Rebalance Your Tires: Step 1 – Spin Balance To Diagnose
Your Emotional and Intellectual Spinal Cord
The nerve center of our physical being is our spinal cord.
In addition to our physical spinal cord, we all have strong, underlying emotional traits and intellectual platforms that create another spinal cord inside all of us.
This spinal cord directs how we act and what we value. It’s like we all have two spinal cords.
We know that much of our emotional “spinal cord” was al ready in place as a result of our genetic program and environment or the values we were taught early. But, in reality, we need to take ownership for how we act and think now.
We need to realize that we have a choice. We can react to life’s situations on the basis of our “taught” values, or we can choose to change those reactions based on the new values we wish to follow.
Once we define our foundational, emotional and intellectual values (what’s important to us), we pour them into our emotional and intellectual spinal cord to form a steel reinforcing rod which provides strength to our actions.
We are consistent and predictable based on these “spinal cord” values. People know where we stand and can accept or reject our opinions. We are like an oak tree with deep roots, not a willow with shallow roots.
If we’re out of balance, we’re probably bending and swaying in the “wind” of other people’s ideas and demands of the moment.
To suggest a different metaphor, think of yourself as a steel structured building. Now spend some time visualizing and then writing how specific issues of importance to you relate to this building in its three main parts:
Foundational Supports
What are the foundational rock solid structural supports that explain how you want to support your life?Main Structural I-Beams That Shape A Building
- What elements of your character and intellect will most shape your activities?
The emotional and intellectual ways you have noted describe your steel superstructure. You have begun the process of understanding your emotional and intellectual “spinal cord,” what keeps you standing tall and straight, what makes you unique and distinctive, what makes you memorable.
Look Out 20 Years
What’s the essence of your emotional/intellectual spinal cord make up? Twenty years from now, how do you want your family, friends, and work associates to describe you? What do you want them to say? How do you want people to describe your superstructure?
What are the core responsibilities in your life?
The key idea here is to distill all of your activities into six core responsibilities you actually live out on a regular basis. Define three responsibilities, split equally between your work and personal life, that you live out on a weekly basis.
Most of us have work core responsibilities. Define them, not just by your title, i.e., “Sales Manager”, but by the aspects of the job that most clearly delineates the key result areas you need to zero in on to accomplish your job as Sales Manager.
For example, you may have three core responsibilities that are the key result areas
of your work title of Sales Manager:
1. Develop people.
2. Senior client contact
3. New business leader
You also have core responsibilities in your personal life: parent, social relationships, personal development, family finance manager, home maintenance manager, Rotary Club President, religious education coordinator at church, etc.
The task is to discover and define a total of six core responsibilities into which you can break down your life.
The rebalancing strategy is to divide these six core responsibilities evenly between your work and personal life. This strategy attacks the key concern regarding why we feel out of balance to begin with; our work lives are highly structured and planned, many times leaving little meaningful activity in our personal lives.
Then, by assigning priorities to each core responsibility as you plan your week, you can look at each to determine what action should take place.
The assignment of priorities and action steps to evenly balance core responsibilities is obviously necessary if we are to truly balance our lives. If we continue to “tilt” to one side or the other as we live day to day, it usually means we will tilt to our work life, ac cording to current lifestyle research.
However, if one of your core responsibilities is “father”, you can define an action step during the next week to help you become more involved with your children.
You define your core responsibilities. Remember to divide them evenly between work and personal life. Write a few down so you’ll eventually be able to condense to a total of six.