Good day all!! Hope you are having a great one. A couple of quick notes before I get to today’s lesson learned. We are just over a month away from Victory Party, and I am going to extend the invitation again to everyone of you. I would love it if all of you can join me for the celebrations and thank-you’s on April 13th. You’ll hear more about the party and events of the day as it approaches, but for now you can mark it off in your planner. Today’s message is titled “Balance” and for those who know me well, before my cancer challenge, they are probably laughing right now as for me to write a message about balance seems a little hypocritical. Let’s just say that I had a different sort of definition of balance before November ’98. But please remember this collection of thoughts that I am sharing relates to my most valuable lessons learned throughout the course of my series. And the importance of being balanced has been a great lesson learned on my part. Hope you like the thoughts and can see how they may fit into your life. Have a great week and you’ll hear from me again soon.
Balance
Everyone has a balance, just as we have our own perspective. Balance to one person may not be balance to another, but within each of us there is a balance. Having a balance and being balanced are two different things, at least I’m going to talk about them as being different. To have “a” balance I’ll suggest is much different than “being” balanced, as I feel everyone has a balance and we all treat our balances differently.
If you can imagine a balance of the traditional image, two platforms on either side of a point, a teeter totter of sorts, I think that the balance of life is kind of like that. Everything in life can be placed on one of the platforms, which I call Personal and Professional. There are many ways you can look at the “balance,” but I often look at it through the Personal and Professional perspective. The elements of my life, family and friends, work, play, finances, etc., all fit on one of those two platforms. Once you are aware of the concept of balance, and you can understand and define what it means to you, the trick is to then apply it to your life. The awareness, the true inner awareness, has been my big challenge, whereas the application of what I feel is necessary is fairly easy for me.
For those who knew me before my Cancer Challenge, they will tell you that my version of balance was doing all of something until I had enough, and then moving on to something else, again, until I had enough of that. The expression “all or nothing” fit very well to my mentality regarding many aspects of life. My life balance wasn’t in balance at all. The challenge for me was being aware of that, and by aware I mean really aware that there were other alternatives and that those alternatives could be even better than my current set-up. My cancer challenge has provided that opportunity for me to see some other options, and I like what I have seen so far.
I can say with great confidence that I am far more comfortable with my balance today than ever before in my life. While the things that are important to me, my preferences, both the daily preferences and the life preferences, have changed, so has my view towards being balanced. And when I say it has changed, I mean it has really changed. And I like the change.
My cancer challenge has provided the opportunity for me to think about my preferences and how I arrange the things on my balance in an attempt to establish and maintain balance. This process does take effort and I feel the only true way to attain a balanced state is to go inside yourself to explore the preferences that will contribute to your own personal balance. This has been one of the biggest positives of my Cancer Challenge, as the opportunity to go inside myself and to redefine, or in this case, define what balance means to me has been an exceptional gift. I feel that everything in life is enhanced when you are in balance with your internal preferences. When you know what you want, and then work to attain it everything in your life becomes enhanced. At least that has been my experience.
For me, balance is a lot like perspective, in that I think everyone has a different view of it, their own personal view. And when you decide to define what your view is I think you are a major step closer to achieving the balance that you want. For me, balance is key to enhancing and enriching every day I have left, and I know fully that I am the key to those enhanced, enriched days.
Always…
Live Life. Love Life.
Geoff
