August 2003

Key life areas are like the spokes of a wheel. They need to be maintained in balance with one another.

By Bill Dyer

As a manager, you’re always aware of the importance of safely operating all vehicles connected to your operation. Accidents are costly and can easily turn tragic, particularly if someone falls asleep at the wheel. The attention you pay to vehicle and driver safety is a priority. It’s a big priority. People’s lives are at stake.
This article is about staying awake at another kind of wheel — the wheel of your life. We all have key life areas that are important to us. They include areas such as business/career/achievement, relationships with family, relationships with friends, health, finances, fun/recreation, and spirituality. Imagine a wheel from which different spokes radiate outward. Each spoke represents a key life area. When your life is in balance, all the spokes are the same length. Your life wheel is round because you are paying attention to the areas of life you value. On the other hand, when your life falls out of balance, your life wheel looks more like a flat tire due to neglect.
When our lives are hectic, it is easy to lose focus and fall out of balance. That isn’t necessarily a harmful thing. It’s a natural phenomenon when we are paying special attention to a particular area. For example, I recently finished writing a book called When Life Blows You Down. When I was writing it, I took time away from other things I would have been doing otherwise. No doubt, my new project affected my life wheel — one example being that I didn’t spend as much time with my friends. In that example, my “achievement” spoke got longer, while my “relationships with friends” spoke got shorter. My life wheel was out of balance.
As I said before, falling out of balance is sometimes a natural byproduct of taking on a new priority. The key is to be aware of what you are sacrificing, and not stay out of balance to the degree that your sacrifice becomes too costly. Our sacrifice shouldn’t turn into a neglect that we will later regret. That’s falling asleep at the wheel and driving out of balance. Doing that for too long will cause your life wheel to disintegrate. Your life is at stake because other areas will be negatively affected.
I let that happen once and became aware of it while driving home from work one day. A few hours before, I had nearly been killed in a flyrock incident. While driving home, I reflected on my day and realized how fortunate I was to be alive. Then it occurred to me that when I woke up that morning, I had no idea what was about to happen. Suddenly I was highly aware of my mortality and recognized that I have no idea what is going to happen five minutes from now. None of us do.
With that thought, I started asking some questions, such as: If life as I know it ended tomorrow, how do I feel about today? How happy am I? How fulfilled am I? What have I accomplished? Have I accomplished all that I’d like to in life? Am I complete in all my important relationships? Has everything I’d like to say before I die actually been said?
I didn’t like any of the answers. My marriage was on the rocks. My wife and I were coexisting under one roof — living together, but alone. I was miserable. I dreaded going home. As a result, I worked longer hours. The stress mounted. My cholesterol level soared. I was seriously overweight. My health was a disaster. My attitude stunk and it was negatively impacting all my other relationships in life including those at work. I recognized that I had been complaining about my situation, wishing and hoping things would improve as if I had no choice in the matter of my life.
I had fallen asleep at the wheel. I was headed for disaster. What a shame that it took a near death experience to wake me up. That’s not the way it has to be. No one has to wait for some serious mishap to wake up and get back on track with what’s really important. The following steps provide a quick guide for you to consider your life wheel and create more balance where you see fit.

1) Consider your key life areas and pick an area you value or cherish that’s not working or not working as well as you would like.

2) Answer the following questions:

• Is there something I can do in the next 24 hours that would make that part of my life worse?
• Is there something I can do in the next 24 hours that would make that part of my life better?
• Do I have a choice about what I say or do in that area?
• Does every choice I make have an end result?

If you answered “yes” to each of the above questions, whether or not you realize it, here’s what you just said: No matter how good or bad my past is, no matter how good or bad my present situation is, there is something I can do in the next 24 hours to make my future either better or worse, and the choice is mine.

3) Identify what you are going to choose to start, stop, or continue saying or doing in that area to create more of what you want.

4) Take action!

Only you can do that. There is no conference table where there is a group of people sitting around right now trying to figure out how to make your life better. If you don’t identify opportunities for improvement in the areas of life that matter most to you, nobody else will. If you don’t say what needs to be said, and do what needs to be done, nobody else will.
Life is not a dress rehearsal. You can’t trade it in if you don’t like it. Destiny is not a matter of chance. It’s a matter of choice. One way to predict the future is to create the future. If your dreams and aspirations could talk, they would be relentless in their message to you. Every moment of every day, until the end of this life, they would whisper in your ear, “Stay awake and choose wisely.”

Bill Dyer is a professional speaker and trainer for Quantum Leap Resources, Greensboro, N.C.