About 30% of the people I speak to in my daily coaching sessions are stressed, fatigued and frustrated with their current ‘life-balance.’ I feel for them. I’ve been there, and beyond, myself.

When I first moved to Switzerland, I started a company and threw everything I had mentally and physically into it. I was trying to do the right thing for myself and my family—to get some security…to get to ‘that place’ where ‘we will be comfortable and I will reduce my working hours!’ And I really believed myself too! I may have had noble intentions, but intentions account for absolutely nothing in the cold light of reality.

After a number of years of working weekends, missing family occasions, and neglecting time with friends, the inevitable physical and mental health concerns started appearing. To make a long story short, I developed an auto-immune disease (arthritis) which stopped me doing a lot of activities (hiking, snowboarding, gym) which I had previously enjoyed. It also created a burden for my wife, because it got to the stage where I couldn’t even pick up my 2-year-old son. For a man who prided himself on his work ethic to provide for his family, this was quite the slap in the face with a wet fish.

The point I want to make is this:

Concentrating too much on one area of our life invariably takes time away from other areas. We know this on an intellectual level. But the fact that I speak to highly intelligent people daily, who have problems stemming from this phenomenon, including relationships breaking down (intimate, children, friends), mental health problems, and physical health problems shows me that I was not a special case. This trap is common. And all of the people—myself included—didn’t think it would happen to them.

So what’s the solution?

If we want to build the lives of our dreams (and why shouldn’t we?) we need to be paying attention to, and making progress and constant improvements in ALL areas of our life.

We all have slightly different key areas of life, but some common universals, and the ones that I regard as my key areas of life, are the following:

1. Physical Health (diet, exercise, energy, vitality, well-being)
2. Emotional Health (quality of consistent thoughts)
3. Personal Growth
4. Relationship with Children
5. Intimate Relationship
6. Relationship with family (mum, dad, siblings, cousins, etc.)
7. Fun / Hobbies
8. Socialising with Friends
9. Career
10. Finances

And none of these areas exist in a vacuum. Each area effects each area. This is far from trivial.

An extremely useful exercise, if achieving life balance is something we desires, is to ask ourselves a specific question relating to each of our key life areas (which may be slightly different to mine above). The question is this:

“How fulfilled, on a scale of 1 – 10, am I in each of my key life areas? 1 meaning ‘couldn’t be any worse’, and 10 meaning ‘couldn’t be any better?'”

Where we are at in life becomes clear when we make distinctions like this…

However, if that’s all we do—look at a list—nothing improves.

What happens to a business when we ignore problems, or pretend they don’t exist? Sticking our heads in the sand is not an adequate business plan; nor is it an advantageous life plan. Rating ourselves in each of these key life areas allows us to take stock. If some areas are falling below a 4 or a 5, we can now do a lot of things, we have an array of options…but we can’t say we got caught up in life and didn’t notice what wasn’t working 🙂

A practical tool that I personally use, which works very well for me (and my clients) and may work for you, is a ‘Life Balance Wheel’:

The way I find this works very well, is by having the above picture on a magnetic white-board, so you can take stock every week. You can slide the magnets to your current rating out of ten. I have my whiteboard on my wall in my office (next to my written goals) and since I started using this, I have achieved much more balance in my life. I’ve spent a lot more time with friends. I’ve focussed on my health, which has had a flow on effect to my vitality and my businesses.

Some people disregard tools like this because they seem overly simple, and they have pre-conceived beliefs that something so simple can’t be so powerful.

The way I respond to this line of thinking is it is the intelligent person who can simplify the complex…life is complex if we look at it all at once…or worse, don’t look at it at all! A fool is more likely to complicate the simple…not to mention the mess he’ll make of something as complex as life! But life doesn’t need to be so complex!

Peace 🙂