By Clay S. Nelson
Try to imagine this: You get out of bed each morning before dawn. Your family is still in their beds fast asleep. You get ready for work and head straight to the newest job site. You gulp down a doughnut and coffee at some point along the way. After solving a couple of problems at the site, you stop by the plumbing supply house and another job site to talk to your electrical sub about one of his employees and check on the progress there. You attend the local home builder association lunch meeting, and spend the afternoon at the office, putting out whatever fires flare up until early evening, when you have an appointment to meet with prospective clients.
After that 90-minute meeting, you go home–dinner and your family are waiting–and you decide to spend some "quality time" with them. So you veg out in front of the television, your eyes on the screen but your mind on an estimate you should be putting together. Even though you're beat, you know you won't sleep unless you at least get started on the estimate, so once the kids go to bed, you spend some time in your home office working on it. And ordering some materials for the day after tomorrow, which you forgot to do earlier. And answering some e-mail, which you didn't have time to do this afternoon. And looking over a couple of resumes, since that won't take very long ...
Now is that is a picture of someone who is living large? I don’t think so! This is a picture of someone whose life is out of balance. If this is what an unbalanced life looks like, what does it mean to have life balance?
Having it all
For the outside observer, life balance is purely a fantasy that the observer never really expects to attain. Yet life balance doesn’t have to be something you only dream of having. It is possible to be a success as a builder and remodeler and have a fulfilled life too!
Life balance is not about being able to walk a high-wire from one 12-foot stand to another. It is all about being able to balance your life inside the challenges of your life by putting tools and a team in place that help you to live the balanced life you are committed to living, no matter what!
Now there is the "C" word we avoid like the plague: Commitment. As with anything we set out to accomplish, our commitment to living a balanced life is the very first step in actually having life balance. Getting people to commit often requires convincing them that stepping through their fears and circumstances is worth the slight effort, especially when they consider the payoff. So here we go. When you live a balanced life:
- You are happier.
- Your relationships are healthier, you are physically healthier, and your business is healthier.
- Your energy and passion burn much brighter.
- The circumstances of your life, your business, and those around you don’t own you; you are much better equipped to manage the changes that constantly surround you.
- You don’t feel guilty for lying in the hammock on Sunday afternoon.
- You are much more present to the way it feels to have your son's or daughter’s arms wrapped around you when you tuck them into bed at night.
- You know how much is enough and when to say no.
- What you do isn’t about how much money you have, it’s about the quality time you take with the people you are making the money for.
And the best part is that having a balanced life requires nothing more than a change in the way we think. This change then brings about a shift in our actions and the way we choose to operate and live our lives.
Being out of balance doesn’t mean you are a bad person. It simply means that you are missing out on the best things in life. You see, most of us were raised to work, work, work, but it is entirely possible to be a success professionally and live a happy, fulfilled, and balanced life too! So with this having been said, picture this:
You get out of bed each morning and enjoy a cup of coffee in the quiet of the dawn, having already mapped out a plan for your day the evening before. You greet your family with a smile as they awaken, and then you head to the gym for your daily workout. From the gym you go to the office. You meet with your team for updates on sales and job-site progress, you meet with your electrical subcontractor, you attend the local home builder association lunch meeting, you spend part of the afternoon meeting with your marketing team for an update on their progress and with a longtime supplier, working out more details for a program to streamline ordering and deliveries. You end the day with an appointment at 3:00 at the home of some prospective clients. You go home at 5:00, have dinner with your family, watch your son play in a ball game, snuggle your spouse as you watch a movie together, map out your plan for the following day, and then you make it to bed without first falling asleep in your home office chair.
This is a glimpse into the life of someone who has life balance, and while your own picture of life balance may be different, the core remains the same: All people who have life balance are committed to having the life they say they want to have.
Clay S. Nelson is president of Clay Nelson Life Balance.
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