Do You Feel Life is Like a Juggling act?

The passed four weeks, I have not written a blog, because I will admit, life has been like a juggling act for me this past month. You have your main five or six balls that you keep juggling constantly, which is finance, relationships/family, education, work/career/business and health.

However, every now and again, those balls seem to increase in number, sometimes the work/career ball gets a whole heap heavier and people keep throwing in smaller work/career balls for you to juggle. Which means you have to drop something, because you can only juggle so much at one time.

Other times, and especially as you get older, your health ball will be the one dragging you down, and you have to drop the work/career/business ball, maybe you have to drop it and decide to never pick it back up again.

There are so many elements to our lives, especially in western society, where achievement is deemed to be the most important aspect of our lives, however, what if I told you that it is okay to drop a few balls here and there?

You may drop the work ball, or the health ball, or even the family/relationships ball for a short period of time, and that is okay. There is nothing wrong with dropping the ball, because no one is capable of juggling all of the balls at once for the rest of their lives. The key is to knowing what you value more than anything else, do you value family the most? Or do you value career/business?

And I don’t want you to feel bad about what you value the most either, because there is no right or wrong answer, some people will value family higher than even their own health. And others will value career or business above family…

There is nothing wrong with valuing one above the other, that is your choice, but you have to know that it is the right choice, based on how you feel, whether your partner and friends are okay with your values to stick around for the long haul, whether the job/business you are currently in accepts these values as your own priority.

Once you know what you value the most, the aim is not to drop the ball for too long. If work gets too much and you have to spend more time at work, but your main values are health and family, then you have to make sure that you don’t get stuck in the rut of continuing to juggle the extra career/business balls in perpetuity. You have to make a forced decision to drop a few career balls and pick up your health or family balls again.

Multiple factors and multiple balls make for really difficult decisions, day in and day out.

Hence why I wanted to write this post, to help you (and myself, let’s be honest) to be okay with dropping the ball every now and again.

But, and this is the major problem we have in Western society especially, we have an expectation that is placed on us from work, from partner’s, friends and family…

And some of this expectation is actually made up in our own heads, where we think we are expected to act in a certain way, it is simple psychology, as we are socially oriented to act in a certain way to “fit-in” and be accepted amongst our peers.

However, what if I told you, that the expectation you think is put on you, is actually a lot less than you think? In some cases, it is completely a figment of your imagination.

Of course, there are some expectations, which have already been communicated, and these are the hard truth’s, but most of the time, we create pressure on ourselves to be everything and do everything, when really you just need to meet your own standards and expectations.

One of the key statements that I remember to this day about choosing which balls to pick up and which balls to drop comes from the great Gary Vaynerchuk and multiple others before him…

“When you die, who is going to remember you for more than one day? Your manager/boss whom barely knows you outside of work? The masses of people on social media? Or your family that you interact with on a daily basis?”

Even celebrities and monarchs need to really think about this question, because most people forget about you once you have passed away and after the funeral, they have their own lives to get on with, their own struggles. You only need to think of the great Kobe Bryant, who sadly passed away in early 2021 from a freak helicopter accident, or even more recent, the queen of Britain herself. Do you think of these two truly inspirational and amazing people on a daily basis?

Probably not, and they had such far reaching impact on so many lives, much more than your own impact most likely. Yet still, you or I never really think of these amazing people, not unless we are prompted by something such as this post.

When you realise that humanity as a species, as much as you love to think we are all doing the right thing by each other, which for the most part is true, are inherently selfish, the better it will be to help you choose which balls to pick up. We focus on our own lives, our own thoughts and we perceive things directly from our own frame of reference and thoughts.

Therefore, everything you do here on this Earth is only going to be thought about very briefly after your passing, hence why you need to really think about the ones who will truly remember you, which are the ones you have an impact on a daily basis for multiple years, where you are irreplaceable. Hence, I find it really easy to be able to choose which balls to pick up once they have been dropped and you can too once you get your head around this concept.

Another strategy you can use is the power of reflection, truly it is probably the most powerful thing anyone can do, especially when you get busy and you are feeling overwhelmed by life. Being able to reflect on what you are doing, and which balls you are dropping or juggling currently is the key to understanding where you are at and where you want to go with life.

Without understanding the past or present, you cannot truly look forward to the future. Now some of you may think, we don’t need to worry about the future, and that is fine, you don’t need to worry about the future… Until the future gets here of course, and then what?

The key to being able to pick up the right balls and juggling them constantly, whilst you have kids wanting your attention, a boss hounding you for work to be complete now, or assessments that are due next week, is to know what you value and to communicate this with the people who are constantly wanting your attention/energy.

The great Ron Malhotra once said to me, when I asked him about how he kept juggling all the ball’s of life, “The key is knowing when to drop what ball, and when you have been neglecting it for too long, to drop another and pick that one back up.”

You are the only one who can choose to drop and pick up the balls, therefore I hope you can use what I have written to help you choose what balls to pick up at and at what time.

The rest is up to you,

Until next time,

Take Back Control