The Myth of a Balanced Life

Too many people talk about living a balanced life, as if life can be slotted into the chunks of a pie graph. The truth is, we don’t balance. As Joan Borysenko said in her book Inner Peace for Busy People (aff), “Even airplanes veer off course during the trip, and they have computers to guide them.”

For far too long I tried to live a balanced life; to make sure I was giving equivalent amounts of attention to my family, my work, and my interests. What hogwash! I was giving 8 hours a day to my work. By that formula, I would have to give 8 hours to my family, and 8 hours to my interests…every day. So much for sleeping!

The truth is that sometimes my family gets more of my attention than my interests, and vice versa. Work doesn’t get any attention during non-work hours.

The truth is we are like those circus actors who spin plates on sticks. We get the sticks going, and we give the attention as it is needed. Sometimes one stick may need more attention than the others. It all works out in the end, or the plates will come crashing down.

I have been thinking more about this lately as I struggle to carve out writing time while managing my working time and my family. The conclusion? I need to not forget about any of the plates I have up there, but some I can leave unattended for a little while.

On a different note, I discovered that Laura Earnest is running a series on the book Inner Peace for Busy People (aff) over at LauraEarnest.Com. If you haven’t read this book before, you might want to take a gander at it. It’s one of the books that has had the most profound effect on how I view the living of my life.