The hardest thing for people is to find the middle ground, the sustainable, the mean. The smooth. The life they claim they want. Everyone, on and off the internet, is trying to monopolize your time.
It is a lot like walking on a rope… any movement, leaning to the left immediately needs to be balanced to the right.
In rope dancing the consequences are clear and immediate.
In plate spinning: the consequences are clear and immediate.
In life, even in business, the consequences are removed, timewise, and unless you are astute with a very wide cone of vision, you don’t know what you are causing with each and every movement you make…
No movement is also a movement, by the way.
All and every fall began as a movement that wasn’t followed up by a counter-balancing movement.
One area where this has been ignored is health. The area of being well, having energy, feeling good, about your body, about your life.
The art of being well is the art of balancing.
Some of my clients and students are militant. Others are resistant and a f… you. Yet others pretend to be clueless.
The article I wrote about spinning plates went without any feedback… no echo… but it was a very important article, but either it went over your head, or you willfully ignored it.
Because that article was about the science of growth, the science of a balanced life, the science of no extremes, the science of the good life you all claim you want.
Of course, I see that having a cone of vision the size that a pen-light illuminates is a big issue here.
Unless you have a display of all the areas of your life, all your “projects”, all in one place, even drawn in balance, you will fall victim, again and again and again to the behavior that destroys your health, destroys your relationships, your income, etc.
Some productivity gurus (most) preach prioritizing.
Create a list of all the things you say you need to do, and do only the top three.
It’s giving you too much credit. It is only useful if and when you have your whole enterprise, the business of YOU.Inc in front of you when you make your list. All the plates that are essential to this business to run smoothly, for longevity. You.Inc.
You.Inc
And if you are a one person incorporated business, all the tasks fall on your lap.
In a business you cannot ignore some areas and concentrate on one or two that you deem the highest priority.
You need to stay on the tightrope… and move forward at the same time.
If you cannot do it for your little life, if you haven’t learned to run your life as a business where everything needs to be kept up to date, you have no business starting a new business, or dreaming about becoming a millionaire.
So how do you do it? How do you run your life as a well-managed business that also grows?
In my experience, having a map with the areas, with the projects, with the action steps, with the available resources, is the best approach for most people. A map is both visual and kinesthetic.
My life turned around when I made my first such map.
I put it in the corridor between my room and the bathroom… so I had to see it several times a day. Each time it gave me a reminder, like a sideway bump on my head… just a reminder that my life is a circle and I was on a single line…
You live on a single line, always, only two dimensions, but lots of single lines make a circle.
The art is to not get stuck on one line. That is what the map is for: to make you move every time you see the map. To attend to everything, just like the plate spinner does… or the plate falls off the stick.
Certain dietary mistakes make this difficult, by the way. Being dehydrated makes this difficult.
Your brain can misfire… and keep you in ADD or OCD mode… that is: never sticking with anything, or being too sticky with one thing.
The New Year Resolution time is coming… and with it self-hate.
All new year resolutions are actions promised, caught from thin air. Actions at the expense of what you are already doing.
The problem is not that you are a weak person, or that you are not consistent, or whatever horrible things you say about yourself: the problem is that you pile those actions on your already packed life.
A map in space and in time solves that problem.
You need to calculate the energy, the time, you can allocate to a new activity, while taking care of everything else.
A new activity is like adding another plate. If you are already bad at spinning your existing plates, you are better of removing time and energy consuming activities that don’t give you a good return. Like watching television, Freecell, articles, youtube, texting.
Or computer games.
No project can be added without re-arranging the existing map.
I haven’t watched Netflix in weeks. I have added two new projects, and something had to go. And what needs to go is what contributes the least… for me it was Netflix.
I am willing to give a map-making workshop, if there are enough takers.
I prefer maps drawn with hand. It’s OK to add pictures from magazines, but not necessary. No pie in the sky.
The map is not about how artistic you are. My original, life changing map was rectangles and squares with my ugly handwriting in them. And that was that.
I made a second one, years later, on my computer. It won me kudos, but it did nothing to my life. Why? Because my attention was on pretty, and on concept of design, not on my life, not on what’s important to the good life.
Someone acknowledged me for experimenting with my life all the time.
I don’t remember if they liked that about me or not. I think it was one of the things they didn’t like… lol.
A life where you keep adding, keep injecting energy to every area of life, does look like a laboratory from the outside. You seem to be focusing on a different area every time someone looks from the outside…
Your health, your money, your skill-building, your relationships, your How capacities at work… like a search beam always on the lookout for weak areas that need attention.
This morning I slept till 8 am. My body needed the energy injection. Yesterday was the Days of Power download… it takes a lot out of my body. I was also showing signs that my immune system needed a little TLC, tender loving care. I was hoarse… So I gave my body what it needed.
I am now energized, well, no hoarseness.
Two hours extra sleep solved a problem that being square, militant, strict about when I should get up would take to all the way to getting sick.
Remember, you are You, Inc.
You don’t want to have to start from scratch all the time. You want to grow. Slow and steady. And not crash and burn.
Elide, I have decided to make people jump through hoops to get into the workshop. Wait for the hoops… please. Thank you.
Hi Sophie, I would be interested in a map creating workshop. Thanks.
As I so enjoyed your article “spinning plates” and attempted unsuccessfully to save it to a file, I now seem to be unable to locate it. Is there an archive?
thank you.
I have added a pdf version to both articles, and here is the link for the spinning plates Article https://www.yourvibration.com/30322/plate-spinning/
Recognize your life? Or other people’s lives?
Thank you Lucia. xoxo
Excellent analysis.
thanks