Life is tricky. It requires negotiation and fearless navigation. The bills are due, the house needs work, and the kids need your attention. We seem to do all this at the expense of our dreams. I believe the SECRET is BALANCE.

Stephen Covey talks about this in his great book, “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. How Dr. Covey sums this up is by breaking our life down into 4 quadrants:

1. Urgent & Important
2. Not Urgent & Important
3. Urgent & Not Important
4. Not Urgent & Not Important

Quadrant 1 is basically about putting out fires… this causes stress, burnout and did I mention stress?

Quadrant 2 – We’ll come back to that…

Quadrant 3 – The urgent and unimportant is all about interruptions like phone calls and email. We get stuck here and it makes Q1′s stuff more urgent and more stressful…

Quadrant 4 – is where we go  hide when we are feeling overwhelmed… Ultimately causing more stress (from Q1) and setting us up for failure.

Back to Q2

Quadrant 2 is where we want to spend the majority of time. This is where balance happens. We get our work done, make great connections and relationships and do the things that nurture us (and our soul).

Quadrant 1 is the killer. When we spend all of our time fighting fires… we have no time for much else. Then we burnout – go hide in Q4. This results in more fires to put out – leading to more stress… the cycle begins again.

There will always be Q1 things that come up but if we spend the time focusing on the long term and balancing our life – making sure to include time for the good things our quality of life skyrockets!

This is where dreams come true… By removing ourselves from the stranglehold of the urgent and important – fireproofing instead of fighting fires… we suddenly gain time and perspective.

When we slow down – moving away from the urgent we have time to go out for a hike, take singing or piano lessons, travel, be truly in love…

Sounds like a good idea for me.

Slow down and breathe…