FINDING BALANCE - THE KEY TO LIVING LIFE TO THE FULLEST

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.” – Thomas Merton

Life is multi-faceted and we assume different roles as humans.

Take for example; the CEO of a corporation is likely to be a husband, a father and a member of a club. He may also be an amateur photographer, a political financier or member of a religious organization – many hats for just one head.

He’ll be a failure if he acts as a CEO in all the other areas of his life.

The same goes for us. You and I need to find a way to achieve balance in every of our lives. If not, we cannot truly be considered as being on the path living life to the fullest.

Many of us enjoy great successes in some areas of our lives and this is great. But if it is at the expense of other areas, then this imbalance will eventually destroy or at best tarnish our success over time.

Finding balance in life means giving attention to the major areas of life so that none of them suffers.

If you run a billion dollar corporation successfully but your health goes down south as a result of your schedule, do you need anyone to tell you that isn’t true success?

If you are a bestselling author and your readers have a better idea of who you are than your kids do, would you consider that as true success?

If you are an A-list actor or the best movie director but your marriage suffers because you ignored it and ends in a divorce can that be considered true success?

I’m sure we both agree that the answers to these questions are a big, fat NO!
Success spills over from one area of life another in a balanced life. However, in a life that isn’t balanced, negligence destroys success in other areas of life. At the end it makes the first area of success not as worthwhile.

With this said, the question you may want to ask is: “How do I find balance in my life?”
For you to live life to the fullest, you have to do two major things. First, identify the seven of life and then decide that you will not starve any of the necessary attention required to keep it alive.

You have to commit to creating balance in your life. Those who live life to the fullest have learnt how to balance all the facets of their lives excellently well.

These are the truly successful.

Here are the seven areas: spirituality, soul, body and health, family and relationships, business, work or career, finances, recreation

Spirituality
This deals with your relationship with God. God is a Spirit. God is the source of infinite intelligence and creator of all things. As a human being you are first of all a spirit. You have a soul and you live in a body. Note the order. Your spirituality is the most important part of your existence.
Your spirit nature means the most important things in your life are the intangible one like imagination, intuition, perception, integrity, faith, conscience, values, and principles. It is through spirituality that you discover your purpose in life. This discovery makes life meaningful and brings limitless joy and enthusiasm.

You shouldn’t focus on developing your spirit at the expense of your soul and your body.
Even if your spirituality is strong, you won’t live your life to the fullest if you do not balance it with the other six areas.

Soul
Your soul is primarily the link between your spirit and your body. Your soul is made up of your emotions, intellect and will.
Your soul’s primary function is to develop and pay attention to your spirit. For instance, you imagine that you want to double your income. That is a possibility your spirit conceives. Your emotions need to experience what it will feel like to achieve this goal. Your intellect needs to learn what you need to know to double your income and your will must decide to do what you need to do to double your income.

Body and Health
Your body is the house of your spirit and body. It is the machinery for achieving your desires.
The body exists in our physical realm and there are laws it needs to obey to function effectively here. These are the laws of physical health including proper nutrition and exercise. You must actively help your body grow and be healthy. It is an investment that pays healthy dividends.
A healthy body will execute the ideas of your spirit that your soul wants to realize with high energy levels, speed and enthusiasm. It is easy to pay too much attention to the body at the expense of other areas because it is visible. Don’t make this mistake.

Family and Relationships
Your family are the most important people in your life. They form the core of your most important relationships. Love is a most important part of the family relationship.
After this come friends, colleagues, acquaintances and the society.
Relationships make your life beautiful. That is why on deathbeds, people regret how they didn’t invest more in building relationships with loved ones. Also, know that best feeling of fulfilment comes from your relationships not achievements.

Business, Work or Career
Your primary work is to create value for your customers. Your customers are everybody in a general sense. However, the more important customers are your employer, your superiors and the people that buy your company’s products or service.
It is in serving these people that you build your career and accomplishments at work. It is in this area that your output in life or your productivity is measured. Productive people increase their output in this area of life.

Finances
There is a saying that romance without finance leads to annoyance. Money and sex are the two biggest reasons that divorce rate is high in the world today.
You have to learn to be a master of your finances. You should make money serve you and not the opposite. The formula that has worked so well for me and many other people is to give 10% of my earnings to God, then pay myself from my salary, save 20% and live on the rest.

This should be about 60% of your salary. Living on this remainder means have a budget that dictates how you will spend it.
It does not take a genius to know that if you spend more than you earn, you will always be in debt.

Rest or Recreation
You need to set time apart to have fun, relax and indulge in some activities that you enjoy. For instance, you can decide to take your family out, read a book or if you are the creative type, paint or write or cook.
Taking time out for your hobbies helps you to reduce your stress levels and rejuvenate.

The Seven Areas Work together for Good
Without sounding too philosophical, every area of our lives work in sync like the gears of a brand new automobile just leaving the dealer’s lot.
Think of a car with a flat tire. The remaining three good wheels won’t make much difference.
Let’s look at an example of how neglecting an area of life can cause havoc in other areas
Remember our successful CEO, who ignored his health? Well, pretty soon his poor health will reduce his energy level; lead to absence from work and his productivity will reduce. It will also drag the company’s stock price down.
All of a sudden it looks like he’s lost his genius and this affect his confidence, resulting in problems with his family and subordinates. His pay will also not be justified after some time.
This is the same way it will affect the man who ignores his finances. Financial stress leads to a lack of peace and confidence and sooner than later it will put pressure on his relationships with family and friends and ultimately his career.
We can go on.

So long as you identify the main areas of your life and commit to improving them, the successes in one will spill into every other area.

What next after identifying the main areas of life? How can you balance the important areas of life and still achieve what you want?
The answer is to ensure that you keep all the areas in perspective.

Here’s what to do:
Imagine how you want each area to be, then, set goals to get you there.
Set goals for all areas of your life and remember to set goals for all for areas.
Set time apart to be alone and then have a Q & A session with yourself about what you want and come up with specific answers like these:

Spirituality: Meditate on my Bible 30 minutes and commune with God for 1 hour everyday

Soul: Read 4 books and listen to 1 audio-book a month

Body: Jog daily and workout 3 times a week and gain 5kg of muscle in 30 days

Family and relationships: Date my wife every Wednesday evening. Call 3 close friends every week

Work/Career: Increase the number clients we write for by 100% by the end of the year

Finance: Double my organizations income from writing per month until end of this year

Rest: Paint for 30 minutes daily or read a chapter of the children’s story book to them every evening

Look at your goals in everyday and change set new goals if you have achieved any. Keep your goals constant, don’t always change them.

To do a check on yourself, rate the seven areas on a scale of 1-10 and review monthly. If you rate them fairly you see how you have progressed and areas that need more of your focus. Let t 10 be the highest joy in an area of life and 0, the worst. A score of 5 in each area means there is a level of balance already. All you have to do is to consistently improve.

Remember that what you want is strong harmony and balanced growth in these seven areas. To grow your life in every area, dedicate part of your time around each. Set time apart for spiritual, soul, body, relationships, work, finances and rest. Whenever you feel laxity in an area, give it the needed attention.

My team and I use model in our lives and our writing business and the benefits have been immense to us and our families. The wisdom of balancing every area of life is beautifully rewarding.

Try it and start seeing a positive impact.