The Balancing Act Part 1

Some Inspiration for you…

If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.
Sir Isaac Newton

The sun, with all the planets revolving around it and depending on it can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the universe to do. Galileo Galilei

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.

If you want to test your memory, try to remember what you were worrying about one year ago today. E. Joseph Cossman

There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?
Dick Cavett

One of the best ways to persuade others is with your ears - by listening to them.
Dean Rusk

The nicest thing about the rain is that it always stops. Eventually. Eeyore

The most terrible thing in life is to have no one know who you are. Anonymous

Confession without repentance is just bragging. Rev. Eugene Bolton

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. Martha Washington

Behold the turtle. He makes progress when he sticks his neck out. James Bryant

Better bend than break. Scottish Proverb

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on. Robert Frost

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. Mark Twain

There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.
Graham Greene

The majority of businessmen are not capable of an original thought, simply because they cannot escape the tyranny of reason. David Ogilvy

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Henry David Thoreau

If you bite off more than you can chew, then you better chew like hell. Peter Brock

Pray to God…but keep rowing toward the shore. Russian Proverb



What Does “Work/Life Balance” Mean?
Some seem to have it. Others don’t. At one end of the scale is the wealthy, dedicated business person who works 18 hours each day and is creating tremendous material wealth. At the other end of the scale is the “lazy bum” who lives off social security and does nothing all day. Which one has the better balance?

Then, every once in a while you meet someone who seems to have time for everything and still manages to be successful. They appear to have plenty of time for work, their partner, their kids, home, friends, exercise, self and even have time to make a contribution, in person, to the community.

Who has got it right? Has anybody, in fact, got it wrong? Is their some indefinable ideal that we are all dreaming about that does not actually exist?

I suppose my first questions to you are:

1. Are you happy?
2. Do you feel the effects of negative stress on a regular basis?
3. Are you satisfied and content?
4. Are all of your relationships working?

You see, I could be working a 16 hour day but still answer favorably to all of those questions. But then I could also be working a 6 hour day and answer unfavorably to all of those questions.

Work/Life Balance is not a “Black and White” issue.

So let’s start out by taking a look at life and see where it leads.

The Big Picture of Life: Finding Balance and Peace

The aim of the paper is to help you to examine your life and life roles differently in an attempt to create better balance between all of life’s demands including work, family, community and self, whilst maximising your effectiveness in each of those domains.

Who is in Control of Your Life?
For too long, probably since the onset of the industrial revolution, many of us have been functioning on automatic pilot. We seem to wake in time to get to work, often eating breakfast on the run and arrive at work in a rushed state. We work all day, drink too much coffee and tea, fail to eat enough nutritious food, then we head for home again, often after dark.

At home, we face a television set, a tired and often stressed family or partner, quite often too much food and alcohol and a late night.

Perhaps that is not how it is meant to be. Perhaps we should be waking refreshed, getting some exercise and eating a nutritious breakfast; leaving for work at a reasonable time, arriving relaxed and working efficiently, with energy, throughout the day. At the end of the day we should be leaving at a reasonable time so that we arrive home reasonably fresh and relaxed. We can then prepare a nutritious meal, spend time with the family or friends and retire at a reasonable time to ensure a restful sleep.

Then there might be times where some parts of our life have to be set aside for a given period to focus on a task, perhaps responding to a tender or taking the family away for a holiday. These are important parts of life and if done in a deliberate manner, for a given period, other parts of our life will not suffer.

For many of us, living is not a deliberate exercise. It is more a process of reacting to what is going on around us. What has happened to us? We have lost control and we are not taking responsibility for that loss of control. We have forgotten what real life and real survival is. Instead, many of us have become all consuming hedonists, worried more about what we think we should be receiving in life as opposed to what we might be contributing.

So let’s take a look at the whole survival thing.

Would You Survive?
If I were to take you out into the middle of the Simpson Desert and leave you, all alone, would you be able to make it back to civilization, to water and to the things that will ensure your survival?

This is a question designed to make you think about yourself and your personal resources. Have you still got that “hard edge” that human beings need to survive when times are tough? Or, have you become so domesticated and soft that losing simple luxuries like television can be enough to ruin your life.

It is clear that as a society we are fascinated with this concept with the incredible popularity we witness around survival shows on TV that subject people to isolation and harsh living conditions, complicated by difficult challenges.

When we look around at the levels of obesity, ill health and over-indulgence, we see a population of people who do not have a basic fitness level that would allow them to run for a bus. Many would not survive 3 or 4 nights lost in the wilderness. Where are we headed as a nation and as individuals?

The cold hard facts of the matter tell us that people are no longer hardened to the task of fighting for their survival. People’s physical survival is not challenged every day, so they are not trained to deal with a situation where their survival is compromised. The skills required to survive include:

• The fitness and strength to walk for many hours, perhaps for days
• The capacity to endure thirst and hunger and the strength to self ration food and water supplies
• The capacity to calculate direction, recognize and monitor land marks and to stay on a path toward a destination
• To find food and water in the wilderness
• To overcome the fear and loneliness associated with the isolation of being separated from civilization
• The capacity to remain positive and to keep working toward solving the problem

The Necessity of Struggle
It is the fight for survival that keeps us lean, hungry and able. Imagine living a life where you had to work hard physically to get food each day; where shelter was something that required physical work daily and where your very safety was not guaranteed simply due to your ongoing exposure to the elements and the presence of possible assailants.

