Creating Balance in Your Life

So you are a husband, father, teacher, entrepreneur (when the chips are down), brother, uncle, church volunteer, resource person, and you have just 24 hours to be all at once. You feel completely out of place and aren’t able to be one of these things to the best of your ability. You wake up feeling you have infinite responsibilities to accomplish in a finite allocation of time. You go to bed at night feeling like a worse crap than the one that awoke some hours earlier.

          You are not alone in this. Facts don’t lie and it may be interesting to know that you have for a company over 50% of the population of any city in the world. Unfortunately what I just shared with you doesn’t make you feel any better about this situation. You may actually feel worse off – who wants for a company a host of stressed folk?

          What you need is to create balance. Have you seen one on those funambulists [/fjuːˈnambjʊlɪst/] – those fearless people that walk on thin tight ropes? What’s the one word you’d use to describe them? Balance? You are right. They must master the art of creating balance – internal and external balance – else they’d be dead with the first try at public funambulism.

Life is very much like walking on a tight rope. If you don’t create effective balance – internal and external (and in that order) – you’d fall off many ropes until you give up living. If you will be the best you can be in all your roles and responsibilities you must make balance the underlying principle that holds them together.

Internal balance is that which comes from within you. It is the spiritual, the conscience, the inner you. It is the beginning point, the means to an end. When you have it sorted out you will give the external something to work with and build its balance upon.

External balance comes from without. It is the organization, the focus and prioritizing, the outer you. It is the process, the end that comes from a means. Your glory – what the world can see.

I will be writing, in the next few articles, how to develop internal and external balance in your life. These principles will apply irrespective of where you are or what you do.

The Gangnam Style Effect

The music video, Gangnam Style, surpassed 2 billion views – and still counting – on YouTube alone early this month. It is by far the most watched video ever. It lasts for 4:12 minutes and that means, like The Economist highlighted, it has been watched for 140 million hours or 16,000 years! I must confess I have contributed to at least 20 of those minutes. In this time we would have built 20 Empire State buildings (USA), or 7 Burj Khalifas (Dubai) or 4 Great Pyramids (Egypt).

Now, I am a considerate person and know that it isn’t logical to assume we shouldn’t watch a Gangnam Style or any other fun pop video but will like to raise the point of how productive resources such as time, money or energy can be gradually dissipated on unproductive activities by one little drop after another.

The fact that time goes in seconds makes it easy to waste. Money is spent in cents makes it easy to spend. Energy goes in tiny calories makes it easy to dispel. The difference between successes and failures is in one thing – the ability to use limited resources and get the very best out of them. To the success, little is much. He knows that the seconds matter, and the cents are important, and each calorie is all too needed. He uses the little of today to produce the much of tomorrow.

To ensure the Gangnam Style Effect doesn’t infiltrate you, you must understand the multiplier effect of “little” things. Remember it is the “little foxes that spoil the vine.” Nobody has it all – time, money or energy. Don’t look down on the little you think you have because as you do the best you can with your little allocation you will produce results that make it seem you have more than your fair share.

Identify what is important to you and your success journey and ensure you don’t spend most of your resources on the things that aren’t important. The “would-be” doctor who spends half of the day watching Entertainment TV will become a “wanna-be” doctor.

I am learning to prioritize and focus only on the things that are foremost to me per moment. I try to live through the day by starting with number one and go down the list. Setting priorities is a difficult habit in a world where things intrude into our plans and make us plan-less. But this intrusion is the reason we must prioritize lest we find ourselves helping Gangnam Style hit 3 billion views.

How to Have a Good Start

It isn’t every time that speed determines success. I am fond of the rabbit and turtle race fable in which the rabbit explodes in great speed leaving the slow turtle moving at the best speed it can behind. Close to the finish line the rabbit discovers that the race wasn’t a contest by any standard and decided to rest his feet under a tree before winning. Unfortunately he falls asleep and loses as the turtle crept through the line with the rabbit still asleep.

The story brings to life the maxim: “Pride cometh before a fall” – which is true, but doesn't negate another profound truth which is that a good start is priceless. I argued in an article, The Swift Achiever, that, although the fastest runner doesn’t always win the race it is good to be the fastest. Who would you rather be on a 100m race track, Usain Bolt or Yusuf Leinge? I would rather be Bolt!

