How To Sustain A Balanced Life
How to Have a Balanced Life
Imagine yourself twenty meters (sixty-six feet) above the ground on a platform, as thousands of faces watch and wait for you to perform. Now imagine taking a step, with only a half-inch metal wire between you and the ground. Welcome to the world of high wire and the life and death importance of maintaining perfect balance.
A young girl asked the tight ropewalker how he first became involved in his current profession.
His response was, ‘Can’t remember really, I think I just fell into it.’
A Planned Life
One of the key ingredients that I have personally found helpful, when seeking balance within my own life, has been centered around one major thing, and that is planning.
A planned life is a life lived in order. It is a life that has a roadmap already marked out. It is not an accident waiting to happen. It is an event ready to occur.
So often, because of a whole range of circumstances, we can become like the tightrope walker who has failed to maintain his or her center of gravity. This causes us to rotate about the axis that will ultimately bring about one thing; a dangerous fall.
By simply going through the motions of business in your day-to-day life, this ‘falling’ event will ultimately come upon you. It may explode in your relationships, your finances, and your health or in any area of your life. It might not be today, or tomorrow, but I can assure you that it will come.
So how do you avoid such a terrible outcome?
The Secret Of Solitude
You must hop off the rope and go somewhere quiet. This is where you will be able to regain your balance.
How do you do that if you’re a single parent? Hire a babysitter. How do you do that if you’re a sole trader in your own business? Close your doors for a day or hire some temporary staff. Whatever you do, don’t delay. Balance is essential for ongoing success in every area of your life. You will not be able to clearly identify how to regain your balance unless you get out of your situation and into a place of quiet solitude. Solitude is the secret to regaining balance.
This brings me back to thinking about the hare and the tortoise. Frantic movement didn’t help the hare at all. I imagine the slow tortoise as a planner, who spent quality time before the race preparing and working out how he could compensate for his lack of speed. The end of the story tells it all.
If your life is currently out of balance, then it tells me one thing: you have not spent sufficient time in the planning area of your life.
Questions To Bring About Balance
Let me ask you these following questions:
- Do you have a written set of goals at hand?
- How long since you wrote a fresh set of goals?
- If you have a business, do you have a written one-page business plan?
- When was the last time that you updated that plan?
- Do you refer to your goals on a daily or weekly basis?
- When was the last time you referred to your business plan, to see that your business was on track?
- Do you have a written budget/cash flow projections for your household and/or your business?
- Do you keep a tidy office, house and car?
- Do you delegate tasks that could be done by others?
- Do you spend at least one hour a day quietly on your own to think?
The Importance Of Regular Planning
Regular planning will bring balance into your life.
How did you go with those questions?
If you have some areas to work on, then don’t delay. Now is the time to schedule some time for you, and only you, to take some time out.
I can hear some say: ‘But I don’t have time?’ or ‘I can’t afford it.’ Well, get ready for a crash bang event coming your way.
You must not procrastinate when it comes to pursuing and maintaining balance in your life.
Your children will survive a weekend with a babysitter.
Your business will last if, for just one day, you have a break or leave it in another’s hands. And if you can’t do that, then you need to restructure the systems for your business anyway.
As a writer, and because I run my various business interests from home, I have to take out regular periods of time if I am to complete specific projects on schedule.
You can live a balanced life. Plan, and in your planning plan time-out so that you can spend sufficient time thinking about where you’ve been, where you are and where you want to go in the future.
And a bright future it will be if you choose to maintain your center of balance.
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