As Good as It Gets: The Balanced Life?
We are probably familiar with the often-mentioned human resources axiom:
The response you are getting from employees is exactly what your current message is motivating and rewarding.
We recognize this law of human performance when it comes to addressing questions of product promotion, compensation or market mix. But many times we fail to see that this truth applies to everyone in relationship to us.
Are your sales people missing their goals? The truth is that they are doing exactly what you are motivating them to do. Are your customers wavering or resisting? Your message is motivating this behavior. Are your vendors giving you problems? Your behavior supports these actions. And it’s not just about business. The same adage applies at home, at church and in your neighborhood.
The life you have right now is exactly what your current thinking is motivating and rewarding.
If you want to improve your life, something must change in the way you think. It won’t work to adopt a new behavior technique because the new behaviors will still be based on the old motivators and rewards. Sooner rather than later, the behaviors will return to the old patterns because the underlying thought process didn’t change.
We experience examples of this all the time. Want to lose weight? You will never succeed until you change the way you THINK, not just the way you eat. Want to stop smoking? Unless you change your MIND, you won’t make it. Want to make more profits, gain greater market share? Business progresses at the speed of THOUGHT, not manufacturing or sales or advertising.
So, look at your life right now. Is this what you want? Is this what completely satisfies you? If you can say, “Yes, this is as good as it gets”, then STOP right here. You don’t need to do anything more. Have a nice day.
But if you aren’t able to stand up as shout, “This is everything I ever wanted”, then I am suggesting that the next great step forward will be with your MIND, not with your feet. Let’s take a deeper look at the mental path ahead.
There are two competing paradigms in business today. The first is the effort-perfection model. The second is the vision-available model.
The first looks and feels like this:
- If it’s going to be, it’s up to me
- If you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself
- I am the captain of my own fate
- The goal of life is accumulation
- Problem-solving skills are essential for success
- Knowledge is power
- Power is control
- Life is a zero-sum game
- What matters most is self-fulfillment
The second looks and feels like this:
- I am part of something bigger than me
- I am not alone
- I do not fully control my own destiny
- The goal of life is giving myself away
- My problem-solving skills will never be enough to solve all the problems
- Power is imprisoning
- Obedience is freedom
- Life is possibility unfolded
- What matters most is significant purpose
The behaviors fostered and rewarded by these two competing models differ dramatically. Unfortunately, many of us attempt to live with one foot in each camp. We have discovered the uncomfortable, frustrating struggle of trying to reconcile these models. Our usual compromise is compartmentalization. We break up our lives into “watertight” boxes, adopting the behaviors of accumulation, competition and individual self-fulfillment in work while we try to act from obedience at church and cooperation at home. We are constantly re-drawing the lines and shoring up the bulkheads as the water from one set of behaviors threatens to flood another set of behaviors. We are leaking at the core.
Most of us recognize this inconsistent behavior but we seem to be powerless to do anything about it in the long term. Our lives are spent adjusting. In order to get off this treadmill, we need to do some seriously deep thinking. We need to answer the question:
Why am I having so much trouble living a balanced life?
What this question shows us is so obvious we have overlooked it. We have forgotten to think backwards. We have accepted the question as the legitimate goal of living. But this question already contains a paradigm. That paradigm is:
The best life is a perfectly balanced life.
Our question really begs the question. Is life about balance? Once we have accepted this standard, all the rest follows. We are ushered down the aisle of personal performance, individual responsibility, compartmentalization, accumulation and self-determination in an effort to capture that elusive trophy – the balanced life.
But thinking backwards jars my assumptions. Why do I think life is supposed to be balanced? Where did I get this idea? How come it dominates my experience?
The balanced life is a cultural ideal presented to the Western mind by the Greeks. Because the Greeks did not believe in a personal God, they viewed life as the constant conflict between the forces that acted on Man and Man’s effort to counteract those forces. They lived in an impersonal, random and chaotic universe where the only method of successful survival was to keep things under control. Since life could upset the apple cart at any moment, the best solution for living was to balance the good and the bad so that no one event would cause disastrous results. When life was in balance, Man could control his destiny for the moment.
This ideal has a powerful effect on us today. What we fear becomes the focus of our efforts to prepare for. We buy insurance, use hedge funds and create retirement funds because we want protection against uncontrollable forces. We live in a universe of risk and control is our balancing tool. Unfortunately, we often discover that in spite of all our efforts, control evades us. Life tips us over and we fall off the teeter-totter.
Have you ever noticed that just when you got control over one part of your life, another part seemed to slip into chaos? Why didn’t that constant theme ever make you question whether balance was the right objective? You probably didn’t question it because you just assumed that was the way life should be. The cultural pattern blinded you to reality. But God has a way of pushing reality through our best-laid plans. He wants us to see that there is another way to look at life – a way that He put in place long before the Greeks arrived on the scene.
The balanced life is immensely complicated. How do you determine how much effort is needed to keep work, home, family, church and social relationship all functioning perfectly? If you have the formula, let me know and we’ll write a book. For most people, balance is a trial and error process – and it turns out to be mostly error. Others constantly remind us, “you don’t take enough time for me”. No day is long enough to meet all the expectations. Behaviorally, the balanced life is a myth! It just can’t be done because human living is far too demanding for real balance. Add time with God to the equation and we all come up inadequate.
But God already knew this. That’s why He doesn’t expect or demand balance. In fact, God’s answer is the simplifying principle of living. God doesn’t want your balanced life. He wants your totally committed, absolutely focused, myopic concentration of Him. “Seek ye first”. “Love God with all”. The theme is the same over and over. There is only one relationship that I am to manage completely – my relationship to Him. God’s view of living is not the teeter-totter. It’s the bull’s-eye. In the very center is my perfect score – a relationship in perfect harmony with Him. Every concentric ring expending out from the center is a relationship with less of my control. That design is intentional. God wants me to see that I cannot control all the aspects of living. God wants me to see that dependence is the answer to life. I will never achieve balance because balance is based on the false theology of independent living. In God’s world, I need Him because I cannot control any relationship except my direct relationship with Him. He, on the other hand, is perfectly able to take care of every one of my other relationships on my behalf as long as I give Him complete authority to do so. In other words, when I stop trying to manage the consequences of life and put all of my energy into managing my vertical relationship with the Father, He will order my steps so that I will accomplish His will. And that is real living.
Which paradigm determines your picture of living? Are you caught in the false theology of independence, trying unsuccessfully to bring control to all of your relationships in order to achieve balance? Or have you sold out to God, yielding the consequences of your life to Him while you put all your eggs in the Father’s basket? Which paradigm presents the greater risk? The one that says “do it on your own” or the one that says, “give it all to Me”? Don’t let your past cultural mythology dictate your emotional reaction. Unless you want to play god, you better seriously consider if balance is as good as it gets.
Skip Moen, D. Phil.
