Lesson 7: Putting it all together

By managing your mind, hands and heart, you'll achieve a honed body and spirit that acts as one, enabling you to master your emotions. This lesson puts the four principles of the LifePACT model together to balance personal and professional demands.


Balancing personal and professional demands

The previous lesson was designed to help you develop a proper tone so you can overcome the tension in your body and achieve a state of relaxation and ease. You'll find that, by using the LifePACT model to define your principles for lifestyle management, you'll be able to maximize the benefits of stress while mitigating its costs. By managing your mind, hands and heart, you'll achieve a honed body and spirit that acts as one, enabling you to master your emotions.
Today we'll learn how to put the LifePACT model's principles together so that you can begin to balance all of your personal and professional demands.


The importance of balance

The hottest topic in personal growth books today is balance. So consider yourself in good company if you want to find greater competence in juggling your time and energies. The image of the individual flawlessly and effortlessly attending to the demands of family life, social life, and community life while still having time for herself is a figment of our collective imagination.
People who find a balance in their lives -- who utilize their time for work, family, and personal needs -- have less stress, are more at ease, eat and sleep better, and enjoy greater rewards in their interpersonal lives. One major reality makes the achievement of perfect balance a difficult challenge. Let's take a look at it.


Pacing yourself

Do you pace yourself throughout the day? Pay attention to your natural rhythms. When do you perform best? Schedule your most difficult tasks for that time. Also try to set up your day so that you shift back and forth between pleasurable and difficult tasks. Take small breaks throughout the day in order to prevent the symptoms of tension and stress


Barriers to achieving balance

One barrier to achieving balance is the multitude of external demands being thrust upon you. As a child, your network of social responsibilities was limited to your family and school. But as you mature, your life became more socially cluttered. Maybe you found a life partner, had children, or landed a job in the private sector. Maybe all of the above! Simply put, the older you get, the greater the number of people who occupy room in your life.
People who depend on you for some type of support are called stakeholders. The problem with the accumulation of stakeholders is that generally when you get a new one, you don't get rid of an old one. It's much like getting new Christmas ornaments. Just add one or two new ornaments to your collection each year: in no time, you're going to have trouble finding room for them on the tree.


Typically, by the time you're an adult, you have a crowd of people looking to you for emotional support, to do certain tasks, or to just have fun with. A life rich with stakeholders wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for one thing: Each stakeholder wants all of you.


When everybody wants you

Many stakeholders don't know how to share. Remember that teacher who always gave you too much homework? Didn't he realize you were taking other courses that also demanded your time and energy? Although you might never have confronted him, if you had there's a very good chance he would have said: "I don't care."

Stakeholders are the same way. Work doesn't care that you have a family and family doesn't care that you have a career. Church or other community groups don't care that you have another life apart from their activities. They all want everything you are willing to give. Step back and listen to this litany of everyday demands:


The boss says, "Don't let me down, I'm counting on you" while your staff says, "What about us? We have rights too" and your customers are saying, "Faster, cheaper, better." When you get home your spouse is asking, "What about us, don't you care?" Your kids are screaming, "Mommy, mommy! Daddy, daddy!" And in the midst of all this, you hear your own voice saying, "Slow down, relax, take care of yourself." Does this situation sound familiar?


If there were just one voice, you could respond to it and feel that you had fulfilled your responsibilities. But it's rare that you get the luxury of dealing with just one demand. More often, there are multiple stakeholders demanding your attention. By trying to meet the demands of all the stakeholders in your life, it's easy to lose sight of what is really important to you. The result is that your life begins to wobble. You have, in other words, lost your balance.


Identifying imbalance

Imbalance is generally easy to spot. For instance, when your tires are out of balance, the whole car is affected. When your checkbook is not balanced, you'll find out about that soon enough. When the tightrope walker loses his balance, the crowd gasps and hopes he can recover. But a life out of balance is a slow boil. It may be years before the problem is apparent enough to register on your radar screen. You may even be the last person to realize it. Let's take a look at the following example of a life out of whack:

Gary loves his family. He also loves his work. Lately, he has not been successful in giving equal amounts of attention to both priorities. He's on a fast track at work. The more he does, the more recognition he gets. The more recognition he gets, the more hours he puts in. Due to frequent conflicts with his wife, Gary is now spending time at work even when there's no pressing need to do so. He wonders how things got to this point.

