The Balanced Life & Giving

I believe that being self aware and monitoring our choices is critical to living a fulfilled life. For me there are 3 aspects to accomplishing this:

• Knowing the Principles that are important to yourself
• Knowing the various roles and activities that are important to you
• Monitoring your thoughts and actions to ensure you are achieving balance

Imagine the work centric person who spends too much time at work, and sacrifices their spouse, family, health, etc. Some people may die satisfied when they look back at their choices, however I am betting most will have regrets and may even harbor resentment toward their employer.

Or imagine the adult child that lives to care for their aging parent, even if this requires sacrificing friendships, hobbies, etc. Isn’t it more likely that the adult child will at some point feel burdened, burnt out, and possibly grow to resent the parent.

I truly believe that one must take care of themselves in order to freely and happily give of themselves. I learned this the hard way… My previous priorities were Family, Work and then John. This went along fine for many years, however I finally exhausted my energy reserve and ability to give, resulting in my needing some significant help. This helped me to truly understand that my priorities must be John, Family and then Work. My batteries MUST be charged if I am to effectively help others.

Since most of us play many roles and engage in many activities, here is a tool that will help you identify them and keep them in balance. I learned about it in some training by the Pacific Institute, however all it requires is a blank piece of paper and 5 minutes to create…(see below)

• Draw the lines
• Label them with roles/activities that you think are important
• Score how you think you are doing against your criteria

The challenge is then to start spending some more time or effort in the areas that you have determined are coming up short. The goal is to create a round circle. This may require you to say no to some things. And isn’t it good to say no proactively, rather than waiting until you are fried…

And once you have the balance under control, you can begin improve your capabilities and increase the diameter of the circle.

Below is an example of the one I did today… It looks like I have some work to do. (ie exercise, volunteering and hobbies) However remember that it is okay to go out of round once in awhile. LIFE HAPPENS… It is just nice to have a simple way to start managing our life rather than having it manage us. Thoughts?