Life Balance – A primer
A framework to create a balanced life
Introduction:
Let us begin to take this most slippery of topics and wrestle it to the ground. Let us begin and grapple with the slavering beast that is seeking a balanced life.
This will be the first post in a series that will explain a summary framework of life balance. Future posts in this series will delve more deeply into the tactics and strategies briefed here.
Are you a ‘Seeker’?
Are you a restless soul who knows that there must be something better? Do you have great emotions and great energies and you know there must be some way to harness these to make a worthwhile life for yourself? Does your ‘inner voice’, your sense of ‘self’, constantly create noise inside your head, nagging you to constantly search for answers to unanswerable questions?
You are not alone. We are many. It is the natural human state to strive and to seek. It is one of the defining characteristics of our kind.
We know what it is that you feel. We know how you suffer and strive. Let us share with you what we have learned from a life of seeking. Let us share with you what we have discovered from a life of learning. Let us share with you what we have been able to work out in our lifetime of striving so that you can start early to define your worthy life.
How will you find this balance in your life? That is your challenge, and your burden, but we can leverage our experience to provide a context for you to use in your seeking. Allow us to share with you a map of sorts, and a framework, that will enable you to understand and focus your yearning for a better world and a better place.
Life Balance – a framework.
Picture your life as four overlapping circles. Go ahead and grab a piece of paper and a pencil. Draw four big circles.
In the first circle write “Work” – this represents the part of your life that you dedicate your career and your vocation – to making a living.
In the second circle write “Family – Relationships” – This represents your parents, spouse, children and your social activities.
In the third circle write “Spiritual” – This represents your spiritual life. Note that this is religion for many people but is used in a broader sense here and not restricted to religious activities.
In the fourth circle write “Health” – This is your physical self and your body.
This is your framework and this is what you are trying to balance.
Between your circles write the word “Balance” in big bold letters.
This is the framework I use when I think about life balance.
How you balance your life must align with your sense of ‘self’
Beneath your circles draw a big block or arrow. In this block or arrow write the word ‘Self’.
What are your core attributes? What makes you happy? What fulfills you? It is these things that will help you define your balance.
There is a set of attributes that you possess that are uniquely you. They have nothing to do with your relationships and your career. They are the underlying skills and passions that you bring with you to everything you do.
You need to find these things and define your life balance around them. Unless you do this you will be unhappy and unfulfilled.
Out of balance – The problem
The problem of life balance arises when these areas of our life come into competition. You may have noticed that every one of these areas demands 100% of your time.
Your spouse and family and social engagements want all of your ‘free’ time. You wish you didn’t have to work so much. You want to go to the gym but you don’t have the time or energy after a long day at the office. Even your religious activities want more of your time and energy than you have to give.
Everyone wants more of your time, more of your energy and more of your creativity and passion.
You end up running back and forth frantically like a person trying to put out too many fires at the same time. You become so tightly scheduled that the slightest little blip sends your whole week spiraling out of control. You feel like you are jumping from task to task without getting anything worthwhile done.
What’s going on here? Why can’t you find the balance?
The reason you can’t find the balance is that time is finite. No one can create more time. There is only so much that you can do in an hour or a day or a lifetime.
The trick is that you get to choose. The scarcity of time forces you to choose. If you can’t get your life in balance, or you are unfulfilled, this means you are not choosing well, or worse, allowing someone else to choose for you by default.
Time is not scarce. Time is abundant. You get to choose what you will do with that hour, that day and that lifetime. You can make it worthwhile.
Out of balance situations and corrections
Over time your focus will change. There will be temporary surges in your career that take you away from your family. There may be the birth of a child that will take you away from your career. Your life balance is not static.
One person’s out of balance situation may be perfectly fine to another.
The executive who is driven to the top of their company can be perfectly happy and fulfilled because they are acting in alignment with how they define themselves.
Likewise the Mom or Dad who chooses to stay home and school their kids is may be perfectly and happily aligned with their sense of self.
Different balances work for different people. They change over time and over a lifetime. You get to choose.
Make each life balance area richer
Have you ever noticed people who seem to be good at everything they do? One of the great lies of life balance is that fulfillment is time-based only. Time is finite, but fullness, ripeness and level of satisfaction are not.
One of the best ways to make your life balance more fulfilling is to do each area well. Your life balance will become unstable if you don’t continue to grow in all areas.
You cannot just show up for work because that is what you have to do in order to have a house for your family. You are cheating yourself. When you are at work make the best of it – love what you do.
There is abundance in every area of your life and by realizing and seizing that abundance you will find a fulfilling balance.
Be a learner in every area, especially in your ongoing discovery of self. You are an unfinished masterpiece. Don’t stop tinkering. Expand each circle, each area with fullness and discovery.
In essence the old saying is true, you cannot put more time into your life, but you can put more life into your time.
Engineer overlap and alignment
Find ways that your life areas overlap and augment each other. This is what people really mean when they say they are living their passion. They have found a way to combine spirituality with health. They have found a way to combine work and family. They have found a way to align everything that they do with their core attributes.
You have seen this already. You have seen people who join a fitness club or group to overlap community and health and this is a very effective strategy. Maybe your job requires travel and you treat it as an adventure to align it with what makes you happy.
You know the people who are great at this when you see them. They live their passions, they work their passions and they build a family and a fulfilling spirituality around it!
Life Balance Lessons
- Only you can define how you want to allocate your finite time and energy
- Letting others set your life priorities will make you unhappy and leave you unfulfilled
- Your balance will align with how you define your ‘Self’
- No one can create more time
- Continue to learn and expand the fullness of every area in your life
- Finding practical ways to overlap your life areas will create greater fulfillment without sacrifice
I would appreciate any thoughts or comments you might have on this.
And I’ll see you out there.
Chris,
Chris Russelllives and trains in suburban Massachusetts with his family and Border collie Buddy. Chris is the author of “The Mid-Packer’s Lament”, and “The Mid-Packer’s Guide to the Galaxy”, short stories on running, racing, and the human comedy of the mid-pack. Chris writes the Runnerati Blog at www.runnerati.com. Chris’ Podcast, RunRunLive is available on iTunes and at www.runrunlive.com. Chris also writes for CoolRunning.com (Active.com) and is a member of the Squannacook River Runners and the Goon Squad.
Email me at cyktrussell at Gmail dot com
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So, if I read this correctly, the trick is mastering the science behind creating more time. 😉
In all seriousness, I think the conversation lately is shifting away from the concept of work-life balance and toward work-life integration – what you call practical overlap. The key is to stop viewing these areas of your life as discrete and to start looking for where they share things in common.
It’s not easy. I still struggle with it, myself. What you have here is a great starting point, Chris. Good on.
The element in the middle of the post about time being finite, yet abundant, reminded my twisted mind of the comment from Zathras, a character on the sci-fi TV show Babylon 5: When told that they were running out of time to handle a crisis, he said: “Cannot run out of time…there is infinite time. YOU are finite; Zathras is finite; THIS is wrong tool…no, no, never use this” (Which probably gives some twisted indication as to how Zathras viewed himself 😉 )
Lewis