Clearly Gary's life is unbalanced. He is spending far more than 40 hours out of each week on his career. Also, even when he's not at work, he's taking time dressing for work, commuting to work, thinking about work, and decompressing after work. Although he may be a star at the office, the rest of his existence is withering. In other words, he's on a gradual downhill trajectory. The very pattern that is earning him accolades today will ironically lead to a decline in Gary's health, peace of mind, and, ultimately, his productivity.

If life were perfect you would have a job that offered enough challenge to be interesting, enough ease to be enjoyable, enough fellowship to be nourishing, enough money to pay the bills, and that still left you enough hours to spend on your relationships and self-renewal. But that's not the real world. The real world is a place where trying to have it all can mean losing it all. It's full of compromises and consequences for the choices you make. Let's look at some ways we can achieve the highly-sought prize of balance.


Managing job stress

Job-related tensions need not carry over into the other aspects of your life. By identifying your sources of job stress then motivating yourself to take control of these stressors, you will have a greater chance of pacing and balancing yourself


Keeping the stakeholders happy

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Ways to achieve balance

Effective stress management requires that you establish boundaries between the different arenas of your life: Personal, work, family, and goals. Here are some ideas for keeping the stress of work from infiltrating and contaminating other parts of your life.


Creating lists

As the workday draws to a close, you may be facing the next day with a vague sense of dread that can very easily be brought home. If you feel overwhelmed by the tasks you need to finish, try to dissolve the dread by translating your free-floating anxiety into specific goals. List all the tasks you need to do the next day. Then look at your list. Are there any tasks that can be delegated? Any that can be handled later in the week? Finally, assign a priority to each task and a preferred time of day to tackle it and then start cracking.


Visualize

Another way of dealing with unfinished business is to use the same list of tasks and to close your eyes and imagine yourself finishing them. See yourself shaking hands with an interested client after your presentation. Then picture yourself coming to the bottom of your in-basket. End your day with a vision of yourself completing tomorrow's work. This kind of relief from unfinished business can be a powerful tool in your successful passage from work to home.
Stop!


Consider Steven's situation. His job involves giving monthly reports to the senior management team in a large organization. For days before his presentation, Steven would always be haunted by doubts: "Will I stammer? What if I don't know the answers to their questions?" When you are preoccupied with similar fears, try saying loudly, "Stop!" This command interrupts your negative review of the day or preview of the future and offers the opportunity to redirect your thinking.


Slow down and reorganize

At 4:15 you may find yourself doing your most demanding work. When your day ends with a feverish finale, you probably will carry that intensity with you all the way home. Instead, why not schedule the least-demanding tasks for your last hour in the office? Listen to soothing music, consult your next day's schedule, return phone calls, use the copy machine, proofread letters. In this way, you will be able to change the focus from your task-oriented day so that you can have a relaxed and spontaneous evening.


Uninvited guests


Each workday brings intense encounters with difficult or disturbing people. These people tend to become uninvited guests in your mind, which you then bring home with you. The key to rectifying this problem is by creating a distance from the close encounters of the day. Ask yourself, "When I left work today, what were the my strongest feelings about the difficult people I encountered?" Then consider a number of words that might describe these feelings. Frustration, anger, and confusion are common negative feelings in the work arena. By labeling your feelings, you are beginning to prevent them from interfering with your personal life.


Choose your responsibilities wisely

Have you ever left a buffet line with a plate embarrassingly overloaded with food? It all looked so good you didn't know what to pass by.

Life presents you with many options, and it is sometimes difficult to choose between them. The best stress managers have a deep sense of commitment. They make commitments to the things that truly matter to them and then spend their time and energy on those commitments. For some, this means owning a large home. For others, it means lots of leisure time. Still others value financial security or their children's future above all else.

