At my son's Boy Scout meeting the other day, I was reminded that there are three "anchors" in scouting: duty to self, duty to God, and duty to others. The boys are encouraged to do at least one thing to benefit each area every day.
This is a good way to view various areas of responsibility and it reminded me to keep balance in my life. Each day for the next 6 weeks or so, I will consciously pursue one "hard target" for each of four main areas of responsibility: self, family, work, and community. For me:
- Self involves self-development activities such as exercise, prayer or meditation, writing, learning new skills, and things like that.
- Family involves doing something to improve my home and family life, improving some aspect of my relationship with my wife and kids, etc.
- Work involves taking concrete action toward one of my work objectives, building relationships with people I work with, and other things to help my company achieve its mission.
- Community includes involvement in church activities, my work with the Boy Scouts, and doing things to help others.
Some of these areas may be difficult some days - I imagine I'll be challenged to come up with concrete actions for Family on my upcoming business trip to Europe, for example. I won't stress out, though - this gets back to my earlier post on Intention: I'll approach each day with sincere intent to do something good in each of these areas, then that intention will create the opportunities to do so.
One other qualifier on this - try not to look for simple, "check box" kinds of activities. Instead, try to identify an action that can bring positive forward progress toward a better life for you in each areas.
In my case, I think a focus on conscious completion of at least one substantive action in each of these areas over the next six weeks will be a good thing. Who knows- it may just become a habit!
What about you - what are your anchors? As you think about what you want to do each day, decide on one thing you can do in each of your anchor areas, write it down, and make it happen.