Does your life feel like a balancing act?
Have you ever felt overwhelmed by the sheer number of business decisions you have to make each day? As you grow your business, have you felt like you were on your own?
No one is telling you how to invest your money. You don’t know how to prioritize. You wonder:
- Should I invest in people?
- Should I invest in systems?
- Should I invest in myself?
- Or operations or marketing?
- If I do invest in marketing, what marketing do I invest in?
Perhaps, like me, you found dozens of resources to help you start your business. But once you started growing your business, you felt like you were on your own. No one was there to hold your hand and guide you through the maze of choices you had to make.
As you face these decisions, you might admit it to thinking, “It’s almost easier to be poor! At least you know where to put your money. You pay your power bill, and if you have a little bit left over, you can get your nails done.”
Now that you have more resources to steward, it’s tricky to figure out how to invest them. Often, there are more than one good option. Figuring out the right balance between two good options is a critical skillset that will help you build capacity.
The Tension of Two Truths Explained
One of the most significant mindset shifts or ideas that has helped me with my decision-making has been the concept of the Tension of Two Truths. I first learned about this at the Wizard Academy from Roy H. Williams. Roy shared a quote from Neils Bohr, a famous physicist: “The opposite of a fact is a lie. The opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth.”
The easiest way to demonstrate that is: If you were married to a Jewish spouse in Germany during World War II and the Gestapo was at your door, would you prioritize honesty or loyalty? If you prioritized honesty, you’d incur the sin of loyalty and betray. If you prioritized loyalty, you’d incur the sin of honesty and lie. The reality is, honesty and loyalty are two good things. How and whenyou prioritize them makes all the difference in the world. It determines the consequences and the impact that you will have.
It’s easy to see this balance in many areas of life: quality vs. efficiency, practical vs. spiritual, caution vs. risk. Yet when you boil it down, I believe all these dichotomies can be summed up in just two basic profound truths. Scientists say that light is both a wave and a particle. To have light, you need to have both. You can’t have just one. So I’ve used the concept of “waves” and “particles” to describe the two basic categories I see in the world around me.
- The waves of light represent the feminine, the nonprofit, the soft side of life. It is the right brain. It is color.
- The particles of light represent the masculine, the structure, the organizational, the black and white, and the tangible.
We often think we need just one or the other. But in reality, we need both. To have the dreams, the gifts, and the flourishing that we are looking for, we need to have both waves and particles. When one is absent, we struggle.
The Tension of Two Truths in Everyday Life
Let’s look at some areas in which we need to hold two truths in tension.
Business vs. Family. It’s tempting to fall into an either-or perspective in this area. It’s easy to focus on my business at the expense of my family, or focus on my family at the expense of my business. Yet, both are parts of my life. My personal life and taking care of myself are important. Yet I want to live an integrated life where both business and family are reflected in my time, resources, and energy. Both must be included. This really has been a foundational principle to help me build an integrated life.
Fit vs. Heart. In business, it’s really important to have both someone who fits into my organization and someone who has a heart and a passion for what I’m doing and who wants to be part of the community. In building my business, it’s important to find someone who is the right fit (has the right skillsets) for what the business needs; at the end of the day we need to produce. In a family, it’s important to prioritize heart over fit. I can’t fire my family members! So how we prioritize depends on the season, the timing, and the structure of what we’re doing.
Unity vs. Diversity. In the area of team development, we need a both-and perspective rather than an either-or outlook. To build a healthy team, I need many different types of personalities. As I’m building my team, I intentionally choose team members that are different than me. That way, we can see each other’s blind spots and build a healthy team. I’m stronger on the “waves” side of things. I’m a flexible dreamer who would rather talk about ideas and build community than work on details and build business structures. That’s why I prioritize hiring “particle” (practical/strategic) team members. The business benefits from the strength of the team members’ unique gifts. This is healthy and needed.
Joy vs. Sorrow. In therapy, I have learned that I can have conflicting thoughts and emotions at the same time. These “two profound truths” don’t negate each other. We must allow ourselves to accept things that don’t seem to make sense. When a person who has suffered for many years is dying, we experience bittersweet emotions. We are sad to see them go, yet we are glad they are not suffering and in pain. Accepting the both-and of emotions has helped me grieve well and accept myself more. That which we accept brings peace, and the gift of acceptance allows peace to grow and mature in our lives.
Urgent vs. Important. One of the key two balances that I’ve learned to balance is urgent vs. important. In time management, we seek to prioritize between urgent tasks which seem like emergencies and long-term important things that don’t seem like emergencies. We often think that we’re too busy to do important things, like exercising, eating healthy, and building infrastructure. In the words of a children’s song, we think that we’re just “busy, busy, dreadfully busy, much, much too busy for you.” But that’s a lie. We are not too busy for a certain task. Instead, we are choosing to invest our time in whatever we’re prioritizing. Scott, my fractional business manager, said, “People do what they want to do. We have time for that which we want.” We are always prioritizing, but we are not always conscious of it or intentional about it. What would it look like if we were intentional about what we were prioritizing in time management?
Practical ideas for transformation. The both-and concept has really transformed my life. It can transform yours as well. This week, observe your thoughts.
- Observe where you’re thinking things are either-or and where you’re seeing things as both-and.
- Where are you wrestling with prioritizing?
- Where are you wrestling with giving yourself grace?
- Where are you wrestling with intentionality, the clarity to say, “Hey, today I’m going to prioritize this over that”?
You’re always prioritizing, whether you realize it or not. The key is being intentional about what you’re prioritizing. Prioritizing is a skill set. Just like waves and particles are both needed in light, both practical and relational aspects are necessary in families and businesses. Both are beautiful. That is the gift of light.
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