How many times do we read articles about living a balanced life? It’s often along the lines of, “If you don’t live a balanced life then your quality of life will suffer, without balance you will never be a success, or without balance you are not living in harmony.” Have you ever wondered who the author of the article is and what they have accomplished for themselves? Did you ever wonder if they are happy, or reaching their personal goals, or even what their personal goals were when they wrote the article? (Other than finishing an article prior to deadline as part of their job responsibilities.)
Maybe balance isn’t what most people think it should be. Or perhaps what most people would consider balance to be doesn’t line up with what wealth builders would consider balance to be.
I often struggled with figuring out what balance means and how to apply it in my own life. There’s certainly a correlation with work, effort, and subsequent luck. It seems like the more I work on things that are important to me, the more likely I reach my goal. That also required making trade-offs. I had to learn that lesson for myself through personal experience.
Many people believe that balance is about equal time for all activities. The philosophy is more along the lines of spread your time out amongst all things in your life in equal amounts and that results in balance. That’s a concept that is difficult to for me to grasp and agree with.
Wealthy people approach balance differently than allocating time equally amongst all activities. They actually define balance differently than others because they know the value of allocating time to what matters and what is most important to reach goals and objectives that are most important to them. Likewise, they don’t spend a lot of time on things that aren’t important to them.
Time is allocated based on return on time investment and priorities.
The higher the personal return possibility, the higher the priority, the more time they allocate to that endeavor.
This leads to MORE personal satisfaction and happiness because they are allocating their time to what matters to THEM.
Imagine the activity of mountain biking for a moment to represent the concept of balance. Consider the following;
- Balance requires forward progress. If you stop moving, you are no longer in balance. It’s possible to stay in balance at varying speeds.
- Some people can go down a mountain trail at warp speed. They can remain in balance going fast on a tricky path that is full of bumps and obstacles.
- Others need to ride much slower and on a smoother path to stay in balance. If they go too fast, they are more apt to fall and get hurt.
- Some can ride a mountain bike while doing wheelies down the road. Others need training wheels.
If you think about it from this perspective, you will realize a few things;
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Balance is a skill just like any other skill. It can be enhanced through repetition, practice and focus.
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It’s not always about what you add to your life, it’s what you can cut out that isn’t important that may allow you to be more in balance.
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Finally, and most importantly, mountain biking isn’t for everybody. Some people don’t like mountain biking. That’s ok. What’s important is that you identify what IS important TO YOU.
Your desired goals and activities will have their own speeds and obstacles to overcome. You will have to take things at your own speed just like mountain biking.
Wealth builders spend time on endeavors that correlate to their personal goals and objectives. They create a life where they utilize their 24 hours a day in ways that lead to personal satisfaction. Balance for them may be more about what needs to be eliminated (such as watching hours of TV each night) versus what needs to be added to be happy.
If you believe that balance is doing a hundred things and allocating a little bit of time to all one hundred, you may not be maximizing the time that you do have on the things that matter the most for you to reach your most important goals in life.
What do you want to allocate your time to? What are your goals and objectives? What are things that you need to eliminate? Share your answer on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn.