Achieving balance

Balance is what you need to strive for in all aspects of your life, such as Education, Family, Fun, Finances, Health, Spirituality, etc.

At times in our lives it is quite difficult to find balance. Different things require different levels of involvement and attention and it is easy to get into a mode where you are completely absorbed into one area of your life and you may neglect others, which are important too.

You know that you have achieved balance in your life when you are achieving success and feel content with all and each area of your life. At this point you will not feel rushed or stressed out. Yes, I know that teenagers too have stress!

Below is a diagram of my “Wheel of Life”, a simple tool to assess the balance of every area in my life.

You may re-create this for yourself by drawing a cirlce like this with spokes as per my diagram. Then, label the different areas with the labels I used above: Health, Family, Education, Finances, Fun, Spirituality, Friends and Self.

You will notice a circle in the middle with “0” and on the outer radius you will notice “10”. Now, on a scale from 0 to 10 (ten being the most), how much of your time is spent on each of those items? Draw a little dot somewhere between 0-10 and repeat this for each of area on your Wheel of Balance.

Once you have repeated this 8 times, once for each area, you need to play “connect the dots” and you will clearly see where you spend too much or too little time or emotional energy. From there it will be easier to work out where to find balance.

It would be interesting too to do the same exercise in a different colour pen, but instead of writing how much time you spend on each of these areas, you need to stipulate the benefit you get from each. Afterwards compare your two wheels and you will be surprised how much time you invest in things for less of a return than you expect. Re-prioritise your time effectively and get better value out of your activities.

Putting bread on the table

Finally, in mid-January I found a job. I was to do tele-sales for a company selling nutritional supplements from their home. I worked for two guys and their shared little office, which was one huge, big mess. I have never seen such a mess in my entire life. The guys, Wade and Neil went to work in shorts and t-shirts and it just did not seem like a ‘real’ job. Wade seemed aloof, but Neil took me under his wing.

I had some tele-sales experience from my first job, but here I had to speak English, whilst my home language was Afrikaans. Every time I opened my mouth I would remember a time in Grade 10 when a girl I perceived to be my best friend and came from a Christian home, said something hurtful to me. It was one of those days that we received our test results for a Science test and I scored 73% whilst the bulk of my class failed. This girl and her friend, whom I had been friendly with for 12 years, told other kids in the class that they saw me sitting with my Science handbook on my lap, cribbing answers to the test. The book on my lap was in fact a romance novel in which I used to lose myself those days to not let the loneliness get to me. It was during this attack that this friend said to me: “You cannot even speak English! You do not know the difference between laboratory and lavatory. ” Until today I can still hear laughter and mockery and see the scorn on their faces.

This fear of making a fool of myself became a blockage and I did not succeed at my new tele-sales job for the first two months. At this point, Neil suggested to Wade that they let me go and find someone suitable. Luckily, Wade had by then taken a liking to me and felt sorry for this young girl, alone in the world and kept me working in the office, doing various office duties. Miraculously, when I ‘gave up’ and the pressure subsided, I started selling products and became quite successful. Wade decided that I too should become an agent for the products and I did. I started doing trainings in English in front of crowds of more than a hundred people and loving every second of it.