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Balancing Your Life 233

A DIFFERENT KIND OF LIFE PLANNING

It has been an argument throughout this book that everything con-
nects. Mind and body. Body and spirit. Feelings and thoughts.
Science and living. Learning and change. Work and home lives. To
be fulfilled and successful in today’s complex world involves learn-
ing to learn and using your mind to its full potential.
At the heart of achieving this is the need to take control of
your own life. Feeling helpless is a stressful and unhealthy state of
being. Organizations recognize this, which is why they produce
business plans. These seek to reflect the priorities of those working
within them. They try to make sure that time is spent on what mat-
ters for the organization. But, what about you as an individual in
your private life? How much time do you spend setting your own
priorities and ensuring that they are understood and shared by
those to whom you are close?
Stephen Covey explored the idea of creating a Family
Mission Statement in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families. “Being
proactive” is the first of the seven habits he seeks to encourage.
There are many interesting and detailed suggestions for putting
your mission into practice as a family. However, I suspect that many
busy business people see a book like that and think that it is about
self-improvement and not, therefore, relevant to their working lives.
I want to suggest a simple approach to getting your personal life pri-
orities in order, which is, paradoxically for some business people,
central to being successful in life.
Its premise is simplicity itself. Unless you are happy and
doing the things that are important to you in your private life, you
cannot be truly successful in your working life.
Since our marriage in 1995, for both of us a second marriage,
my wife and I have been spending a great deal of time seeking to
understanding our priorities and living these out together. We have
evolved a set of approaches that are personal to us, but I hope that
even if you throw up your hands in horror at some of the ideas, you
might find enough resonance in what I am saying to want to
develop something that works for you and your partner, or simply