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Q: What about achieving life balance?

A: Survey after survey indicates that one of the greatest challenges faced by most people is life balance. People tend to focus so much on work and other pressing activities that the relationships and activities they really treasure most end up getting squeezed and pushed aside. They end up becoming addicted to urgency.

Let me illustrate a solution with the story of a man who got caught up in this whirlpool of urgency. Notice that he took time to think about what mattered most to him (conscience, vision and passion), and then used those criteria to creatively decide how to organize his life to be in harmony with his priorities (discipline) and create the life balance he desired. Notice also how the solution came through synergy with his wife. Here is his true story told in his own words: I have always had a special friendship with my mother. Together we endured a series of life events, which has created a wonderful relationship. At one time in my life, even though I loved my mother and really enjoyed spending time with her, I got caught up in my commitments to work, the community, and to my own family. My life got so busy, weeks would go by before I would make even a quick phone call just to check in. And when I did manage to squeeze in a visit, we would have just sat down to talk, and it would be time for me to leave. Another meeting to go to, another deadline to meet. My contact with this wonderful woman became mostly hit-and-miss.

My mother never put any pressure on me to visit more often, but I wasn’t happy with the situation. I knew my life was out of control if I couldn’t consistently spend time with my mother. So, my wife and I brainstormed for a solution. She suggested scheduling a time each week or so that would work for both our family and my mother. When we looked at the calendar, we saw my wife has choir practice every Wednesday evening. That night became my night to spend with my mom.

Now my mom knows that every week or two I will be coming on a specific night, at a specific time. I won’t be running off within the first ten minutes, and there are few interruptions. If she wants to get some exercise, we go for a walk together. Other times she’ll cook a meal for me. Sometimes I take her shopping at the mall, which is further away than she feels comfortable driving to. No matter what we do, we always talk about family, about current events, about memories.

Every evening I spend with my mother is a peaceful oasis in my busy life. I tell my wife it’s one of the best suggestions she’s ever given me.

This beautiful little story is just one illustration of what can be done when we focus our hearts and minds upon what truly matters and then live with integrity to do it. When my own father died, I decided I was going to maintain and even increase my very special relationship with my mother because of the new void in her life. I resolved that despite a very heavy travel schedule and no matter where I was, I would phone her every day for the rest of her life. Though we lived fifty miles apart, I would also make special efforts to visit her at least every two weeks. She lived for another ten years and I cannot begin to express the depth of my gratitude for her life and for the preciousness of our time together.

I learned that when you regularly communicate with another person, you reach a new level of understanding that almost runs by nuance. I found that the daily phone call was not too unlike our semiweekly visit; we felt as close to each other and as open and authentic with each other as we did when we were together. It was like one continuous conversation. It really didn’t make much difference whether it was on the phone or face-to-face, which surprised me, because I’d always thought nothing could replace face-to-face contact. I am sure in another sense that is correct. Because each conversation contains the cumulative effect of the previous conversations, there is hardly anything to catch up on. Instead, you can share deep insights and feelings rather than just experiences. Intimate communication means in-to-me-see.

Just like the gentleman in the previous story, I, too, have had the tremendous benefit of having a very supportive and understanding wife who has the “abundance mentality.” My wife, Sandra, doesn’t see life as a fixed piece of pie where there is only so much time, where time with my mother would mean time away from her. She saw that time with my mother would actually increase the depth of our own relationship.

When Mother passed away, we put on her tombstone a line from Shakespeare’s 29th Sonnet: “For thy sweet love remembered, such wealth brings ” I would encourage you to read this sonnet slowly and carefully. Let your imagination fill in the richness and meaning of each phrase: When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself, and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featur’d like him, like him with friends possess’d,

Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least:

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee,—and then my state

(Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings’.

Perhaps the highest way to bring balance to life is the family. The first and most demanding form of personal growth also takes place in the family and provides the greatest contribution to society.

I believe, as a wise leader once said, that the most important work you do in the world will be within the walls of your own home. David O. McKay taught, “No other success can compensate for failure in the home.”12 My convictions about the importance of family are so deep and strong that they led me several years ago to write the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families.

Parenthood is the most important leadership responsibility in life and will provide the greatest levels of happiness and joy. And when true leadership—i.e., vision, discipline, passion and conscience—is not manifested in parenthood, it will provide the greatest source of sorrow and disappointment.

It’s amazing to me how small adjustments in one’s life along the lines of vision, discipline, passion and conscience can have such huge consequences. I believe all of us at a future date will be both amazed and saddened by the realization of how such small changes could have brought about such big results.

For parents to instill a sense of vision and possibility into a family, to exercise the discipline and sacrifice to pull that vision off, and to endure through the difficult times with a deep sense of passion, drive and commitment, all in a conscience-driven way, I suggest, is the ultimate and best test of leadership. If part of the vision is to see this family culture transmitted from generation to generation, perhaps in that alone will our lives be fulfilled and joyful, even if we accomplish nothing else. But if we fail in that, we may find that success in other things will not adequately compensate. I often think about the poignant words of John Greenleaf Whittier: “For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these: It might have been!”13 But someone else taught, “It is never too late for us to become what we might have been.”