Our lives are built on several legs, the Seven Vital Areas: Health,Family, Financial, Intellectual, Social, Professional and Spiritual. Ifone is a little longer than the rest, like a table, it will affect thenentire table.

Life can be cruel. You can lose in any of those areas overnight. Yourhealth can go away. Your money can be lost. Your family can leave you,all on a moment’s notice. Not that we don’t do things to prevent thatfrom happening, but the point is, if one or two legs falters, you haveothers to hold you up.It takes three legs for a stool to stand. If you build your life aroundjust one or two legs or areas you first have a continual problemmaintaining your balance.

Worse, if you lose those one or two legs ofthose remaining legs, you collapse.Here’s my list of the seven best ways to get out of balance and becomeuni or duo dimensional.

1. Ignore your Health. Don’t get the quantity and quality of sleep yourequire. Don’t take time for exercise. Eat the wrong stuff. (90% ofthose who join Health and Fitness Clubs today will stop going within thenext 90 days.) Your resistance level will be reduced and you will besusceptible to all the latest sniffles and flues going around to ensurethat you take advantage of all the sick days you are allowed. 75% of alladult deaths are preventable. We are literally driving ourselves toearly grave in the “hurry-up, stressful” life of ours.It’s interesting when someone gets a new car, they bring it in for thescheduled maintenance, put the right grade of fuel in the tank, and keepit shiny and clean. Our pets visit the veterinarian on a scheduledbasis. In a recent study, 34% of the men surveyed said they would not goto doctor even if they were experiencing chest pains.

2. Postpone Family time. They will always be there for you anyway whenyou get the time for them. A student once asked me, “What is the bestway to take my four year old on vacation?” I replied, “You take her whenshe’s four years old.” Fifty percent of marriages wind up in divorcecourt. Imagine, getting married at age twenty-five and twenty yearslater, at age forty-five, you give up 50% of everything you have workedfor in your adult life in a property settlement in divorce court. It’slike the squirrel, gathering the nuts, hoarding away while someone isdrilling a hole in the side of the tree to let all the nuts escape. Thesquirrel is too busy to hear the impending threat. The average workingperson spends less than two minutes per day in meaningful communicationwith their spouse or “significant other” and less than thirty secondsper day in meaningful communication with their children.

3. Don’t plan your Financial life. Be assured that your employer, and ifnot, then the government, and if not, then maybe a kindly relative willtake care of your needs. Most people arrive at the end of lifefinancially deficient or dependant upon some type of assistance from thegovernment or relatives. Most people do not spend a little of theirtime, on a regular basis, to create financial freedom and live theirlives they way they “want to”, but rather do what do because they “haveto”. Eighty percent do not want to go to work on Monday morning.Ninety-seven percent say that if they did achieve financialindependence, they would not continue with their current employer or intheir current line of work.

4. Stay away from Intellectual development. You have the degree. Youread books at one time. Five percent of the population purchasesninety-five percent of all the books. The other ninety-five purchase theother five percent of the books. They don’t have time to read them. Theygive them away as gifts. You barely have enough time to keep your headabove water, what with work and other interests. Coast with theknowledge you have. It’s draining away from you daily but hopefully youfilled the reservoir enough early on that it will carry you through yourlife.

5. Let your Social contacts decide your future. Follow the advice ofyour friends about what you should be doing in your life even if theyare not in a place where you would want to be. Be ever conscious of“What would my friends say/think if I did…?”. Always seek out and actonly with the approval of your peers. Take comfort in the knowledge thatwhen there is a void in leadership your life on how you should bespending your time, someone else will fill that void and tell you whatto do.

6. Let your Professional life just happen. Do not establish a lifetimeplan of where you want to go. Take whatever opportunity and advancementlife gives you and be satisfied. Don’t rock the boat. Seek the familiarand avoid the strange. Play it safe. Make it comfortable. If you chose acareer path when you were eighteen or twenty years old, and now at ageforty you are unhappy, don’t consider a change. Hold on to that decisionyou made twenty years ago. It will be like going to a twenty year oldfor career counseling.

7. Avoid spending time in your Spiritual area. Not only in a formalreligious venue, but also in our relationships to others, our community,our environment, and the universe. Leave those questions to others toponder. “When man forgets his Creator, his own creations will be turnedupon him.”