Suddenly, what had been an awful year now had the potential to turn catastrophic. I had just hung up with our insurance provider, and was trying to figure out a way to tell my very pregnant wife that we would be paying for our daughter’s birth out of our meager savings, and if anything went wrong, it could bankrupt us. “Hi honey! Um, I was thinking that maybe this time we would try having the baby at home, with no medicine or doctors? Maybe the boys can help!”
Nine months prior, when my wife and I were apparently in a more celebratory mood, we were in a very different place. I had an awesome job with a great income, flexible hours and incredible benefits. We had just built a beautiful new home, and an early retirement looked like a real possibility. That’s when I was approached about investing in and joining a startup business.
I still occasionally wonder why I made the decision to take that leap and quit my job, especially when it lead to the loss of most of our life’s savings and seriously tested the most important relationships in my life. Looking back, the better question is how did we go through all of that and still manage to come out of it closer, stronger and in better health? Because that is what really happened.
You won’t learn this in school.
Given the poor rate of success for most of the things in life, it’s pretty obvious that we’re not very good at planning. It’s not our fault, though. Most schools don’t teach life planning skills, and once we hit the real world, we get zero training on how to plan for and manage the most important aspects of our lives.
Sure, we have parents, counselors and coaches, who provide a lot of wonderful, heartfelt guidance. But at some point it’s still completely on us to figure everything out for ourselves, from finding a compatible life mate, to staying healthy, raising kids and figuring out how to manage complex financial scenarios 30 years down the road.
There is also an overwhelming amount of ‘self-help’ material in the world, but the typical approach to achievement is goal-oriented, where we establish a goal in a specific area of our life, identify the steps to accomplish it and take action. A lot of important steps are missing in that process, and there are a lot of opportunities to veer off course and never make your way back.
So what does a great life plan look like?
That is the where the Balanced Life Plan comes in. The focus of this site is to teach you what a Balanced Life Plan is, to help you understand what it gives you, and to provide the education and tools to build and maintain your own Balanced Life Plan.
There is a lot of debate right now about what balance truly means, and whether we can actually achieve balance in our lives. Our definition of balance is simple. If all of the important parts of your life – your physical, spiritual and mental health, your financial peace of mind, your relationships and your ability to contribute – are healthy and vibrant, then you have balance.
I know what you’re thinking. Are you kidding me? I’m already overwhelmed and exhausted! Now you want me to do more?!
Trust us, this is NOT a super-achiever, extreme approach to life. We’ve been talked into enough of that nonsense. If you want to be Super Woman / Man in every category of your life, then this is not the approach for you. We are never going to recommend a plan that is based on ads or magazine covers.
The hardest part of developing a Balanced Life Plan is realizing that you need one. Once you take that first step, it gets a lot easier from there.
So what next?
The process of building a Balanced Life Plan is simple, and once you complete the first step, the next steps are consistent across each of the four areas: Health, Relationships, Finances, Contribution. You can work on these areas in any order that you want, but our recommendation is to follow the above order.
Each of these steps is covered in much greater detail throughout the site, along with tools and fun stuff that will help you along the way. For now, here is a quick summary of how you will build your Balanced Life Plan:
Step 1: Define your Mission. The first step is to really examine your most sacred beliefs and values. We all think we know what those are, but it’s easy to lose sight, or get confused along the way. This step helps you to clearly define who you are, and what you believe, giving you a strong foundation for your Balanced Life Plan.
Step 2: Measure your current health. You’ve defined your personal mission in Step 1, but for each of the important areas of your life, you need to have a clear, realistic measurement of how you are doing in these areas right now. In this step, we will provide a simple scorecard that will help you measure your current health in each of the important areas of your life, so you know exactly where to start.
Step 3: Take Action. With a clean slate, and a clear vision of where you want to go, this next step will help you get organized in each area of your life so that you can easily achieve your vision. For each area, you will build a clear, simple path to success that is aligned with the other areas of your life, and that will have a high probability of success.
Step 4: Stay the Course. Even with a simple plan, and a clear direction, it’s easy to get sidetracked. There are a lot of quick, simple ways to keep on top of things, and make sure that you continue down the path that you designed. In this step we will offer suggestions and guidelines for staying with the plan.
How it works in real life.
You’re probably still wondering, after such a cataclysmic failure in business, how my most important relationships managed to get stronger, my personal health get better, and how found financial peace of mind after losing nearly everything.
I’d love to say it was my tough-minded optimism or my dogged determination, but I would be lying. At the end of that process I was an angry, scared rabbit who was ashamed to look even my closest friends in the eye.
But in the early days of our marriage, my wife and I had built version 1.0 of our own Balanced Life Plan, and finances were only one part of it. Our plan was built on our family mission, so it was in line with our core values. It also kept our most important relationships intact, and allowed time for physical, mental and spiritual health. Lastly, we also had a strong financial outline, and even when things got very bad, there was always another back-up plan waiting in the wings.
In no way did this feel good, by the way. Failure sucked, and losing so much money was devastating. I am sure there were many days when my wife asked herself if she married an idiot. But because we had a plan and we never stopped moving, we never found ourselves stuck in anger, shame or depression, with absolutely nowhere to go.
Maybe you’re reading this because you’ve lost money, or someone you love, or maybe you are just getting started and the horizon is exciting and new. Whatever your circumstances are, building a plan is one of the most positive, optimistic things you can do, and I hope that this helps you!
If you’d like to begin building your own Balanced Life Plan, read on, or sign up for our newsletter here.