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How Do You Achieve Work-Life Balance?

Guest post by: Adam Sonnhalter

Article Overview: I received an email from a friend earlier this week entitled "Personal Balance in Demanding Times" with the following question: "How can we balance our personal needs with the most pressing needs of our community and the larger world?" Her email continued with some deeper questions including: - How are you doing this balancing act? - Who do you know who seems to balance well and what do they know? - How does your life touch the life of the larger world and what would allow you to feed your personal life while making a difference "out there"? - How can you feel satisfied you've given enough to yourself, your family and your community? Some pretty deep stuff, right? All variations of questions I've asked myself over the years. Perhaps you have as well.

How Do You Achieve Work-Life Balance?

I received an email from a friend earlier this week entitled "Personal Balance in Demanding Times" with the following question:

"How can we balance our personal needs with the most pressing needs of our community and the larger world?"

Her email continued with some deeper questions including:

- How are you doing this balancing act?
- Who do you know who seems to balance well and what do they know?
- How does your life touch the life of the larger world and what would allow you to feed your personal life while making a difference "out there"?
- How can you feel satisfied you've given enough to yourself, your family and your community?

Some pretty deep stuff, right? All variations of questions I've asked myself over the years. Perhaps you have as well.

So after pondering these questions for a day or so, here's what I came up with.

My short answer to the "giving back to my community and the larger world" question is that I've become involved in Rotary International, an international service organization. I'm a member of my club in North Ridgeville. This has provided a tremendous outlet for me to not only give back to my local community, but to have an impact on people around the world.

I've only been a member of the club for about 2.5 years, but we've done so much as a club over the years. We are actively involved with:

1. Assisting local charities (e.g. Community Care in North Ridgeville which helps people who are down on their luck get back on their feet by providing some basic necessities),
2. Improving the local community (recent projects include the reconstruction of Safetyville which is a miniature town that is used to teach kids about safety as it relates to fire, crossing the street, etc.),
3. Having an impact on the youth of our community (e.g. ongoing sponsorship and support of the high school Rotary Club, an annual fishing derby for mentally challenged kids, and supplying dictionaries to all third graders in our city), and
4. Funding some pretty amazing projects overseas (e.g. providing medical supplies to the Ivory Coast, helping to fund children coming to the U.S. to have life-saving surgeries that could not be provided in their own countries).

Our club currently has about 45 members. We meet weekly for lunch and then we each spend a few hours a month helping out on these various projects. Many hands truly make light work.

Rotary International has over 1.2 million members in over 200 countries worldwide. I have found this to be a great way for me to give back and help those in need without having to do it all myself and thus maintaining a relative "balance" in my life.

Like anything else, once you know what you're looking for, chances are you'll find it. The way I discovered Rotary was sitting down and talking with a friend about what he did to give back to our community.

When talking about things like "balance," I guess it comes down to how you define balance. The way I look at is I like to spend my time doing things that are both "of value" and that "I value."

Helping people with both physical time and effort as well as with financial support is something that is important to me. So is spending time with my family. So is working with small business owners to help them get where they want to go.

The more waking hours I can spend doing the things that are both "of value" and that "I value" leads to what I would call a pretty good balance. When I can, I'll bring those three worlds together (service, family, and business) so they can each be involved and interact. That seems like a pretty good balance to me! How do you define balance?

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Article Tags: balancing act, personal balance, personal life, rotary international



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