For many people, much of life consists of trying to keep a balance, as though they are fighting to keep on their feet amidst a vast crowd of people who are pushing and shoving them around. It seems that life demands we become professional jugglers. We want to do our jobs well, to bring up our children well. To romance our loved ones, to spend time with friends, time with our family and time with ourselves. In this complicated world that we have created, we also want to take care of our homes, our cars, our bodies, our heads, our hearts, our souls. We also want to play sports, enjoy hobbies and nurture outside interests. We want all of this, and as if this wasn't enough - to complicate matters further - we want on top of it all, more money, more power, more recognition, more possessions, more of everything. The trouble is we can't have it. And we can't have it for the simple reason that we don't have the time. And even if we did, once we fulfil one desire, another one crops up, and the demands on our time and energy don't match. No matter how hard we try, we simply are not able, in the time at our disposal, to satisfy all the demands our desires make on our minds.

Balancing our act

To make our lives meaningful we have to be clear therefore about what is valuable to us. We have to take a good look at our priorities. We are striving for balance, but balance, like other admirable traits, is hard to achieve. Balance means recognizing out of our many interests what our real needs are, and then rearranging our priorities to reflect those needs. This usually involves letting go of some of our tightly held pursuits and attachments, and for this we have to be prepared to ask ourselves some tough questions. But it is worth asking them because balance is essential to achieving self-realisation; and without knowing who we are, we cannot go very far in life.

Society tells us that having balance is about having a spouse, children, a house, a couple of cars, a good job, hobbies, being involved with our places of worship and civic activities, keeping physically fit - the list goes on. True balance has little to do with all these things because they are all outside us, and true balance is a state within. Balancing the externals of life is fine for someone who is content with life at the surface. But for many people this is not enough. They want to be free from their limitations, free from being owned by their possessions, free from the craziness, disappointments and frustrations of life at this level. They are interested in waking up to what life really is, not in creating more illusions.

Only if we wake up will we know what it means to be alive. For the most part, we don't live, we just exist. Consider that in the meagre lifetime we have been allotted (according to recent statistics) we will spend six months at traffic light waiting for them to change, one year looking through desk clutter for things we have misplaced, two years calling people who aren't in or whose lines are busy, five years waiting in lines and three more sitting in meetings. That's a lot of time being drained away from us. It is not just time we are running out of, it is the opportunity to make the best of our lives, to experience who we are and know what we really want.

How we spend our time and what we do with it is very important. It is because we mistakenly believe that to be happy and lead a balanced life we need all these outside things that we complicate our lives. But it need not be that way. There are other options. But to find these options we need to look inwards instead - we need to look within ourselves.

But how does one do this, one may well ask oneself? And the logical answer, first and foremost, is to take the help of those who understand the question. We need to be in touch with people who have themselves developed their potential and can teach us how to do the same.

Therefore to succeed in life it is vital to have a Mentor, someone who has the ability and skills to set us on the right road and guide our every step.

Written by Gerard O'Donovan Founder of Noble Manhattan coaching Ltd

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