Living a Balanced Life

Life is complicated. There is so much to do and so much that requires our attention that people tend to overemphasize some areas and completely ignore others. It’s been about six months since God told me, “Your life is completely out of balance.” I remember thinking that balance in life was a very Eastern, almost Buddhist concept. After all, aren’t we supposed to be 100% after Jesus? I got a new understanding of life that has helped me live a much healthier happier life.

Let me paint you the picture that was painted for me. Let’s imagine your life as represented by three concentric circles, a small, medium and large. The smallest one represents the core of your life, which is most important and defines your reality. The second represents those things which are supporting pillars of your life and are crucial for living a healthy life. The third is the back burner, things that might possess some vague degree of importance, but are not consistently invested in.

A picture of a healthy life looks like this: Jesus is at the center, source, most important space. The second is composed of what I’m going to call the seven areas. They are physical, emotional, spiritual, professional, relational, financial and intellectual. In order to live a healthy life, all these areas need to be considered and invested in, but not allowed to take over the center of your life.

Let me explain:

1. Physical refers to your body, your physical health and appearance. How you manage your body and health will determine if you live to 65 or 100. An extra 1/3 added onto your life is not to be belittled. While I’m not necessarily advocating 7 days a week in the gym and an all organic diet, your bodily health cannot be ignored. What is an extra 30, 40, or even 50 years, worth to you and your purpose on this Earth? In the same way choosing to spend some time on your physical appearance/hygiene demonstrates a value for yourself, others and your profession/position.

People who have a physical center are those who get their sense of value and worth from their strength, beauty or even bodily health. Pursuit of these things drives them to neglect other areas. If you’ve ever been to a gym you’ve probably seen a guy or two who are way too big, their relationships are a mess, professional and financial life are going nowhere, but they’re still expecting people to think highly of them because of their physical appearance. The same can be observed in women (or men) who obsess over their appearance to the point that other areas suffer.

A person who wholly neglects this area is easy to spot by the total neglect for their own health and/or appearance, while these individuals might verbally acknowledge the need for better health, there is no action that accompanies it and the last 30 years of an amazing life that was supposed to impact the world will never be seen.

2. Emotional refers to your internal world, the thoughts you choose and the emotions that are cultivated by those thoughts. It is the world beneath the surface that no one can see directly, but the fruit that bursts from it can’t be hidden for long. Learning to manage our emotional state is a fundamental skill for anyone looking to have influence.

People with an emotional center are those who, rather than controlling their emotions, attempt to control their environment so their environment will “make me happy.” People who live here often either isolate themselves and excessively indulge in their preferred entertainment, develop a substance abuse problem or they become extremely offended and manipulative of other people blaming them for their negative emotions/behaviors.

Those who ignore this area are usually passive communicators and seek to deny that they have any emotions or needs to begin with. They don’t develop tools or practices for managing stress or processing all the craziness that’s going on inside of them and “out of nowhere” go off like a 30 ton nuclear bomb over something small.

3. Spiritual has to do with the outward manifestations of a person’s faith: going to church and ministering to people who need help. In a balanced life, it is the way that my relationship with Jesus touches the world around me. In a broader sense it is being a part of something bigger than myself that gives my life a sense of purpose and design.

The best example of people with a spiritual center is the Pharisees: obsessive emphasis on rules, unloving towards others and a massive emphasis on “knowing the scriptures”. They were convinced that they knew God better than anyone else and would literally kill people who disagreed. And yet when God was standing right in front of them, not only could they not recognize Him, they killed Him.

I once heard a story about a minister with a very large church who one day had all his adult children come to him and basically say, “From now on we will only call you pastor, not father, because you have never really been a father to us.” The man later recounts this event as “the cost of ministry.” Your relationships, physical health or any other area should not be sacrificed in the name of “spirituality.” Doing so will cause you to live a much shorter, less fulfilled life and make you a very toxic person to be around.

Conversely, those who reject spirituality lack a sense of purpose, identity and destiny, and will compensate by hiding in fantasy worlds (emotional center), being a workaholic (professional), or filling their minds with facts to the point they don’t feel they need to listen to anyone else (Intellectual).

4. Professional is about my contribution to society, my trade, the way that I give to society and receive money based on how my society values my contribution. Healthy people aspire to be great at something that can support their families and leave an impact on the society.

Professional centered people are the classic American workaholics that are so invested in advancing their career that nearly all other areas are ignored entirely. Sleep deprived, racked with stress, and relational disconnect are some of the common symptoms of this center.