A determining factor to swiftness is a good start – the take-off – it is the foundation to victory. The way you start anything goes a long way in your overall performance. It is true that the end is more important than the beginning but many have misinterpreted this to mean that you can start as lazily and casually as you think and would still finish at the strongest possible way for you. This paradigm is a fable in itself and believing it is the same thing as ignoring all contrary evidence in athletics, academics, politics, and even religion.

To have a good start you must train for it. It was Ann Voskamp, author of One Thousand Gifts, who said, “Practice is the hardest part of learning, and training is the essence of transformation.” It may be okay to be a slow starter for now but if you must make progress in your success journey you must allow training transform you into another person. Your training will including reading and expanding your mind.

Second, you should maintain the right mind-posture for the take-off. Your heart’s disposition shouldn’t be one of laziness but of rapt attention to the approaching opportunities. This would ensure that you indeed spring forth when the need arises.

Finally, when the opportunity comes, drive as much force into your take off as you possibly can. Don’t take it lightly on this. Opportunities, in their unique nature, come only once. Take it with all you’ve got because you will not get exactly the same opportunity again.

Time for Your Change

Change is and has always been a full part of our humanity. From the moment of conception we begin the process of change, which continues nonstop every day until the day we leave this sphere of existence.

Change tells us one thing – the future beckons. “Extra! Extra!” It shouts at the top of its voice, “That lovely future you longed for is here!” how would you respond to it?

Interestingly, we are hardwired with the ability recognize and hold on to the familiar good. We erect the structure of our lives around the favorable things that have happened to us and hence end up with the structure psychologist call “The Comfort Zone.”

This zone keeps us safe. It ensures we are not exposed to all the negatives beyond its boundaries. Unfortunately it also ensures we don’t experience all the exciting possibilities of the unknown. “The thing you don’t know won’t hurt you,” says its wrong voice. It inflicts a fear of the future: “The demon you know is better than the angel you don’t know.” Have you heard it before? That is the voice of the chains holding you back.

You know better than to put new wine into old containers. They would burst. New wine needs fresh containers. – Jesus

The effect of living in this zone is that we try to meet the inevitably changed future by doing the things we did in the bygone past. This will fail. The future demands new approaches. We must get into it in a different way – special way if you may. Our minds must be plastic enough to accept the truth that change is indeed inevitable. It is the only constant thing in life; it will come if we wish it, it will come if we pray it shouldn’t. In the lovely book, Who moved my cheese, Spencer Johnson outlines that to handle change we need to understand these 7 writings on the wall:

1.     Change happens

2.     Anticipate change

3.     Monitor change

4.     Adapt to change quickly

5.     Change

6.     Enjoy change

7.     Be ready to change quickly and enjoy it again

Rise up and welcome your change. Your lovely future beckons!

For More Articles on Change CLICK HERE

You Can't be Beaten if You Refuse to Stop.

Growing up in a system that crowns competition is unfortunate but remains the story of every one of us. It is a daunting task to live up to the expectations of such a system as it forgets about your unique capabilities, capacities and talents but focuses on some goal set for every person in a particular class, peer group, or generation. How many times have we seen a young girl who may have been the greatest singer of her generation lose her dream because she is made to compete in calculus and algebra or a boy who would be a great scientist if allowed to explore his inquisitive nature only to be tagged, “destructive” and placed in the arts class? Competition simply does not bring out the best from us.

You can then understand the reasons behind my problems with the problem part of competition. Left to me I would create a world without competition. A world where you become all God has earmarked for you without struggling to outdo another person. Such a world seems perfect in my mind until I get to the field of sports and imagine how gutless football would be without competition. Competition gives it life!

So I have grown to the balance that the best way to operate in our competitive systems is to compete only with the one person that matters in the field – you. Stretch yourself beyond the limits of your last success story. Grow up and grow BIG within you. Increase your capacity; enlarge your coast. Don’t settle for good when best is just around the corner.

I am a slow walker, but I never walk back. – Abraham Lincoln

If you do find yourself in a field that encourages external competition set your mind that you are not trying only to do better than your competitors but to be the best you can be. The formula is: NEVER STOP! It is almost impossible to beat a man who won’t stop. Many give in for speed and outshining their peers when all they need to do is set their hearts on their goals and keep moving – no matter how slow – towards it.