Seek balance.

Balance emotions with reason.

Combine detachment with doing our part.

Balance giving with receiving.

Alternate work with play, business with personal activities.

Balance tending to our spiritual needs with tending to our other needs.

Juggle responsibilities to others with responsibilities to ourselves.

Balance caring about others with caring about ourselves.

Whenever possible, let’s be good to others, but be good to ourselves too.

Some of us have to make up for lost time.

Today, I will strive for balance.

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation.

What emerges for you when you read this passage?  For me, Melody Beattie describes the successful professional’s perpetual search.  Finding the middle ground, equilibrium.

But, how can you be a top performer and not burn out?  Is it possible to help your clients and still take care of yourself? How do you give, yet become willing to receive?

These questions (among others) are common among people in transition:  career transition or life transition. Yet, in the busy-ness of a leader’s career, they are often not explored…and sometimes ignored.  Coaching offers a space to sort out what’s important and to really consider this idea of balance.  And like the author suggests, “some of us have to make up for lost time.”