Jack Canfield, co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul, argues that perfect balance is impossible. Instead, treat balance as an ongoing process of adjusting priorities. He shows how focusing on high-priority goals like health or spiritual growth can improve other areas of your life.
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Hi there. I'm Jack Canfield, co creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and author of the Success Principles. And today I'd like to talk to you about the idea of finding balance in your life. And what I'm about to say might shock you, because spoiler alert. Finding true, static, lasting balance between all the competing areas and demands of your life is actually impossible. And that's okay. In fact, it's better than okay. It's simply how the universe and life has always worked. And the sooner you understand that, the happier and more content you will be. So the reason I want to talk to you about balance is because at the last live event I held, many of the participants had the same question on their minds. They all had important goals they wanted to accomplish in one area of their lives, but were worried that focusing on that goal would cause them to suffer in other areas of their lives. One woman described it best when she said that she had recently entered into a relationship with a new boyfriend and she wanted to invest her time and energy into developing that relationship into something meaningful and lasting. But she was also a single mom with a couple of adolescent kids and a business that she wanted to grow and make more profitable. And she worried that investing the time in her new relationship would change her relationship with her kids and stand in the way of her business schools. And so she asked me, is this how it always works? If you want to achieve success in one area of your life, the rest of your life has to suffer. And it's my experience that a lot of people feel this way. But here's the deal. Life isn't a zero sum game. Succeeding in one area doesn't necessarily mean failing in everything else. In fact, when you're living your life on course, following your true interests and passions, listening to your intuition, and following your inner guidance, achieving your desired goals should result in more joy, more expansiveness, and more fulfillment in all the areas of your life. Now, that said, of course, all areas of your life won't be perfectly balanced all the time. There will be times, but not forever, when you are going to want to focus on one goal to the possible exclusion of other things. And that's okay. The key is to prioritize the goals that you believe will bring you the most joy and and will yield the kind of payoff that will translate to better results and experiences in all areas of your life. For example, if you focus on your health and devote your time and energy to getting in better physical shape, that will have a huge payoff in all the areas of your life. Because boosting your health and your fitness will ultimately give you more energy, more strength, more resilience, and more self confidence, which will raise your physical as well as your mental and emotional vibration. And so that you're able to produce better results in your work as well as in your personal life. And when your vibration is high, you attract more opportunities and more people to support your projects and your initiatives. So even though it might feel like the time you're spending on working out and being physically active and preparing and eating healthy food and getting enough sleep is time that's being taken away from your other goals, the truth is your efforts are going to have a positive impact in all, all the areas of your life. Now the same is true for taking time to focus on personal development and spiritual growth. For example, taking time to meditate, to work on identifying and releasing your limiting beliefs, or learning how to stay calm in a stress filled world affects every area of your life. Or let's say you're in a new relationship and worried that focusing time on it will cause your relationship with your kids to suffer. Like the woman in my workshop who I mentioned earlier. Well, one way that helps your children is that you're modeling for your kids what cultivating a healthy, fulfilling relationship looks like. So they'll be able to do the same thing when they're adults. And all the joy you feel in your new relationship might also have a positive impact on your work as well. Because the happiness and the self confidence it brings you causes you to show up in the world in a more positive and a more powerful way, which might make it easier for you to attract new clients and and thereby grow your sales and your profits. So rather than focusing on the belief that time is scarce and worrying that there are only so many hours in a day, an hour spent on one thing means hours taken away from something else. I want to encourage you to think in terms of creating a rhythm and a harmony between the different parts of your life. You know, sometimes one part of your life will take center stage with all the other parts simply harmonizing with that part. And sometimes it'll be another part of your life's turn to be the highest priority. And that's how life works. The truth is, there will probably be very few times in your life where everything is in perfect balance. And that's okay. It's not about trying to balance all things equally all the time. There's actually no such thing as balance in that way. We tend to think of balance as a noun, a thing we can achieve, but in reality it's actually a verb. There's only balancing. It's never a static situation. It's a constant dance of making small adjustments, like when you're walking on a tightrope or when you're driving your car. Sometimes you shift a little to the left, but maybe you went a little too far, then you got to shift back to the right. You're always correcting and making adjustments. It's about trusting what is emerging in your consciousness as to what you were drawn to do and following that. And that's how you make real progress toward your dreams. So if you feel driven right now to focus most of your time and energy on one area of your life, please don't view that as a sacrifice or or as a belief that the rest of your life is suffering. The effort that you put into achieving a high priority big goal could have a huge payoff in other areas of your life that you cannot even imagine yet. So I encourage you to keep following your inner guidance and your passion and focusing on the goals that are most important to you in the moment and see where your journey takes you. I'm willing to bet it'll be somewhere quite amazing. All right, well, that's it for today. Thanks for watching. And now what I'd love for you to do is is to share your thoughts and questions in the comments below. I'd especially love to hear what you have to say about creating balance in your life. And if you found this video helpful, please make sure to like it, share it with a friend who may need it, and subscribe to this channel. For more videos like this one, and for some additional tools and videos on how to cultivate success habits and achieve your goals in life, check out the resources page@jackcampfield.com There's a lot of great free resources there. Thanks again for watching and have a great day.
