In 1995 Dave and I moved to Slovenia for a better 'Quality of life'. By comparison with our lifestyle experiences in Manchester and Leicester, Slovenia was then a more relaxed pace of life that was not driven by money and having more. We loved the 'coffee culture', people took time to meet and talk with family and friends, the countryside and weather was beautiful and peaceful, life was less complicated , more relaxing and fun, just what we wanted. 

 

More than 20 years later a lot has changed in Slovenia; far more choice in what to spend your time on, entertainment, types of foods, travel options.... Sounds good? With this has come different and longer working hours for many, processed foods, loans and credit and money as a driving force in our lives, less free time, the need for higher income levels to support higher life costs. However I still see people striving to keep a quality of life they once had more easily but now try harder to keep hold of.

My experiences living in Slovenia and working internationally over the past 20 years have shown me that Quality of Life means different things to different people and is also very dependent on your past experiences and comparisons with what you had and what you have now. 

In my work more and more I am helping people to manage their time better, find ways to 'protect' family time, reduce stress, cope with many different kinds of daily pressures, improve the quality of their relationships, find meaning and purpose both in work and life and help them to be successful in whatever they choose to do. For me these are all signs of the wish to find, create and keep the quality of life that matters to us. 

This has led me to question what are some of the components that we need to learn and manage well in order to have the quality of life we want and I have come up with the following:

• Knowing what we want – often we don't know this as clearly as we need to in order to create what we want
• Having meaning and purpose in life – why do we do what we do, what contribution do we want to make to our world, what do we want in our life to have achieved
• Having quality relationships – the cause of a lot of stress when we don't have this
• Being fit and healthy, physically and emotionally – sometimes hard to find enough time for this in our busy lives or put ourselves first sometimes when we're taking care of our families
• Coping with stress and pressure – it can be hard to combine, the many demands on us and our time sometimes and to cope with changes and volume of work that threaten to eat into more of our personal time

I believe there are many more things than this that also contribute to Quality of Life and many of all programmes, workshops and one-to-one work helps each of us to create the Quality of Life that we want, so do share with us, what Quality of Life means to you and what would help you to have the Quality of Life you want.