How to Find Balance in an Unbalanced World

Do you ever feel like life is pulling you in different directions? You know, that feeling you get when there seems to be no balance with all the many things you find yourself doing each day. It would be great to find balance.

It feels like you are not making any progress with anything you are involved in. You are working, spending, and being in too many places. You feel frazzled because you are spinning your wheels to the point of exhaustion.

The lists you make of things you should do does not seem to help you find balance either. You know, the list of eating habits, work habits, social commitments, family relationships, and your relationship with God.

Do this, read that, be here, go there, serve here, and don’t forget to do that! The list of priorities seems to knock off other preferences depending on whether you are focused on health, wealth, sleep, pleasure, or your treasure.

I am confident that the American way these days is to try and put 10 pounds of crud into a 5-pound bag. There does not seem to be enough hours in the day to get it all done or make everyone happy. We end each day by trying to determine if we picked the right 5 pounds and wonder why our stress level is out of control.

Sure we go to seminars and read books about how to be more effective with our time. We learn how to prioritize better, but it does not always seem to work for us.

We live in an unbalanced world with unbalanced expectations of what we should do and who we should be. We think that we need to work long hours, play sports, get our kids to play on sports teams, serve the community, fix the house, exercise daily, serve on committees, read daily, and, oh yeah, make sure to sleep if there is any time left for that.

We get so stressed that we justify spending the few free hours in front of the television. We drag ourselves to bed to get a few hours of sleep before we need to wake up and do it all over again.

Caffeine is our drug of choice to perk us up, and sugar-filled snacks are the jolt we need between coffee breaks to keep us going.
Conversations are now text messages between those we love and tweets to those we associate with. We read our news on Facebook and never check the source to see if it is legit.

We exercise our faith only when things get rough and hope God will bail us out. We assume God understands why we don’t talk to Him all of the time because surely he knows how busy we are.

We commit to several things at work and several things at church, and we are there for our kid’s many events because we are teaching them the “value” of staying busy and productive. Never do we stop and think about if we can give a 100% to the things we commit to.

Pruning the rose bush is a great analogy. Why not cut some stuff out and let God bring us back more beautiful than before? Why don’t we limit our involvement to the number of things we are doing and increase our effort in the few things that matter to us? Giving less than 100% is not fair to the teams we are on.

Why can’t we decide what is truly important and focus on those things and do them well? Why do other countries take a siesta during the hottest part of the day while we cram down a twinkie and coffee for fuel to keep us going?

Don’t get me wrong, I know the value of hard work, and I also know that America is strong because of our commitment to compete at high levels. I get it. I even endorse it if we can find the right balance of doing the right things for the right reasons and junk the rest of the stuff that makes us tired and crazy.

Balance is about determining our core values and then setting our calendar to match them.

Are you a man or woman of faith? Then put discipleship habits on your calendar. Are you a provider for your home? Put work at the center of your calendar. Are you passionate about something? Could you put it on your calendar and do it well?

Once you determine what is valuable to you, set your calendar to support those values and then junk all the other stuff that needs to come off your schedule.

It sounds simple, but it is not easy. Like I said in the beginning, there seem to be things pulling at us from all directions and causing us to be unbalanced and stressed out.

You alone create balance by determining what you can and can’t do every day. Seek counsel, get help if needed then intentionally change your calendar to match your values. Then do everything in your power to stick to that new schedule.

Do you need to be flexible to change? Yes, but you create the boundaries in your life that will protect your time and values. With guidance and help, you decide. Learn to say no when you need to and when you say yes, follow through on the commitment. Let your no be no and your yes be yes.

Be careful. Finding balance in an unbalanced world can throw you off the balance if you are not careful.