Balance is small stuff

I was asked a great question last week – “so what do you do for your personal balance?”

it is tempting to look for magic bullets isn’t it? You know the sort of thing. The pill to make you slim overnight, the exercise to give you rock hard abs in a week, the secret to achieving balance. Unfortunately I have yet to come across anything that really works that way, including achieving balance.

So, there really isn’t a work-life balance template I can give you that will work for everyone. What I can advise is look for the simple things that you can do that are really important. Huh? What does that mean? Perhaps an example will help.

I am married to a morning person – that is a challenge for a night owl like me. Some of her best times (and today is her birthday) of her day are in the mornings when nobody (especially the kids) is up and she can relax with a coffee and the paper. It doesn’t need to be a long time, getting up 15 minutes earlier is all it takes.

If I were able to gift you 15 minutes entirely to your self, what would you do with it? That is often the first step to figuring out what is truly important to you and going about intentionally reaching for it.

Time to travel

Travel broadens the mind – that is the saying but I haven’t been able to find the original author of the quote. Actually, I didn’t try very hard but the point of this post is: How does travel help us find balance?

I was reading a friends blog recently (thanks Jay) and you can find it here and one of his posts struck me as very interesting and relevant to the topics I muse about here. The post itself is “Your prescription for a Road Trip” and provides an excellent insight into the benefits of getting out on the road to shake you out of your habits and perspectives born of doing the same thing, going to the same places, getting into the same routine. Apologies to Jay if I paraphrase incorrectly.

Anyway, the point is well made and goes wider. In the seminars that I run I partnership with Dan Gabbert, we discuss the concept of the comfort zone and how operating solely within such a zone limits our growth. Many of us stay in routine and habits because they are safe. Even if we are miserable there at least it is misery in comfort and anyway, we know it, it might be worse if we tried to change.

Travel, even if just outside of the city really helps change that perspective and introduce us to new things, new ideas, new people, sights, experiences. What better way to experience life and get out of a rut in thinking?

We can all start in a small way – thought about going home a different way next time?

Book review #1

Well, I have finally decided to listen to the advice of my good friend Toby Troug (you can find his excellent blog referenced on my site and also here) and introduce some structure to these posts.

Therefore here is the first in a series where I will share some of my thoughts on great (and not so great) books I have recently read. The aim is merely to raise awareness of some of the works out there that can be influential.

This week (to which people who know me can attest) I read “Mindset – the new psychology of success” by Carol Dweck. The central thesis revolves around what people believe to be true about themselves – specifically the talents and intelligence they possess.

In a fixed mindset this belief holds that such things are fixed and set early in life, resulting in some people being smarter than others, better at certain things and that is just how it is. In the opposite state, known as a growth mindset, such skills can be developed and learned through experience. Most of us think within one of these terms of reference and we can use both – for example we might see athletic ability in a fixed mindset, math ability in a growth mindset.

The implications for coaching are potentially huge. In a fixed mindset there is a continual desire to avoid failure as this demonstrates that we are less good (and therefore less speacial) than others. Since these skills are fixed there is no point in trying to develop them so we avoid situations where we might fail – such as change.

Growth requires us to be learners, demonstrate that we don’t yet possess a skill and work hard to develop it. Working hard isn’t seen as a indicative of less talent as it is in the fixed mindset.

So, when facing change, or if you have ever considered that something is fixed, inherent, luck of the draw and can’t be changed, I encourage you to consider reading Mindset.

Too busy?

Is it just me or are people getting busier? It seems to me that “really busy” has replaced “Fine (or good) thanks” as the default reply when asked “How are you?”

In all seriousness I don’t actually think that these are busier times, but it certainly appears that way to look and listen to people (including me!). So what is going on?

There is a certain badge of honor associated with the concept of being busy. Indeed, if we are busy then the implication is that we are working hard, perhaps meeting lots of people, driving toward career or life goals and so on.

However there are implications for talking this way. Now I have some beliefs of my own and one of them is that we start to behave in accordance with the things we say. This is a variation of the thoughts become things theory. So when we say we are busy, what is the implication? Perhaps it indicates that we are too busy for some things? Maybe a business prospect might think us too busy to need new customers. Maybe that’s true, but maybe not – are we just saying we’re busy because it has become a stock response?

So when that stock response comes to mind, maybe it is worth thinking about the message we are sending others, and also how are we conditioning ourselves? What are the implications of telling everyone how busy we are?

What are the alternatives? When asked how we are doing, perhaps we could say something like: “Well, business is good and I am enjoying it. Of course I am always on the lookout for more opportunities”. That may not work well in your world but there are things that you can say that don’t fall into the “busy” stock response.