As we'll see next, what is important is that you take stock of your values and choose commitments that are consistent with them.

Don't overspend yourself

There is a happy medium somewhere between saying "yes" whenever you are asked to do something for someone else regardless of the personal cost, and saying "no" to all requests. Although you should be something to everyone, recognize your limits and realize that you can't be everything to everyone

Finding balance at work

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Managing your social behavior

Periodically take stock of your life, including your achievements, your activities, and your relationships. Then evaluate where you are going. What are your goals and aspirations? Where do you see yourself in the future? It is not uncommon to set out for a particular goal and forget what it was along the way. When you lose sight of your purpose, you risk becoming compulsive. In other words, the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing! Below we'll see how this can be accomplished.


Take time to recharge

Just as you add more cash to your bank account to avoid being overdrawn, you can add energy to your emotional bank account. Recharge your personal resources by participating in activities that energize, refresh, and fulfill. These include participating in spiritual activities, ceremonies, or personal reflection; rewarding yourself when you are happy with your efforts; treating yourself to something special; telling yourself you're a good and worthy person; expressing your needs and asserting yourself to obtain those needs; and laughing with others each and every day.


Set priorities

Ultimately there are just three priorities: Work, relationships, and self. When you wake up in the morning you are given a pie. This pie is equal to the amount of energy you have for the rest of the day. You only have one pie per day. Every Sunday, take time to reflect on how you will divide the pies for the coming week. Each weekday morning take a few minutes to decide what slice of your pie will go to work, which slice to relationships, and which slice to yourself.


Take something off your plate

Learning to say "no" is the single most important thing a person can do to bring order to his or her life. Don't be afraid to remove things from your overloaded plate. Not everything has equal value. Discriminate between what is worth doing well, what is worth just doing, and what is not worth doing at all. Don't say "yes" right away. Stall by asking, "Can I get back to you on that?" Then consider carefully what you will take off your plate if you add another thing to it before replying.


Remember your legacy and be realistic

Which inscription will be placed on your tombstone: "Beloved Parent, Brother, and Husband" or "Off to Another Meeting"? Make lists of the roles you play in your life; for instance, your relationships with your father, mother, son, daughter, etc. For each role, ask yourself, "How do I want to be remembered by the people who depend on me?"


Cultivate a sharing attitude with your spouse

Sit down periodically with your significant other and discuss what you can do for mutual support in your respective jobs, at home, and at work. Many husbands and wives report great relief when their partners lend an ear to their complaints, offer a sounding board, and give advice and encouragement.

It is impossible to reach an ideal in both family and job. Aim for the best balance among your various activities. Don't expect to be a perfect spouse or parent. Lower your standards on the home front and accept some degree of disorder around the house.


Do something for yourself

The remarkable thing about taking care of yourself is that it is the most unselfish thing you can do. Have a "just for me" fund of money to spend each month on a new book, some new clothes, a new CD, or some other tangible reward for working so hard at meeting your responsibilities and fulfilling multiple roles. The refreshing benefits of these rewards will increase your tolerance and make you a more giving person.


Moving forward

You don't have to give up the intellectual, emotional, and financial rewards that go with professional success to achieve balance, but there are tradeoffs and tough choices. In bringing greater order and moderation to your life, you will find you can deal more effectively with problems. Your productivity will increase dramatically and you'll gain higher self-esteem and confidence. Most importantly you will have the energy and clarity of mind and spirit to continue to grow towards your full potential.


Balance is not a static condition that you can possess and preserve. It is an activity that you continually engage in as you make mid-course corrections throughout your life. In the next lesson we will explore anger, worry, and the blues, which are the three most common forms of stress. We'll then conclude our course with tips on how to have a great day everyday.
Common forms of stress Everyone suffers from anger, worry and the blues. All of us have a variety of unique ways of dealing them. What do you do when you get angry? Were you able to vent it in a healthy manner? Why or why not? What about when you were overly worried? And when you had the blues? Do you think you can start applying the LifePACT model to them right now? How would you begin?