Bring balance to your life.

Bring balance to your life

Part of my ‘winning minds’ programme

How balanced is your life? This is a big question. For most of us the answer is probably not very. We are all guilty of spending large portions of our time and energy on certain things and little or no time on others.

Some of us recognise this fact and promise ourselves that we will change and address this unbalance but never quite get around to it, whilst others are blissfully ignorant to the fact that their life is unbalanced to start with.

So what do I mean by unbalanced? Well for instant some individuals work becomes all consuming. They convince themselves that they are so busy that they couldn’t possibly have time for anything else in their lives. In fact the job takes them over and this is what they become identified with. People will comment. ‘There goes Dave he is a very successful salesman’.

So this is how ‘Dave’ is viewed. That will be ‘Dave’s epitaph.’ Here lies Dave a very successful businessman but a crap husband, father and son, but fuck me did he sold 1000’s of mobile phones’.

So how do people view you? Maybe more importantly how do you view you?

To seek true balance in our lives we have to view what Susanne Jeffers (author of the excellent, Feel the fear and do it anyway) calls a ’Whole life model’.

We might try all our lives to achieve this but if we don’t try we will have no chance of improving.

Firstly we have to do a bit of soul searching and admit to ourselves that some aspects of our life could be better and that it is probably down to you that they aren’t.

 A bitter pill to swallow but one that some stage in our life we will have to come to terms with rather than looking for excuses to why this part of our life is lacking. We can always blame other people or circumstances but when we cut through the crap it is usually down to us. Readdressing balance firstly calls for you to ‘give a shit’ and secondly to really want to do something about it. Read that sentence again and fully understand it.

Most of us are good at making the big statement, the promises, the New Year resolutions and then back down at the first hurdle. Why is this?

Because we really don’t have the desire or commitment to do whatever it is we said we were going to do. Or we look to address something easy to tackle in our lives rather than the real ‘bastard thing’ that we should be dealing with. We will attack our Ben Nevis but not our Everest!

Here is an example of a ‘Whole life’ model

Boxes are allocated for different areas of our lives. In this model the boxes are divided equally for clarity. How would your whole life model look addressing all of these areas? Draw it down now. Be brutally honest and see what you come up with.

Contribution	Hobby	Leisure
Family	Alone time	Personal growth
Work	Relationship	Friends

For most of us we might have a massive box for work and tiny one for family. Maybe alternatively you have a big box for friends and a little one for family.

In the above model some of the boxes may be nonexistent for you all together.

It can be a wake up call to many just how unbalanced their lives really are.

The usual answer when people are confronted by this is the defensive comment of I just don’t have time. Well make time. Life isn’t just about you, you, you. There are others to consider whether you like it or not and there are other issues to address apart from the ones you favour doing. Organisation is the key. To be organised you have to be disciplined.

The reality is you have to work at life. It just doesn’t happen. Every day we have to work at it. If you want to be a better you then it starts with you, stop making fucking excuses and blaming everybody and everything for your short comings in certain aspects of your live. Grow ups take responsibility. We reap what we sow.  How can we be so rich in one area of our lives and so poor in another? If you are successful in business but shit in relationships, what are you going to do about it? If you are popular with your friends but have no relationship with your children, what are you going to do about it? Blame somebody else? Harp on about how tough things are? No. You are going to blame yourself and then do something about it right now!

Here is ‘Mandy’s real life model. She is married to Steve. She loves him dearly and they do everything together. She has a small part time cleaning job and she likes to watch soap operas on TV in her ‘Me time’. Other than that she loves being with Steve.

RELATIONSHIP

WORK

ME TIME

A year ago Steve was diagnosed with cancer. Last month he sadly passed away. Here is ‘Mandy’s’ real life model now. Do you think it’s balanced? Did you think it was balanced before Steve’s death?

WORK

ME TIME

Can you see that both models of ‘Mandy’s life were unbalanced? There will certainly be aspects of your life that will take up a bigger share of your time but they shouldn’t become all consuming neither should they become the be all and end all.

Look at the celebrities, TV stars, film stars and music stars that seemed to have the ideal lifestyle. Money, riches and fame but were deeply unbalanced in other areas of their life’s. Think of George Best, Gazza, Mike Tyson, George Michael, Amy Winehouse, and Robin Williams as a few examples. They were rich in one part of their live, poor in another. All incredibly talented but their private lives  were a mess. Their whole life models were well out of balance.

I am not preaching here I work every day to achieve balance. Most of the time I do ok but I have had to work hard for this and do a lot of soul searching into my weaknesses. Also I had to learn to be unselfish and give time to others that needed it even when I wanted to be doing something for myself.

So it doesn’t matter if you are the fittest person on the planet, the most beautiful, the most talented, the richest, and the cleverest, if other areas of your live are crap. If you put as much energy or even a fraction of the energy into the crap areas as you put in to what you like doing you will notice the difference.

Not got the time? Then let me ask you this. How much time to you spend trolling through face book, twitter etc. How much time to you spend watching soap operas and reality TV? How much time do you spend procrastinating and talking crap? It’s amazing how people can be busy doing nothing.

If you wish to explore this more about this topic, then contact me about my ‘Winning minds’ programme.