Quotes About Balance

working with people in business, university, and marriage and family settings, I have come in contact with many individuals who have achieved an incredible degree of outward success, but have found themselves struggling

Did you ever consider how ridiculous it would be to try to cram on a farm—to forget to plant in the spring, play all summer and then cram in the fall to bring in the harvest? The farm is a natural system.

It's incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busyness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it's leaning against the wrong wall. It is possible to be busy—very busy—without being very effective. People

Make the human element as important as the financial or the technical element.

You don't need to worry about defining the roles in a way that you will live with for the rest of your life—just consider the week and write down the areas you see yourself spending time in during the next seven days.

Self-mastery and self-discipline are the foundation of good relationships with others.

Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent, but are important. It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation—all those things we know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren't urgent.

Rather than focusing on things and time, fourth generation expectations focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results—in short, on maintaining the P/PC Balance.

least some of these goals should reflect Quadrant II activities. Ideally, these weekly goals would be tied to the longer-term goals you have identified in conjunction with your personal mission statement. But even if you haven't written your mission

What is the one activity that you know if you did superbly well and consistently would have significant positive results in your personal life? What is the one activity that you know if you did superbly well and consistently would have significant positive results in your professional or work life?

PRINCIPLES OF PERSONAL MANAGEMENT Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. GOETHE

effective interdependence can only be built on a foundation of true independence.

Personal leadership is cultivating the wisdom to recognize our need for renewal and to ensure that each week provides activities that are genuinely re-creational in nature.

George Sheehan, the running guru, describes four roles: being a good animal (physical), a good craftsman (mental), a good friend (social), and a saint (spiritual).

we all have basic needs and capacities that are fundamental to human fulfillment.

But Win/Win is nice… and tough. It's twice as tough as Win/Lose. To go for Win/Win, you not only have to be nice, you have to be courageous. You not only have to be empathic, you have to be confident. You not only have to be considerate and sensitive, you have to be brave. To do that, to achieve that balance between courage and consideration, is the essence of real maturity and is fundamental to Win/Win.

So you have to weigh that consequence against the other consequence and make a choice. I know if it were me, I'd choose to go on the tennis trip. But never say you have to do anything.

The fact that we know it—and that it doesn't get translated into the fabric of our daily lives—is the frustration of the gap between the compass and the clock. Our

Either way—authoritarian or permissive—you have the golden egg mentality. You want to have your way or you want to

It's so much easier to operate from a low emotional level and to give high-level advice.

If you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other.

It is said that wars are won in the general's tent. Sharpening the saw in the first three dimensions—the physical, the spiritual, and the mental—is a practice I call the "Daily Private Victory." And I commend to you the simple practice of spending one hour a day every day doing it—one hour a day for the rest of your life.

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded. They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively. They have genuine Quadrant I crises and emergencies that require their immediate attention, but the number is comparatively small. They keep P and PC in balance by focusing on the important, but not urgent, high leverage capacity-building activities of Quadrant II.

Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least. GOETHE