to activities that give fleeting pleasure (like scrolling through social media) should be noted. Obviously the former is more likely to add value, but as with anything, there are tradeoffs with any type of unbalanced life.
In reality, you’re only young once. The more responsibilities you take on as you age, the less opportunity you have to do things like travel, catch up with friends, or work on your body.
The concept of time should always be taken into consideration when you’re still at the pinnacle of your youth.
Some experiences and activities could prove to be formative, especially when considering that your brain isn’t fully developed until about 25. But you’ll miss out on that potential development if you don’t make the time.
Reflecting on this as you get older can lead to regret. That regret can lead to poor emotional regulation because you’ve realized your younger years are gone.
If you had only branched out your time to also focus on health, social connections, experiences abroad and other critical components of life, you would have decreased the chances of that happening as a result.