A Life in Balance?

Three years ago on the 27th December Lynn’s car veered off the highway, took flight, crashed through a signboard and landed in a crumpled heap on the grass bank. Lynn* sustained some physical injuries as well as a severe head injury. She has just received her final medico-legal report stating that she will never be able to work again, whether full or part time.



Lynn is one of the people I work with through Headway. Over the years she has spoken about returning to her previous employment. When she told me about the report I thought she was unhappy. But the report wasn’t the cause of her mood. She was feeling down because she can’t afford to host a Xmas dinner for her family. Lynn then went on to say, “I am happy not working. I am enjoying my life. Before the accident I put work before everything else in my life. Even if a friend from out of town came to stay with me I would first take time to finish off work on my laptop. Now I belong to a bible study group, I read and I talk to my neighbours. I thank God that he stopped me, took me back to being like a 7 year old and gave me the chance to rebuild myself differently.”


Perhaps Lynn is right. Her life was way out of balance and it needed the accident to bring about change. If so it was a drastic way of doing it.


Is your balance between ‘me’ time, ‘us’ time and ‘work’ time appropriate for this stage of your life?


Do you have opportunities for creative activities – tinkering with a motor bike, making a funny face out of twigs and leaves, laying the table with a special touch?


Do you make time for physical exertion – a walk, stretches, a horse ride or squash game?


Is there soul food in your life – things that makes you feel uplifted, energized, full and happy inside?


Are there little times in the day when you empty your mind of “doing stuff” and get in touch with the real you?


Do you laugh often – with friends, reading or watching a movie?


When you include these things in your life you reenergise yourself.


Have you wondered how some people have much more energy than others? The energetic ones have found the way to harness their physical, mental, spiritual and emotional energies. They ensure that each one gets enough exercise plus a little extra, a short break and then more exercise - interval training to generate more energy.


A year end is a great time to reflect on our lives.


A great opportunity to make choices, to make changes.


Build into your day little 5, 10, 15 minute pockets of time for the things you need to do to give all four ‘muscles’ their exercise. Maybe 5 minutes sitting on the stoep watching the sky lighten and listening to the birds before work, 10 minutes walking up and down a few flights of stairs with a colleague at mid morning, 20 minutes reading a book whilst eating a salad at lunchtime, 5 minutes of desk stretches in the afternoon, a quick call to a friend on your way home (use a hands free) and then invite your teenager to walk the dog with you.


Take control of your life. Plan it and live it the way you wish to.


(*Name changed to protect privacy)

Originally written as a BBI in Dec 2007

Looking backwards

We frequently hear that we need to have a vision, that we should look ahead, keep our eye on the goal. But some years ago a wise person told me that we also have to look backwards.

Why look backwards?

Imagine you were sailing from Durban to Mauritius. That takes a few days on a cruise liner. As you leave Durban all you see in front of you is blue ocean. As you look forwards towards your goal of Mauritius it looks as though you are standing still. But if you look back towards Durban it is easy to see how first the harbour and then the Durban coastline gradually becomes smaller and smaller as you move away.

An occasional look backwards is important when the vision is a long distance one, when the goal takes a while to reach.

Many of us find ourselves in the middle of a change process. Perhaps our company is making changes yet again. Or maybe we are going through a transition in our own lives. Sometimes it feels as though we will never get to the end, that we will be in a permanent state of flux. It can be hard to stay motivated when the end looks far away. Looking back to see where we have come from allows a fresh perspective.

Last year I saw a performance of Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold and the Boys”. In this play set in 1950 Port Elizabeth, we see racism and bigotry play out in the interaction between a young boy and his mother’s employees. It reminded me of growing up in South Africa in the 70’s. It contrasted starkly with how I, my friends and my colleagues interact with people of all races nowadays.

As we left the theatre there was a family ahead of us with teenage daughters. I overheard them talking to their father. They were saying it was just a play and no one would have said those things in real life. Their father was trying to explain the realities of apartheid in that South Africa. He could look back and see a change. They only know the ‘new South Africa’.

This year I saw Bailey Snyman’s dance play “Moffie” which highlights the attitude to homosexuals in the SADF of the early 80’s. This coincided with the time most of my friends did their national service. Whilst there is still prejudice in 2012 we now have legal same sex marriages and much of society is more accepting of sexual preference.

