Getting Round How Smooth Is Your Wheel? Personal Coaches Advise Keeping Your Life From Getting Lopsided

Imagine your life is a wheel. The spaces between the spokes of the wheel are all the pieces of your life that make it run smoothly — work, play, family, finances, health, service and spirituality.

The center of the wheel is 1, representing a low degree of satisfaction. The outer edge of the wheel is 10, a high level of fulfillment. Take a pen and put a dot in each section of the wheel indicating your satisfaction with that piece of your life. Now, connect the dots. Is your wheel lopsided? Is your life?

“Balance is the discipline that gives us the flexibility to handle the rocks in the road,” says Reed Daugherity, of Daugherity Development Resources. Daugherity is a Spokane professional coach and author of “Passionate Purpose: Awakening the Inner Fire” (Book Partners, 1998).

For years, business people have used corporate coaches to help their companies work more effectively. Now, an increasing number of individuals are turning to coaches for help in finding balance in their personal lives.

Unlike counselors, who usually work with a client’s past to move them forward, personal coaches focus on the present and future. They are results and change-oriented.

“It was a natural progression,” says Scot Auble, 36, President of Auble and Associates in Spokane. “For my company to be its best, I had to be my best and you can’t be a good leader if you’re not happy.”

Daugherity was hired to teach team-building skills to Auble’s employees. In the process, Auble learned strategies for living and working smarter in his own life.

“One part of my life that was really under-served was free time with my wife and friends,” says Auble. “Work was definitely over-served. I had to learn to prioritize and plan ahead for the things I wanted most to happen.”

For Auble, that meant making plans on Tuesday morning for Saturday night activities instead of trying to throw something together at the last minute. It meant hiring an executive secretary — which he thought initially he couldn’t afford — to streamline daily operations.

The tell-tale signs of imbalance, according to local coaches, include chronic neck and lower back pain, stomachaches, tension, fatigue and a gnawing sense that there must be more to life than just getting through it. All of these signs can be ignored until a crisis demands our attention.

“My entire life was dismantled,” says Marilyn Colgur, 55, director of Inland Mediation Center in Spokane. “My 27-year marriage was ending. I was leaving my grown children, changing careers and moving back to Spokane after 30 years of living in Canada.”

Coached by Daugherity, Colgur spent over a year networking in Spokane, defining her values and needs before finding the job - and life - she now loves.

“I had lived a life defined by others - family, children and work,” says Colgur. “Women can get so busy trying to keep others happy that we end up not knowing who we are.

“Men’s lives often get out of balance from overcaring for their jobs. But women’s lives get unbalanced from overcaring for people.”

Now, Colgur deliberately schedules time in her calendar for personal R and R. Yoga class, reading, meditation and journaling are activities that restore her sense of equilibrium.

Overdoing or underdoing anything can put us out of sync. But the major source of many people’s sense of imbalance rests in work: too much, too little or the wrong kind.

“A lot of people, men in particular, find themselves working hard for the good things in life but then not having any time to enjoy them,” says Bill Irving, a chemical dependency counselor and life coach in Coeur d’Alene. “Lots of us are deeply stuck in ‘human doing’ rather than ‘human being.’ And you can’t get to being, to balance, by just doing more.”

“People initially say they want either more money or more time,” adds Shirley Bade, a personal coach from Post Falls. “But ultimately what they are really looking for is more joy.”

How do we find it? According to local coaches, two of the key questions to ask ourselves are these:

If I could be doing anything I wanted to do, what would it be?

What’s stopping me from doing it?

Taking responsibility for our life circumstances and being honest about how we arrived there are the next steps. Finding help, either through a trusted friend, spouse, pastor or personal coach, can help solidify our commitment to balance.

And there are dozens of books on the subject that can inspire and motivate us.

Regardless of the resources used, local coaches agree that one element is critical to success: the willingness and courage to change.

“The only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole,” says Daugherity. “Part of finding balance is about getting out of the rut.”

“You have to put something at stake in order to change,” adds Irving. “But those changes often occur within ourselves rather than within our circumstances.”

So a person might keep the same job but change their style of working or stay married but change the way they relate to their spouse. Change, say local coaches, isn’t about throwing the baby out with the bath water.

“We think that change means doing the opposite of what we have been doing, or doing something radical,” says Daugherity. “But really, it’s the small changes that have the most effect. Like walking for 20 minutes a day.

“It’s simple, not always easy, but simple. And most of us still want someone else to walk for us.”

Joy and a sense of flow are two signs that our lives are coming into balance. But harmony isn’t static, and life is full of curve balls.

“No matter how smooth your wheel is, there are still rocks in the road,” says Bade. “It’s just that now you have an underlying sense that everything’s going to be OK.”

SOURCES OF BALANCE Looking for more balance in your life? A good place to start is the local library or bookstore. Check out the following books for inspiration, motivation and strategies to get you moving forward. “Balance Your Choices, Balance Your Life; The Big Picture Guide for Growth and Harmony,” Brian Scott, Systematic Publications and Media, 1998 “Everyday Tao: Living with Balance and Harmony,” Ming-Dao Deng, Harper San Francisco, 1996 “Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway,” Susan Jeffers, Fawcett Books, 1992 “The Home Office Solution: How to Balance Your Professional and Personal Lives While Working at Home,” Alice Bredin and Kirsten Lagatree, John Wiley and Sons, 1998 “Awakening Intuition: Using Your Mind-Body Network for Insight and Healing,” Mona Lisa Schultz, Harmony Books, 1998 “Living In Balance: A Dynamic Approach for Creating Harmony and Wholeness in a Chaotic World,” Joel Levey, Conari Press, 1998 “Restoring Balance to a Mother’s Busy Life,” Beth Wilson, Contemporary Publishing, 1996 “Passionate Purpose: Awakening the Inner Fire,” Reed Daugherity, Book Partners, 1998 “Staying Home Instead: How to Balance Your Family Life (And Your Checkbook),” Christine Davidson, Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998 “Succeed Without Burnout: Proven Strategies to Move Your Life From Burnout to Balance,” Ben Kubassek, Bayeux Arts, 1997 “Time Shifting: Creating More Time to Enjoy Your Life,” Stephan Rechtschaffen, Doubleday, 1997 “Uneasy Manhood: Finding Balance in a Changing World,” Robert Hicks, Fleming H. Revell Co., 1997 “Walk in Balance: Meditations,” Lynn Andrews, Harper San Francisco, 1994 “The Way of the Guerrilla: Achieving Success and Balance as an Entrepreneur in the 21st Century,” Jay Conrad Levinson, Houghton Mifflin, 1998 “The Woman’s Comfort Book: A Self-Nurturing Guide for Restoring Balance in Your Life,” Jennifer Louden, Harper San Francisco, 1992 “You Don’t Have To Go Home From Work Exhausted: A Program to Bring Joy, Energy and Balance to Your Life,” Ann McGee Cooper and Duane Trammell, Bantam, 1992