To keep a healthy balance between all the important areas of life is like a walk on a tight rope that requires concentration, focus and courage.
I recently had the opportunity to walk on an actual tight rope that two young men had tied up between trees in a neighborhood park on the beach. When I saw them from the distance moving around seemingly effortlessly on the thin piece of fabric, I felt an urge to get up on the rope and give it a whirl.
As I approached the scene, I realized that the rope was quite a bit higher than it appeared from the distance and that the two guys were not looking quite as effortless in their practice as it seemed from afar. I nevertheless gave it a try.
I got up on the rope. First with their support and then as they gave me a few pointers, I managed to get up by myself and fall down. This occurred a few times: I got up on the rope, gained my balance, then lost it and fell down again. Luckily the grass was soft and the rope not dangerously high.
By the end of my first “tight rope walking lesson” I managed to walk four steps before a slight imbalance in my posture again brought me to descend from the rope onto the grass.
Walking the tight rope requires a tremendous amount of focus, but not on the rope, or the next step. In fact, as soon as I looked down, I lost my balance and fell. The focus needs to be on a point in the distance, in my case a little hole in the tree that I was walking towards.
To come back to a healthy balance including all the important areas of your life, your focus needs to be on your life vision and not on all the details of your everyday life. So often we get bogged down with to-do lists and trying to fit it all into every day. If you remove yourself from all the pieces of the puzzle and let your gaze wander into the far distance where your biggest vision for your life resides, your steps become more assured and you trip less often.
What is your point of focus in the distance?
Julia James, CPCC, PCC, M.Sc. is a multi-lingual certified life coach, award-winning author and international speaker. She helps busy professionals around the world achieve balance in their lives through individual coaching and workshops. Author of the book, The Mini-Retreat Solution and the audio CD series, Guided Mini-Retreats for Busy People, she provides tools to manage stress effectively and to relax and re-energize quickly. Julia has been featured on Joy TV, CBC News, as well as in The Globe & Mail, Glow Magazine, BC Business Magazine and The Vancouver Observer. For more information visit: www.juliajames.ca