The old proverb that says, "One man's meat is another's poison" is hard to refute. We are all different, with our own unique value systems, telling us what is important and what isn't. So before trying to achieve a good Work / Life Balance it's probably a good idea to know what it looks like to YOU. While the term itself seems self-explanatory there can be no 'one-size-fits-all' formula.

Autonomy & 'Busyness'

Most of us like to think of ourselves as autonomous, making our own decisions and running our own lives independently. But sometimes we let outside influences determine our priorities. While this may be acceptable occasionally, if it happens too often we can find ourselves like the mouse in a wheel, pouring enormous energy into activities that give us little in the way of lasting satisfaction. Life can seem like a jungle where we spend our time hacking our way through the undergrowth. "But what's wrong with being busy?" I hear you ask, "After all, life is tough and you have to keep battling." No argument from me there, except to offer one comment. When you are spending so much time and effort clearing a path through the jungle, how often do you shinny up a tree to make sure you are heading in the right direction?

Where are you going?

So perhaps the first step in determining a healthy Work / Life Balance is to find out where you want to get to. And in which direction do you need to travel? And how will you know when you have arrived? In other words, what does success mean to YOU? For many people the prime indicator of success is a loaded bank account, with all the trimmings. But interestingly enough, when I researched the term to see how the rich and famous defined success, I was surprised to find that money per se was rarely a factor. A much more common thread was the concept of learning. Connecting with, and helping others, was also a common theme. But back to the $64,000 question; what does success look like to you? Here's a little concept that may help you decide.

The Time-Purse

We arrive on the planet with a Time-Purse. This Time-Purse contains a number of years, months, weeks and days. Fortunately, (or not, according to your point of view), we don't know how big this Time-Purse is, nor how much it contains. Now compare that with your money purse. How often do you throw your cash around unwisely? We all know that money doesn't grow on trees, and most of us are careful about what we spend. We don't buy things without doing some mental exercise, even if only to persuade ourselves that we really do need a new gizmo. But what about our time? How careful are we with that? How much of that do we fritter away unnecessarily? Or do we look back on New Years Eve wondering where the last 52 weeks went, feeling we are no better off than the previous year? And even though we start each year with the very best of intentions, how come our New Years resolutions last about a week and a half?

Perhaps success is merely the ability to spend our time on the things that are important to us. The difficulty many people seem to have is in not knowing what these things are. When I ask clients the question, "What do you really want?" they invariably stumble around for a while before coming up with things like a new car, a bigger house and so on. I then continue with, "What else? ? Yes, OK, and what else?" After some more gentle coaxing they eventually go to a level deeper within themselves and typically come up with less obvious comments. Things like, "Well I suppose if I had the money I would open a haven for battered wives" or perhaps "Well I've always loved animals, I wouldn't mind having a place where I could agist horses and a few cattle perhaps."

The common plight seems to be, "Well, sure I'd rather be doing something else." When I shake my head and look at that objectively, what it seems to translate to is, "I really HAVE TO spend my time like this so that I can maintain my lifestyle of doing the things that I don't like."

If any of the above applies to you, you may get some benefit from carrying out a little Time Management exercise that I have assembled.

You can find it at

http://www.gettingrealseminars.com/freebies/Tightrope_Exercise.pdf