Over the years I’ve been an advocate of trying to live in balance. Dan Thurmon in his book Off Balance on Purpose: Embrace Uncertainty and Create a Life You Love claims that searching for balance is futile and ultimately undesirable. Why? Because Thurmon contends achieving balance is impossible. He uses a number of metaphors hinging on circus entertainment: the tightrope walker, the juggler and the unicyclist. In all cases he points out that balance ultimately produces stagnation because balancing doesn’t create forward movement, only swinging movements through a center point.
While we could quibble whether there is a difference between balancing that is static versus dynamic I think Thurmon ultimately makes a valid point. I like his observation how jugglers look up at their target rather than looking down at the feet or how tightrope walkers look at their destination, not down at their feet.
“Keep looking up” is a mantra that reminds us to rise above the outward distractions and imposed definitions of what is important and decide for ourselves what really matters.
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Your pattern is driven by your purpose. … [r]emember that jugglers don’t look at their hands. They look up at their targets. Only by looking up and taking in the full magnitude of what is happening in your life can you being to grasp the pattern and see your purpose.
Thurmon’s book doesn’t hang just on where we focus our attention but also on “letting go”.
Successful people (and expert jugglers) shift their focus and energy from one action to the next, disengaging from the objectives that are, for the time being, beyond their immediate grasp or control.
The center portion of the book relies on juggling as the main metaphor. In this case we’re juggling the five spheres of our life: work, relationships, health, spiritual growth and personal interests. After explaining the various relationships between two of each of these spheres Thurmon proceeds to give ideas how to achieve progress in more than one area at the same time.
In each sphere Thurmon poses several questions to help you focus on what is important in each. He then offers ideas for strengthening the relationships in each pair of spheres. For instance, work-relationships, work-health, work spiritual growth, work-personal interests, relationships-health, relationships-spiritual growth, relationships-personal interests, health-spiritual growth, health-personal interests, and spiritual growth-personal interests.
Once these relationships are identified Thurmon suggests how we can recognize potential collisions between these spheres as we’re juggling them. They are:
- Identify and remove what doesn’t fit.
- Calibrate your instruments.
- Reduce clutter.
The success I am talking about … is multidimensional. It is state of being. A complete success spans the five spheres: work, relationships, health, spiritual growth, and personal interests. These are all wrapped into one exquisite work of art called ‘your life.” … To do this, you have to look up, just like an expert juggler does, and see the big picture. … True satisfaction and life enjoyment can come only from making forward progress in all of these areas.
- You are here because of your past choices and actions.
- The past is over.
- You control what happens next.
In the final section Thurmon switches to the unicycle to make the point about idling in which the rider maintains balance by pedaling back and forth on one spot. To more forward the unicyclist has to lean forward. The key to making progress without falling on your face is to find the right amount of lean. This ties into the concept “flow” that I’ve mentioned before: by challenging yourself you grow while becoming absorbed. The key is to find a “balance” between your abilities and the challenge. If the challenge is too low boredom sets in while a challenge that is too high for our abilities creates anxiety.
This tends to support the point I made at the beginning about dynamic balancing, which results from forward movement, versus static balancing. Overall I agree with Thurmon’s analogy of juggling the five areas of life (work, relationships, health, spiritual growth and personal interests) versus balancing just the work and personal aspects.
