No matter what lens we look through, no matter what our past conditioning, no one can deny the value of BALANCE in all dimensions of our lives.
The word “too” is the enemy of BALANCE. The biggest struggles in my life are defined by the word “too, mostly too much”; getting my balance in sink is paramount. I have been a person of extremes, which resulted in some significant wins, but with wisdom and maturity even some wins become questionable.
Consider the dimensions of caring physically for our bodies, expanding our minds in continuous learning, the commitment to our value system and meaningful service to others. If we neglect any of these areas, we out of balance, we become less effective, our life is out of harmony and our peace of mind is challenged.
Leadership is defined in many ways, and often a play on words, yet the substance remains unchanged. In my experience, great leaders have a balance of high courage and high empathy. High emotional intelligence is vital but limited without courage. Some debate that having high emotional intelligence implies a courageous person. Not convinced.
Self-awareness, examining how we see ourselves, and others, is fundamental to our effectiveness; to unlearn bad habits and to learn new effective habits. The more people I interact with the more I recognise that self-awareness must be kept in balance. When you overthink everything, you end up hurting yourself.
Ernst Hemingway said, “happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know”. This is likely because he experienced them overthinking and over-analysing, a self-awareness inherently out of balance.
Charles Bukowski said, “intelligent people are full of doubts”, likely his association with overthinking and over-analysing. These attributes are fundamental to success but only healthy when kept in balance.
It is important that we stay within our limits, stay within our nature, but that we keep pushing the boundaries. Getting the balance right. We should start new projects with the destination in mind, but we should not be destination addicted. It is a about balance, having dopamine in the process and not only in the destination.
Steven Covey defines our effectiveness as the P/PC balance, where P is the outcomes of desired results and PC is the capability to produce the desired results. He gives many good examples illustrating the importance of balancing a focus on the fruits and investing in the resources required for delivering the desired results.
The saying “everything in moderation is ok” is reference to balance. The importance of balance touches every part of our lives, from what we eat (nutrition), how we sleep, to what we do, whether work life balance or exercise. Strong people don’t have attitude, they have standards. And balance.
Think Bigg-r 