subject: The Great Balancing Act [print this page] I recently attended a seminar to hear a very interesting speaker who always brings up issues that don't usually show up on my desk as a memo. He claimed that the mind and soul must work together, balanced, if any of us wants to experience true bliss.True bliss may be beyond the real world's ability to deliver however, I did start to think about other 'balanced relationships' that must be in place for our personal and professional worlds to succeed. Here's one example that often gets in the way of business progress: trying to balance the work-related project we've committed to do with longer term goals we're also committed to achieve. Or the pull of what others expect of us vs. what's inside us as a personal priority. There's the balance of meeting expectations of our team members, business partners and mentors, vs. what we personally believe, often silently, must be attended to first. And then there's Stephen Covey's famous and often quoted battle between the urgent and the important.Very often the winner is decided in accordance to Time - its availability or its deadline. We have a tendency to blame Time for our inability to 'handle it all', believing we're supposed to handle it all and could if only Time would let us.Perhaps success would be more easily found if we realized that 'time' is a concept and not an enemy out to destroy our schedule or our day. It is predictable and never-changing (at least until Bloomingdale's or Amazon starts selling the H. G. Wells Time Machine - deluxe and standard models); every day of every week of the year, you can count on Time to be utterly predictable, down to it's every-4-years-Leap.The greater path to balancing conflicting needs is our own ability to manage ourselves - our behaviors, choices and beliefs - through the flow of time. Learning not to take on others' urgencies as our own, empowering others to make their own decisions, effective planning, scheduling 65% of every working day (want to know what the other 35% is for? Just get in touch), learning how to say no are just a few of the means available to balance the urgencies and the important issues, our own priorities as well as others', and the unexpected surprises that arrive daily and require attention (yet not necessarily yours). These are the tools that anyone can use to find the perfect balancing act to achieve, perhaps not bliss, but definitely a sense of accomplishment at day's end and the easy justification for a relaxing evening at home.
