Things are
not always as they Appear - Bringing Balance to a Chaotic Life
I’m
listening to a Chris Widener presentation on Bringing Balance to a Chaotic
Life. The whole presentation can be summed up into one sentence – “I can bring
balance to my chaotic life.”
Chris starts
with a joke talking about how a situation may not be as it seems. It really is
true. Most people we deal with on a day to day basis have more going on in
their lives that we can ever see. I can think of many examples of that in my
own circle of people.
The main
thing he observes is when things are out of control because we let some areas
of our life take over from other areas of our life. Really what we need to do
find the priorities in our life and bring those priorities back to centre. When
we feel out of balance it is because what we really need in our life is missing
or being ignored because we are focused on the wrong things.
What we need
to do is remind ourselves what is important and bring that back into focus.
Denis Waitley has a great line, “Most people are focused on tension relieving
rather than goal achieving.” I’ll give you an example from my own life from
this week. I sat and binge watched a show on Netflix. I now feel very
discombobulated because I did not work on my goals. Had I completed the tasks I
had to achieve my goals and then treated myself with some Netfix (some, not
binge) I’d feel much better right now.
The primary
thing we need to do is find our priorities. Instead of working on priorities,
we will be working on what is urgent. What I mean by that is once we have put
off our priorities we end up working on non-priority items that have now become
urgent. For example, because we procrastinated, we have not done the dishes,
and now we need to do the dishes instead of working on our priorities.
Chris gives
all sorts of examples of people he knows whose lives are out of control. He
then talks about those same people and what they did do re-arrange and change
their lives. He uses one example of a guy who figured it out. This guy was
offered his dream job. What he wanted to do and GOBS of money. The boss man
told the guy he would have to work 80 hours a week. He ended up turning the job
down because it would have put other areas of his life into a state of
unbalance.
So what I am
going to do is this:
Evaluate my
life to check the balance on some certain areas of my life, I am going to grade
it on a scale of 1 to 10
- Business and Professional
- Personal Finance
- Marriage
- Children
- Extended Family
- Friendships
- Recreation
- Physical and Health
- Emotional health and satisfaction
- Intellectual health
- Spiritual
- Strength of willpower – ability to function with self control
- Social and Service Commitments
Then I am
going to write a paragraph to describe why I evaluated myself to that grade.
Then I will use that exercise to help evaluate myself and use that evaluation
to priorize my life.
Once I have
evaluated myself I am going to work on the areas which need the most work. And
I am starting right now.
I’ll keep
you posted.
Matt
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