And then a couple of weeks ago we went to a screening of “Searching for Sugar Man”, the film about Rodriguez (well worth seeing). As a teenager I remember listening over and over to my sister’s Cold Fact album and singing along to “I wonder”. The film flashes back to Cape Town in the late 70’s, showing its natural beauty, but also the obvious signs of apartheid like the “nie blanke” signs. There are also a few old news clips of protests and an SABC employee shows how the banned tracks on the LP were scratched to prevent them being played.

What all these films or plays had in common was that they made me look backwards. All this looking backwards created some perspective for me on where we are at in South Africa today. We still live in a most imperfect society but many things have changed for the better since the 50’s, 70’s and 80’s.

Occasionally looking backwards allows us to measure how far we have come, it encourages us that we are making progress and it inspires us to keep on moving forwards towards our goal.

In your own life have you been working towards something for quite awhile? Does it feel like you are always striving but perhaps not getting there?

Take a moment, look back, see how far you have come. Recognise your achievement. And then look ahead and move on.

Take the pressure off yourself

“You don’t look yourself,” was the greeting from a friend on meeting me for our final committee meeting of the year. “I am tired,” I replied. “The last couple of weeks I have just been chasing my tail and barely meeting deadlines.” As I said it, it struck me that this was most unusual for me. What had gone wrong?

Into my head came a picture of Stephen Covey’s four quadrants.

Ideally we should spend most of our time doing activities that fall into Quadrant 2 – important but not yet urgent.

I had instead slipped into being in Quadrant 1 – important and urgent.

I haven’t done that for many years. I make a point of planning and prioritising, of saying No when necessary and of remaining in the moment rather than worrying about what may be coming. However somehow that went pear shaped at the beginning of December. By the time I realised what I had done I was feeling drained and dissatisfied.

I am now back in Quadrant 2 and feeling so much better.

If two weeks of that made me so tired, what do months and months of it do to us? And what’s more it is an unproductive space, so all that stress and strain is achieving even less.

Perhaps this is a good time for each of us to evaluate where we are working from and if that isn’t a productive, enjoyable space to make a plan to change it now?

(Originally written in December 2011)

Being happy at work

A recent e-mail from a client ended, “I often asked myself, why can I not be satisfied with what I have achieved, or just see my job as a means to earn my living.” My immediate thought was, “because you wouldn’t be you, and you wouldn’t have achieved the success you have.” The client is a senior manager who has built up a very successful business unit within a large organisation.

Keeping that famous life / work balance is tricky and sometimes the balance comes from two equally unbalanced phases - working flat out - and then taking a complete sabbatical. The headmaster at King Edward V11 school recently did that. He has been head for eight years so took an entire term off to travel through the Kruger and other game parks. Sound inviting?

Although driven people sometimes do question themselves, they for the most part thrive on being driven - on the achievements and on creating something just a little better than last time – it makes them happy. And being driven is not stressful if it fits your personality - a laid back life would quickly become boring for them.

I am reading a book called “Happiness at Work. Maximising your psychological capital for success” by Jessica Pryce-Jones. For years I have ‘preached’ that we can create productive, effective businesses with happy, engaged, fulfilled people working in them. What is great about Jessica’s work is that she and her team have conducted really robust research that proves that people who are happy at work are more productive.

The happiest employees focus on their work 78% of the day compared to the unhappiest who focus on what they need to do for only 53% of the time. That means the happiest people put about 60 extra days of work effort into their year.

A very big, proven key to productivity at work is happiness!

She also states, if you are happy at work you get promoted faster, get more support. generate better & more creative ideas, achieve your goals faster, receive superior reviews, are healthier, and many more ...

The book explores many factors that determine how happy we are at work. I maintain that all leader-managers should be managing in such a way as to make it easier for people to enjoy their day at work (and get the job done!). However the book really focuses on what each of us as individuals can do so as to increase our own happiness at work. My work with past clients didn’t use the same structure as Jessica uses but I have seen many people who were so unhappy that they came to me to explore changing jobs and yet ended up finding themselves becoming happier and deciding to stay where they were!

As an individual are you happy in your work? And if not consider changing that. Life is too short to waste it being unhappy.

If you are a leader-manager do you know how to manage so that your team are productive and creative, and happy?