When we do not have to fight or struggle for our survival, we lose that hard edge. When we lose that edge, we become soft and weak. Small hindrances become big hindrances. Small problems become big problems. We lose perspective. We forget what it took to win our peace, security and tranquility.

We cease taking responsibility for deliberately controlling our own lives. Self discipline becomes fades and we begin to live by reacting to our lives, our cravings and our desperate search for happiness.

Harry Palmer, the author of Living Deliberately and the author of The Avatar Course, a nine day journey through personal consciousness said, “In America today we have hundreds of thousands of restaurants, movie theatres, amusement parks, bars, computer game consoles, television sets, DVD players, sports stadiums and sports parks, video stores and holiday locations: all telling us how happy they can make us. Yet, depression is now being experienced in numbers never before seen.”

What is it that really makes us happy and content?

A History Lesson
What happened to the Roman Empire, or the Egyptians or Incas? These once great, powerful and wealthy nations have perished. Why? Shouldn’t their power, wealth and resourcefulness have carried them through to today? Somewhere along the line they lost their way.

There is much evidence to suggest that these people became consumed by their wealth and easeful life. Degenerative disease consumed them and they lost that “hard edge” I spoke of. Challenges that would have been insignificant to them previously, became too much for them to endure.

An inscription taken off a wall in an Egyptian archeological dig read, “People live off one third of what they eat. Off the other two thirds lives their physician.”

Life in the Roman Empire seems to be fairly common knowledge in our world. So many films have depicted the Romans and the greatness of the empire. They had great armies and they set out to conquer Europe, the Middle East and the North of Africa.

As the Roman Armies surged forth they met and fought some great enemies. The people of the city worked to support the armies as the empire grew and the wealth accumulated. There was great purpose in the daily lives of people.

But as the expansion slowed and the wealth reached its peak, the struggle began to subside and the “holiday” began. Soon, the people’s attention shifted from the efforts to grow and expand the empire to their own lives. Attention began to ponder the “have’s and the have not’s”. Soon, unrest rose among the people. Boredom set in. With no inspiring purpose, boredom begins the slow rot of the foundations of a society.

So the emperor introduced the games. In the games the soldiers march into the stadium to re-enact great battles against the hapless gladiators. And as the people cheered, the gladiators were slaughtered.

This served a dual purpose. It gave people the excitement of past victories and reminded them of their glory. It also showed them that there was someone much worse off than they; the gladiators.

But what happens to people when they get to that place where they can joyfully stand up in a stadium and gain extreme pleasure from witnessing such a grotesque form of entertainment.

I ask you now. How different is it really when we compare the Romans consumed and mesmerized by such a grotesque display, to ourselves, glued to a television set watching 20 people locked in a house, behaving like complete morons. Then, to cap it off, allowing the events inside the house dominate our conversations and interactions the next day.

We can see the healing power of struggle in film. Robert Zemekis film Cast Away does it brilliantly.

Cast Away
Like many great films, the theme behind Cast Away is a powerful message designed to teach us something. Here was a man, the ultimate ego, with no regard for the really important things in life like love, family and community.

Defined by his title, his pager and his watch, Tom Hank’s character was loud, obnoxious and “Federal Express” to the core. When he landed on the island, he had no food or water and no resources to help him get both. He did have some FedEx parcels but he was not going to open those. No matter how desperate his situation, he could not abandon his identity. His identity defined him.

As desperation grew, he looked at the alter he had subconsciously built (FedEx parcels with watch and pager on top) and realised that perhaps his survival may depend on what was inside those parcels. So began the process of “tearing back the layers”. This symbolises a person tearing away their own layers to find their core, their soul, and their true self.

As he tore through the layers, he came across “Wilson” the soccer ball. With his bloody handprint, Hanks’ character inadvertently makes a face on the ball. As he sits it up on a pile of boxes, it stares at him. The fight between the ego (Hanks) and his true self (symbolised by the ball) begins in earnest, with the ego kicking and screaming to maintain its failing status. As time passes, the ego quiets and the character assumes a role of survival and quiet contemplation. The final transition occurs when he is forced to knock out his own tooth.

In the end, he has assumed his own true identity. He becomes a hardened warrior, living a deliberate existence inspired by a burning desire to return home to his fiancé and his family and friends.

His is a hero’s journey and he is returning home. He loses Wilson because he no longer needs him. He comes back, a man of wisdom and integrity.

In this modern life, ego has taken over. We are encouraged to build an ego and live through it. But the ego often has little integrity, values or virtues and is consumed in a life of vices and pretence. It is important for each of us to face our egos, to look into ourselves and to discover our true nature.

Even the name of the movie tells us. It is not “Castaway” but “Cast Away” – meaning to cast away the ego.


Check out The Balancing Act Part 2




The Balancing Act Part 1 - To learn more about this author, visit John Toomey's Website.

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