Can you have it all?
For years I searched for the perfect balance in my life between my career and my family. I pictured my life split, somewhat evenly with 50% work and 50% family. I’d heard it was possible and yet I struggled. When I was at work, I would find myself thinking about everything that needed to be done at home. At home, my mind would shift to work or worse yet; I would bring work home to get it done before I returned the next day so I could lessen my work load, funny how that never really worked out.
Perhaps the whole balance thing needs to be thrown out the window. Let’s be honest, having a family is a 24-hour a day job. How can you have balance when you have that kind of responsibility? So how did this balance myth get started? I can’t answer that, but the truth about balance is that you must first discover what your priorities are and then learn to live them. Let’s shift the focus from balance to learning to live your priorities.
We can usually identify what is important to our spouse, our children, and even our boss, but sometimes where we struggle is identifying what is important to us. We are so busy being busy that sometimes we forget to make ourselves a priority. To figure out what is important to you, spend some time reflecting on this and write down what is important to you. After you have these written down, rank them in order of priority.
Let me tell you where this one gets hard. We often say something is a priority, but in the busyness of our lives, our priorities can get rearranged. I’ll give you a personal example. Years ago I would have said that my top three priorities were:
- Faith
- Family
- Work
But in reality here is how I was living:
- Work
- Children
- Spouse
- Faith
It is easy to declare our priorities, but without living with clarity, focus, and direction in our lives, we lack intention, and our priorities can get out of focus and quickly change. The problem is that we are so busy being busy that we don’t even notice until we get a wakeup call. Your wakeup call might be martial issues, children problems, or financial problems.
We will always have someone wanting our time, whether it is our family, boss, co-workers, or committees, there is always a need. If you are not focused on what want your life to look like, you can quietly get sucked into things that don’t energize you, things that you regret and you wished that you had just said “NO” to in the first place. When you understand your true priorities, and learn to live them, you simply feel more balanced in your life.
What can you do today to start living your true priorities?
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