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How to BUILD a Well-Balanced Life 

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Like Everything Else, It’s a Choice 

Last week we discussed being busy. It’s easy to find ourselves with too much to do. There are just so many important and fun things that need done. This leads to burnout. 

It’s all too common for people to get burnt out. 

I’ve seen this happen a lot over the years. One place this happens as much as any is in the church. There’s no work any more important than that. When we have a desire to help it can take over our lives … and burnout is the result. 

I know this, because I’ve been there.  

This is why it’s important to BUILD a well-balanced life. 

Finding and maintaining the balance in everything is one of my core values. Finding and maintaining balance is what keeps a busy life from crashing.  

Balance in life is more than just two things. It’s not like a set of scales with one thing on each side. Life is full of a whole lot of things. Life balance also doesn’t mean an equal amount of time and energy spent on each to the things. 

I see BALANCE as a large platform centered on top of a small point. Without anything on the platform, it is level. When one thing is placed on top of the platform near the center, things go pretty well, and it stays relatively level.  

As more things are put on the platform and things begin to be crowded out from the center, it starts to get heavier at different areas. This causes the platform to lean. If one heavy thing–or too many things–are moved too far from the center, the platform will tip far enough that things will fall off.  

Keeping things on the platform is all about weight and location. 

Our lives are like this platform. God has balanced our platform perfectly on this point and given us the responsibility of keeping it there. The difficult part of this obligation is the number of things we get to choose to put on our platform.  

The choices are endless. There is spiritual, family, work, friends, fun, community, etc. Each of these areas are full of an endless number of specific things that we can put on our platform. Some things carry more weight than others. As we go through life the things we have on our platform will, and should, change. 

FINDING AND MAINTAINING THE BALANCE is a responsibility given to us. Will we be perfect at it? No. Can we learn and get better at it? YES!  

If you want to BUILD a well-balanced life, then you need to do something. A well-balanced life doesn’t just happen. 

Here’s an acronym to help you BUILD a well-balanced life. 

B is Being Aware – A well-balanced life starts with being aware of the problems that come from being out-of-balance and that it’s even possible. 

U is Understand – It is the mental grasp or comprehending of something. It is the knowledge about a situation, how something works or what it means. You need to understand what balance is and what it takes to get it. 

I is Intentional Action – This is the most important.  If you don’t do something, nothing will change. This is where most people get hung up. To this point, everything sounds great. Intentional action requires ACTION.  

L is Learn – This is the step that will take the longest. Construction of buildings isn’t instantaneous. You don’t show up on a job site your first day knowing everything about building. You come back the second day and LEARN more and the third and the fourth. And years later you have LEARNED how to build. And you will continue learning for the rest of your life. 

D is Delivery of the Dream – This is where all the hard work pays off. It’s where you can still be very busy, but your life is balanced. You are in control of the things you say yes to … and the ones that you say no to.  

It feels really good to be in control of your life and your business.  

Building a well-balanced life include a well-balanced business. To help with this we have some business BUILDing tools, systems, and services that can help you. If you have questions about getting your business balanced you can schedule a free 30-minute consultation.

How to Decide Where Your Time Is Best Spent

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It Comes Down to Knowing Who You Want to Be

Last week I wrote about the importance of spending time wisely. I shared how I was working to clear the fog to determine what things I should focus on. What should I do and not do? So, like budgeting money I decided to work on a plan for budgeting my time…enter the spread sheet.

Like money, we can choose what to spend our time on.

The difference is that with money there’s the possibility to make more, not with time. This makes spending time wisely, even more critical.

So, what did I find out about budgeting time using a spreadsheet?

What I’ve found so far is that I’ve overspent my time budget by 175 hours (2%) and I still haven’t got everything entered. It is making it very clear that I can’t do everything that I want.

This spreadsheet is allowing me to look at the big picture and see where I can move things around and/or remove things completely to fit into the limited time available.

I listened to a podcast recently that pointed out how important time is due to kids doing school at home and people working remotely. This got me to thinking about how I’ve never really separated my work and personal time. My time is all just…my life.

I think this is because growing up on a farm there wasn’t a ‘clock punching’ separation of time. In addition to that, I’ve spent most of my life self-employed which is the same. I may be doing family, community or church things throughout the day or, I may be doing work things late in the evening or on weekends.

Using the spreadsheet, it is allowing me to see the amount of time being spent rather than the specific time of the day or night. It allows me to be better at living a well-balanced life.

Ultimately the spending of our time comes down to a personal choice.

It’s all about who we want to be.

We can spend our time where we want. So…to that point…today I want to spend my time with my family having a movie marathon weekend.

That’s who I want to be.

How to Live A Well-Balanced Life

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Finding and Maintaining the Balance in Everything

 

I initially wrote about Using Core Values as My Life Filter last year. The focus of that post was the importance these CORE VALUES have in providing me with insight to who I am and more importantly, who I aspire to be. In that post I listed these twelve core values and said I would write about each in later posts.


Currently have written about:

• Honoring God in all that I do
• Paying attention to detail
• Spending time wisely
• Never being satisfied with mediocrity
• Taking off the blinders and being more aware
• Intentional action and again

Today’s core value is FINDING AND MAINTAINING THE BALANCE IN EVERYTHING.

I listened to a Story Brand podcast recently in which Tim Arnold’s point was that tension was a better description of this value than balance. He points out that “we tend to be binary thinkers. We assume things have to be one way or the other”. This was his point about the term balance when used in this context. Often the word balance creates the picture of an instrument with two sides used for weighing.

Sometimes there are only two choices. When choosing between right and wrong or good and evil, I believe this is the case. I agree with Tim that too often we tend to stop our thinking at only two choices and miss all of the out of the box opportunities that are out there.

I see balance as something that involves a lot more than two things.

The Merriam-Webster definition of balance is extensive and covers a variety of different areas including people, weight, stability, accounting, mental and emotional. This is more the way I think of balance.

I see BALANCE as large platform sitting centered on top of a small point. Without anything on the platform, it sits level. When one thing is placed on top of the platform near the center, things go pretty well, and it stays relatively level. As more things are put on the platform and things begin to be crowded from the center it starts to get heavier at different areas. This causes the platform to lean. If one heavy thing or too many things are moved too far from the center the platform will tip far enough that things falls off. Keeping things setting on the platform is all about weight and location.

Our lives are like this platform. God has set our platform balance perfectly on this point and given us the responsibility of keeping it there. The difficult part of this obligation is the number of things we get to choose from to put on our platform. The choices are endless. There is spiritual, family, work, friends, fun, community, etc. and each of these areas are full of an endless number of specific things that we can put on our platform. Some things carry more weight than others. As we go through life the things we have setting on our platform will and should change.


FINDING AND MAINTAINING THE BALANCE of our platform is the responsibility given us. Will we be perfect at it…no. Can we learn and get better at it…YES!

Whether you use the word balance, tension or something else to describe this endeavor is less important than being aware of it and actively keeping your platform as level as you can.