While cycling, many times we tilt over one side or the other, but we must bring our self back in balance, or else we will end up falling. The same goes for life and business, and basically everything that we do. We need to have the right balance between the various sides of your business, work, life or we will end up falling on one side.

From my experience, I can tell you that most of my life have been anything but balanced. Except in the last few years, I have always given more time to things that I was interested in, and not enough to uninteresting though important things. If in my school and college days I focused too much on computers to suffer in every other subject, in my professional life I have been too much of a workaholic to allow my health and family relationships suffer. We can keep doing this for sometime, but after a while, we need to maintain our balance or we end up falling on one side (bad scores, bad health, or broken relationships).

Maintaining a balanced life is a continuous journey and the definition of balance changes as our priorities change. While there is nothing wrong in being focused more on one aspect of life than another (like money over family, or work over health) but it is also important to realize that neglecting one part of life will have its consequences in the future. However, living a balanced life will have its trade offs too. If you are not putting as much hours in your office as your peers, you might end up getting less money or being passed over for that promotion. So it is always a trade-off and a personal decision.

Over Compensating One for the Other
Many people think that if they work harder in one area, results in that area can compensate for the lack of results in another area. For example – You might feel getting more money (and the power that comes with it) might compensate for the lack of time you spend with your family. But what I have seen is that, on the contrary, if you get more engaged in building your career and business, you get under a lot of obligations that you will have even less time for your other priorities.

Keep All Ends in Mind
Keeping both ends in mind, and understanding the trade-offs is the key to a balanced life. Depending on where your education, work, family, kids, contribution to society, or anything else sits on your priority list, you can tilt on one side from time to time, but you have to make sure of switching to the other sides too from time to time if you want to prevent a fall.

Pay Attention
To keep a balanced life, it is important to ask ourselves the hard questions about what our priorities are, and keep a close eye on the trade offs with each option. Examine different areas of your life and set goals which will decide the way you want to balance your life. Make a plan on how to do that, and stick to it. It is very important to learn to say ‘no’ to even big opportunities if they dont fit in your plan, or understand the trade offs if you say ‘yes’.