Cycles of Balance - Creating a Balance Wheel

Balance, like most things in life is not a constant. Moving in an ebb and flow, the teeter, totters. The quest to find that new equilibrium requires conscious thought and effort.

In the same way that there are cycles to life, so too are there balance cycles. They often coincide with the life cycles in a natural tandem. Our lives change. We start a business. Our businesses mature. We achieve a goal. We create a new goal. A new relationship or friendship begins. A marriage sadly ends. Children are born. The same children grow up, the cycle beginning anew. People get sick. People die. Life goes on.

Sometimes we are prepared for the cycles of change, other times they catch us by surprise. By instinct we adapt. It is how we adapt that determines how we live our lives. To do so with balance is a gift, one that you in fact have given to yourself.

Sometimes the easiest thing to do when you realize that you are in a cycle of change is nothing. Wait out the circumstances and react methodically. Make a plan. Act on that plan. But other times an instinctive reaction simply occurs. Something happens and you react immediately. Sometimes the results are positive, other times not so positive. But remember not so positive is not however the same as negative.

The more that you can approach a cycle of your life with a positive attitude the better the chances are that the cycle will respond in turn to you in a positive way. Truly nothing is gained by a negative attitude except additional stress. And isn’t stress which we are all trying to avoid? Or at the very least, control?

Are you conscious of what cycle of your life you are living? Are you aware of your life priorities? If not, why not create a Balance Wheel to integrate your life priorities with your balance goals.

When you create a Balance Wheel you assign priorities to the aspects of life that are important to you - Work, Play, Mind, Body, Spirit, Space, Relationships and Money. You do so reflecting your hopes, dreams and goals at that moment in time.

To begin, imagine a circle (the Balance Wheel) with each of the aforementioned aspects being a spoke of the wheel. Now that you have this image in your mind, take a piece of paper and draw a big circle, your own Balance Wheel, dividing it into eight equal spokes. Do not be concerned if you do not have any artistic abilities in being able to draw the perfect circle. This is NOT about artistic ability or perfection but about creative visualization.

Next, assign each spoke of the wheel a score from 1 to 10 (10 being the most important) in terms of how important that aspect is to your life. Do not try to rank the spokes from 1 – 10. You will surely be disappointed when there is no 9 or 10. This Balance Wheel only has 8 spokes!

Each spoke of the wheel should get its own independent rating. Not everything can or should be a 10. Can several spokes be of equal importance to you? Yes, of course they can. But you need to be realistic and forthcoming with yourself in determining your scores. Creating a Balance Wheel means looking at what is uniquely important to you.

After you’ve done the initial rankings, you need to go one step further and assign each spoke a satisfaction score. This score will reflect how satisfied you are with the reality of this aspect of your life today. Score it the same way – from 1 – 10 with 10 being the most important.

After each spoke has both an importance and satisfaction score, you need to take one last look at your wheel. What stands out to you? Is there an area that has two 10s? If yes, pat yourself on the back. That is an accomplishment to be applauded. What about the other areas? Is there an area that you’ve indicated is a 10 in importance to you but shows a 1, 2 or 3 in satisfaction? My guess is that there probably is one or two (or more) of those on your Balance Wheel. Those areas are the ones that need your work and attention. Those are the areas of your life that are truly out of balance.

You task, should you choose to accept it, is to pick one or two areas where the discrepancy in importance and satisfaction is obvious. That is the where you should begin your balance quest, make a plan, attempt to change your life. Will this be easy? No of course it won’t be. But if you approach it from a single minded focus, one area at a time, it might in fact become manageable. In the quest for balance, manageable is better than out of balance!

While a balance wheel looks like a perfect symmetrical circle, don’t kid yourself. It is not. It would be so easy to simply assign values and priorities to specific areas of life to expend your current focus. But the lines of a balance wheel (of your life) intersect whether you can see them or not. Life is simply not that symmetrical. The best laid plans are always subject to change. Either by design or by circumstances which may or may not be in your control.

The truth of the matter is that none of us can do it all – especially not at the same time. There are simply too many things competing for our time and energy. We have to make choices.

Review your Balance Wheel six months later. Chances are that if you go through the exercise again, your Balance Wheel will not look the same. Do it six years later and changes should clearly be resonant. The point is that your life changes. And so does your quest for balance. The more you understand and accept this the better you will be able to react when life changes in ways unanticipated or unexpected. You will be better able to cope because you’ve been coping all along.

As you attempt to integrate changes into your life and create your own sense of balance the key is to try (operative word try) not to take away from the things you have already accomplished as you attempt to take on the next balance challenge. It may be a slow process in deed. But as you accomplish one thing on your balance wheel and feel ready to move onto something else, try not to let your accomplishments become a thing of the past. Otherwise you might find yourself back at square one.

There are some things that you can (may) do for your overall life balance that have simply become part of who you are and how you live your life. The “pamper” aspects of balance are in fact a commitment to a better you. Whether you consciously attempt eat well and exercise or schedule a regular massage to physically work on the stress kinks in your body, sometimes it is the little things, the pamper things that you do for you that actually keep you in balance. Is this selfish? May it is. Maybe it isn’t. It truly doesn’t matter. Sometimes we need to be a little selfish, to take care of ourselves first so that we can nurture and continue to take care of others. Remove the self-imposed guilt and realize that sometimes it is okay to make it all about YOU!

Embrace your cycles of change, your cycles of balance. They will be part of your life whether you embrace them or not. You might as well get a head start on that positive mental attitude now. It will serve you well when you need it, when you least expect life to kick you in the seat of your pants and force you to find the balance within. Create your own Balance Wheel today and see where that wheel can take you as you find your way on your road to balance!


Cycles of Balance - Creating a Balance Wheel - To learn more about this author, visit Debbie Lessin's Website.

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Dianne Crampton Dianne Crampton is an Executive Leadership Coach and Team Building Consultant and creator of the TIGERS team development model. For the past twenty years she has helped leaders and teams achieve goals with high levels of collaboration and teamwork. Crampton is a published author. Her contribution to Working Together: Diversity As Opportunity was endorsed by Stephen Covey. She has written for trade magazines. Merrill Lynch nominated her business for Inc. Magazine’s regional small business and entrepreneurial awards. Her work with Native Americans was recognized at a United Nations sponsored conference in 1994. The TIGERS model passed two rigorous validation studies in 1992 and 1994. The TIGERS Survey is able to measure and track team development over time. Dianne is also the creator and distributor of the TIGERS Team Wheel game. This game helps groups identify behaviors that build collaborative groups and behaviors that cause conflict, morale problems, production failures, and misunderstandings. For more information, or to subscribe to TigerTracks, a free monthly leadership and team newsletter go to http://www.corevalues.com - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website

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