The Juggle of Life

Alan Lightman, in his recent article The Virus is a Reminder of Something Lost Long Ago, shares how the COVID-19 pandemic may be forcing many of us to slow down, spend more time in personal reflection, away from the noise and heave of the world. With more quiet time, more privacy, in the stillness, we have an opportunity to think about who we are, as individuals and as a society. We have been living too fast selling our inner selves to the devil of speed, super-efficiency, money, hyper-connectivity, “progress.” We have become agitated and angry at doctors’ receptions when kept waiting for 10 minutes or more. We must be connected to the grid at all times. We take our smartphones and laptops with us on vacation. We go through our emails in restaurants and have become slaves to our “urgent” appointments, to-do lists and addicted to the non-stop stimulation of the external world.

But now, many of us feel stuck spending the 24 hours of each day during the pandemic sequestered in the small caves of our homes. Suddenly we find ourselves alone with our thoughts. At home, time and space have opened up in our minds.

In order to use our full potential and to have a balanced wheel we need to make sure not to neglect certain parts of our life. One tool professional coach’s use is “The Wheel of Life”. When I hosted the inaugural Activate Women in Leadership in Africa event in February this tool formed the focus of our discussion. It is a simple, yet powerful, self-assessment instrument that creates some sort of self-reflection that allows coaching clients to find out what to change in a certain part of their life in order to become happier and more successful.

There are many types of the “wheel of life” templates that you can find online to suit your individual needs depending on your season of life. The circle represents your life, the whole of you. The pieces of the circle, like pieces of a pie, represent parts your life: the different areas, roles, or aspects but which on their own do not tell the full story. A wheel of life typically consists of 6 to 8 categories that are essential for one to have a satisfying and successful life. It helps us to determine how much time one spends in a particular category of their lives and whether s/he is satisfied with this state of affairs.

One way to get started when looking for a change or when you need a jumpstart to get on track in pursuing an important goal you have set for yourself is to seek help from a coach. The coaching process can help us navigate life’s challenges by developing a structure for objective assessment and accountability. This way, we are able to achieve more clarity from the chaos in our lives, and begin to realize impact in our work with less confusion, stress and financial pressures that life brings our way, and ultimately, peace of mind.

At the heart of the self-discovery process are powerful questions that one needs to truthfully answer. In the book Co-Active Coaching by Kimsey-House, Sandahl and Whitworth, the authors ask the following questions: Where do you want to make a difference in your life? What do you value most in your relationship with others? Where do you usually get stuck? What motivates you? How do you deal with disappointment and failure?

During this unsettling season, I encourage you to begin the process of personal reflection and to consider taking the steps below:

1. Check-in to your Current Reality: No matter how accomplished or happy you are in life, there are always areas that could use some improvement. Think about your personal growth, relationships, health, career/business, finances, environment, creativity, fun and recreation. Where are you currently thriving and where could you use some work? Do you feel energetic and full of vitality, but struggling to make real connections with people? Are you on track to achieve financial freedom, but you’re stuck in a job that gives you no meaning? What parts of your life have you ignored in order to focus your attention elsewhere? In her book “Thrive” and “The Sleep Revolution”, Arianna Huffington has been vocal about the changes she had to make to become better balanced. “I started taking my sleep more seriously, I began meditating, and I began to be much more deliberate about building in time to unplug and recharge.”

2.   Re-evaluate how you show up in each role: Our lives are a continuous juggling act that needs to be readjusted. What worked well one month may not necessarily work well the next. There are times when all is going well at home and you can devote long days to your career or business. But there are also times when issues surface in your personal life that require you to drop everything at a moment's notice to be there for your family. Develop the emotional flexibility to cope with these changing situations. Each week, examine the categories of your life—spouse, parent, self, career/business—and identify the specific actions that will help you feel successful and fulfilled in these capacities.

3.   Be intentional about your time: If you're going to successfully juggle a rich and full professional life with an equally satisfying personal life, you must learn to ruthlessly manage your time. What support systems can you leverage on?

4.      Achieve your Wheel Balance: Just as wheel balancing is integral to smooth driving, safety and stability the wheel of life is a way to take a good, hard look at each facet of your life, and rate its relative quality level, so you can uncover which areas need more attention than others. When one of the spokes is shorter than the others, it can throw the whole thing off balance. The purpose of the wheel of life exercise is to make sure our wheel, the whole of our life, is balanced, all aspects or needs fulfilled in the right way. When one aspect of your life becomes the focus and the others are neglected, the wheel is out of balance. We know what happens to an out-of-balance wheel. It gets wobbly and is likely to crash. Our wheel, your life, needs to be balanced around the center. But what’s at the center of your life, the most important thing?

5.       Work Life Integration: Now that you have reviewed your wheel of life are there opportunities to integrate parts of your work life with your personal life.

6.      Put yourself at the top of your priority list:  Especially when others depend on you—whether it's your employees or your family—how so you take care of yourself? Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry John Ratey says, "Exercise is really for the brain, not the body. It affects mood, vitality, alertness and feelings of well-being.

7.      Manage your stress level: No matter how much we enjoy what we do, there are inevitably days when our stress level is high. Acquire strategies to cope with stress and to prevent it from affecting your personal life. Those include trouble with eating or sleeping, drinking alcohol more, frequent headaches shorter tempers, and other health problems. On days when you feel the onset of stress, set up a ritual where you can relax for a few minutes by yourself—listening to your favorite music, for example—before you join the family.

8.   Shape Your Destiny: Every one of us has gone through a phase in our lives in which we have treated our work like a glass ball and everything else as a rubber ball. As Tony Robbins says, too many people are caught up with making a living – and not designing their life. But to be able to design your life, you must first create your map of where you are today. In The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Brad Pitt’s character (letter to his daughter) said “For what it's worth: it's never too late, to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you live a life you're proud of. If you find that you're not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. The next time you’re being pulled in a million different directions and don’t know where most of your attention should be, do remember that work is just a rubber ball. Sure it’s important but it’s not the end all be all.

In conclusion, at some point we all have to reimagine life after coronavirus. Although it is still unknown how long this season will take, we can begin by reflecting on how balanced or imbalanced our lives were( if you haven't already), then deliberately taking advantage of the slower pace of life to re-design the life we want post-COVID. In a commencement speech at Georgia Tech, Brian Dyson, former Coca-Cola CEO, had this to say on achieving balance, “…imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them — work, family, health, friends and spirit — and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls — family, health, friends and spirit — are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.”

MaryAnne Mutiga