In my experience those who have no value for the professional area are often those who have an emotional center and are going through the motions to get a paycheck and fund their escape from reality or those who have a spiritual center and think that “secular” things like work are of no value.

5. Relational is comprised of the relationships and connections we have with other people. The quality of relationships that we build with others will have a massive impact on our experience in life. Sadly while there are a lot of skills to learn and growth available by embracing this area, it is ignored by our educational system and people get locked into very toxic “normal” for their relationships.

A relational center will generally take one of two forms: the person who has someone that they love, but hold the relationship in such a way that the other person is a god to them. i.e. co-dependence. Or they have extreme bitterness towards someone they believe to have wronged them. In both cases a relationship is their core and defining reality for them and both will end very badly.

People who have no regard for relationships are usually those who have been hurt by someone and are hiding inside of a different area that they have made their center because they are terrified of intimacy. This again can look like escaping reality (emotional), isolating themselves for “spiritual” reasons or any number of other things people use to keep people from seeing the real them.

Or it can also be those who have made another area so important that relationships are neglected by default. These people often have an inflated sense of self-importance like the pastor I mentioned in the Spiritual section.

6. Financial is money, assets and possessions. While it may seem shallow to have this as one of the seven areas, allow me to explain why this is here. All of us have and use money. It represents the labor of my life and the way that I use and see it matters. But even more than that, those who control the wealth of a society are able to heavily influence the value system of that society. Wealth allows me to expand my values in ways that would otherwise be impossible, it allows me to help and to bless people, and it allows me to set up my descendants to have greater opportunities and achieve greater things than I have.

Jesus talked a lot about money because the use of it is a very clear expression of what’s going on inside of people. It’s also maybe the easiest area to make your center because having money makes people feel very safe and powerful. Much of the “prosperity gospel” teaching is actually not wrong, because God does want to bless us and give us places of influence in society, but it is often out of balance because they make it the core and emphasize finances to the exclusion of other areas.

Many people hear about the “love of money” being the root of many kinds of evil and decide to avoid it all together. Let’s be clear “love of money” describes someone who operating out of a financial center and not someone who manages money in its proper place to bless society.

7. Intellectual is about knowledge. Knowledge is so powerful and can deeply enrich all the other areas of our life. There is so much depth to life and so much to discover about all that is around us. Science, math and even history continue to push the human race forward in our understanding, ability to problem solve, life expectancy and standard of living. The advancement of knowledge generation to generation is what makes it possible for you to view this on whatever device you’re using and for us to even have written language at all.

With the wonder that surrounds us and the easy access we have to it, it can be easy to make our intellectual assent the center of our lives, but it’s a shaky foundation to build on at best. The intellectually centered person is probably best displayed in Dr. Sheldon Cooper from the Big Bang Theory. Dr. Cooper, who is an unbelievably smart and highly educated physicist working at Cal-Tech. One day, he is completely derailed when the President of the university is walking a young boy named Denis Kim through the university. In a series of hilarious exchanges, Sheldon finds that Denis, in spite of having spent a year escaping North Korea, seems to be even smarter than he is. This completely derails Sheldon’s life and leads him to then turn around and drive his friends crazy by trying to show he is smarter than them and do their work better than they do.

The irony of the intellectual center is that it actually inhibits a person’s ability to learn because they are often arrogant and puffed up with how much they know. This causes them to be skeptical and condescending to anyone less educated and sort through new ideas and views much more quickly. Such an attitude inevitably damages learning, as humility is the key to great advances in our understanding.

Those who neglect the intellect are those who are scared or apathetic towards learning. Those with a spiritual or relational center may fear the introduction of new information that challenges their position, whereas those with an emotional center may simply ignore it. Professional, physical and financial centered people will absorb new information, but only as it pertains to their career, physical condition or ability to make money.

So how do I know if I have an unhealthy center? One of the easiest ways to tell is to examine the way I compare myself to others. Do I wonder if they’re smarter than me, more spiritual or have more money than I do? What measure am I using when I look at other people? You can also examine your life and see what you spend the most time on. Time is limited and our use of it clearly displays our priorities. It’s also worth considering which areas you’ve been neglecting.

To be clear, these areas are not of equal importance and are of different importance in different seasons. A person suffering from a medical condition will need a different focus than the person who is struggling in their marriage. The point is that all of these things need daily consideration, even if it’s not a major point in this season of your life.

What does it look like to keep Jesus at the center? When Jesus is truly at the center there is a supernatural empowerment that comes into each area of our lives. Jesus doesn’t want to be contained to the “spiritual” portion, he has something for you in every area. You might want to start a conversation about that with Him this week.

“What is does it look like to have you invade this area?”