One of the most knowledgeable and intuitive elders I know imparted upon me the ultimate knowledge of living a fulfilling life. As I awaited, he took a small breath, pointed his finger and said, "balance." That was it. My only question was, "what?" He simply repeated, "balance," and he finished the conversation.

Over the years, I slowly began to understand his single word. It wasn't an easy lesson, as the true understanding of balance comes when you realize that you are truly out of balance. But, your major job in life is to work toward attaining and keeping balance between your job and your family.

For most people, these life components seem to exist as separate entities, yet they affect one another. This is where the problems begin. You spend too much time at work and you're tired when you get home. In turn, you don't have time to spend with the wife and kids. Your money is spent trying to pay for your family expenses including the yeshiva tuition, house and the car. You have to get away every so often so you can regather your strength to do it all over again the next week. You love your hobby and want to pursue it, but you just can't find the time. This situation can drag you down and cause strain on your job, your family and your life in general.

However, did you ever stop and think that your job and family, different components, are actually smaller parts of one larger component? Instead of viewing them as separate pieces of life, view them as being the aspects that make up your life. Since it's obvious that these individual elements interact in one way or another, why not let them? Instead of allowing one to interfere with the other, learn how to allow them to enhance the direction of your life.

Once you are able to understand how your job and family fit together and enhance one another, your next task is to determine how you can balance these components to provide a greater level of satisfaction and fulfillment.

So many people are scared to lose their jobs, so they pour their souls into them. The job appears to be the only thing that can help you survive and eventually becomes your entire life.

A job is only a part of your life and a way to provide security for yourself and your family as well as satisfaction for yourself. It is not your life. Evaluate your abilities and determine if it's the job or the money that you want. If it's the money, then you must learn to find something that pays you what you want. If it's the job, then you must learn how to rearrange the job for greater fulfillment and prioritize to best meet the needs of the rest of your life.

After much searching and reorganizing of my life, I found that I needed the freedom of being self- employed. I found that once I was able to center my talents and use them to their fullest, I could make more money working for myself than for someone else. I was able to obtain the balance I needed, doing something that I loved, and still make the money necessary to provide the security for my family.

In most cases, when it's a toss-up between your business and your family, the family will lose out. However, pressures from home and family can affect your business and other aspects of your life. By adjusting your priorities at work and determining what it is that's important, you can better balance the conflicts that exist between the need for security that your business or job provides and the need to satisfy your family provisions.

Believe it or not, the family does provide an intense sense of purpose and satisfaction in one's life. It is something to be proud of and cherished because it is something that you've created. If you feel that your family life has stalled or it doesn't provide the satisfaction you desire, then you need to evaluate the reasons why things have changed. Perhaps your time at work is taking away from your family. Perhaps the stresses from the outside world are affecting your family life.
One of the things that I have learned with my family is that, when all else fails, my family is always going to be there. We have been through some serious situations, some tough times, and I always know that I can depend on my family. The reason is that even though my wife and I are two different people, our objectives are the same. They not always that way, but we took the time to sit down and decide what we wanted together. Now, we are able to help each other as well as stay out of each other's way so that we can reach our objectives.

Many people place a lot of value on money. But, money itself is not an objective. Money is a way to provide security for yourself and your family. Money is a way to measure success. Money is a means to reach an objective. However, this one needs some explanation. How much money is enough? If you say you want to make a lot of money, how much is that? The amount of money that becomes "enough" is not measurable. It is simply a moving target that becomes consuming because there is no real metric to determine when you've reached your goal. However, if you set an objective that you want to live comfortably, own a nice house and car, pay your kids’ tuition and provide the basic needs of your family, then you now have a metric to measure your success.

I know a young man who is a "fixer." His goal in life is to make sure that everyone around him is satisfied and moving in the right direction. He would help his friends and community members to the point of utter exhaustion. I asked him why he did this and his reply was, "as long as everything around me is good, I am good." His problem is that everyone around him is happy and moving forward in their lives, with his help. But, he never moved forward or did anything in the direction of balancing his own life.

Balance is the idea of bringing your job and your family together so that they all contribute to helping you reach your goals. Balance can happen automatically if you can set a vision and understand what it takes to get there. It can be a miraculous occurrence when all aspects of your life just line up to aim you in the direction of your desires. It can also be a struggle if you don't know how to balance your life.

If you spend time to reprioritize your life and prepare a new plan, you too can achieve balance in your life.
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Ben Gurion Matsas