Life and Business: The Key to Maintaining Balance

As an entrepreneur, life is often filled with imbalance.

Once, a boss told me something that, at the time, seemed too simple. However, today I recognize that it holds great wisdom.

He said:

“Imagine you want to be a great juggler. The first thing you need to do is take a single ball and try to juggle it. It will fall several times, and you’ll think you can’t master it, and maybe you’re not good at it. But with practice, you’ll surely succeed. Once you’ve mastered that, add another ball and try to juggle both. The same thing will happen, but with practice and discipline, you’ll get the hang of it. And eventually, without even realizing it, you’ll be juggling many balls, even with your eyes closed.”

At the time, I didn’t understand anything about the balls or how it could apply to my work.

Years later, that metaphor stuck with me, and upon reflecting on it, I realized that this simple message applies to everything.

In a fast-paced world, especially for entrepreneurs, we try to juggle many “balls” at once. In our lives, the big balls are work, love, health, family, money, friends, rest, and many others. Throughout life, inevitably, some of these balls will start falling.

If you master the work ball, perhaps the health or family ball will fall. If you focus only on rest, other balls might drop. If you master the money ball, you might lose control of your health. I believe the true challenge in life is learning to balance all of these important balls, giving each one its time and space.

Like good jugglers, our greatest challenge is to maintain that balance in life. Achieving that perfect balance will turn our lives into a great personal performance, worthy of applause.

Jorge Otero