While most advisors recognize the importance of achieving balance between their professional and personal lives, many struggle to put that priority into practice. During a recording of the MDRT Podcast, MDRT President Carol Kheng, ChFC, a 27-year member, and MDRT First Vice President John F. Nichols, MSM, CLU, a 25-year member, shared how they make time for important tasks outside of work. Listen to the full episode at mdrt.org/podcast.

Kheng: I am an avid cyclist. I tend to look at my life as a wheel with a few spokes, and each spoke denotes a priority in my life, namely family, health, religion, my business and MDRT. So, every year or every start of the year, I will sit down and try to plot out what my objectives are in various areas for the forthcoming year, and I would do an assessment in the middle of the year — at the end of June — and then another at the end of December to see how much I’ve achieved according to the objectives that I set out. If any of the spokes in my wheel were shorter because of my inability to meet my objectives, then my wheel wouldn’t be rolling perfectly. So, I tend to think that the Whole Person concept revolves around all the major priorities in our lives as denoted by the spokes in my wheel.

Nichols: And Whole Person isn’t four or five or six equal parts. When I talk about Whole Person and some people equate that to having a balanced life, I tend to think of it as having a centered life, centered around my values. You’re going to spend more time working than you are working out, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work out and take care of yourself personally. So, how do I play Whole Person in my life? I use a mantra called daily victories.

My day starts with a daily victory of myself. And what does that look like? Well, there’s some physical activity in there — my push-ups, my planks. I will do my workout in the morning. I do some personal reading in the morning. I’ll have my nutritious breakfast: oatmeal and blueberries with a side of honey. I’ve done that for 15 years in a row. I know it’s boring, but that’s what I do because I like to keep a proper weight, and it’s just part of my daily routine centered around daily victories. So that plays into then having a right-fit morning.

Part of that right-fit morning is I make 10 phone calls before 9 a.m., and that gets the day rolling. I always think if I can have a great right-fit morning, it sets up the rest of the day to be a right-fit day. That’s how I view Whole Person. I’ve been doing that for years, and it’s what works for me.

Someone else’s right-fit morning doesn’t have to be exactly what I do or what Carol may do. Start to think about what you can do for yourself first, and work from there. What can you do for your family? What can you do for your business? What can you do for your social life, etc. And build out your model of a right-fit day or a right-fit week to build in a Whole Person concept in your life. I kind of view Whole Person as a lifestyle as opposed to four pieces of a pizza that are 25% each.

Kheng: A right-fit morning, as per John, sounds like something that each of us should really strive for. I think it boils down to having the discipline to do that and having the right mindset because for myself, I have a very fixed routine. I get up at 6 o’clock, I’ll go and cycle, I’ll meditate, and then I’ll think about what I want to do for the day ahead. This is how I start each day, and I think that contributes to my overall quest to have a Whole Person life.

Has there ever been a time when these great systems have been thrown off course? How do you get through a time when your process isn’t working as well as you’d like? 

Kheng: For times that I’m unable to fulfill my objective for the day or for the month, I will work double hard toward making up for what I have missed out or lost out on. I’m very conscious of what I did not do so that I will do it down the road.

Nichols: I look at it just a little differently. I try to forget what I didn’t do and focus more on my present behavior. I’m all about What am I doing today? I’ve got a running streak. I’ve run every day for the last 365 days. If I get off that streak, let’s just say due to an illness, my focus is to get back on my streak. I just start a new streak. It’s like, Jeez, I didn’t have a sale this week. Well, I forget about this week and focus on my behavior. What do I need to do to get back on the streak? I’m less concerned about the rewards once I set my goals for the year.

For example, if the goal is to make MDRT, or in my case, to make Top of the Table, I kind of forget about it, and I focus very hard on the behaviors: how many phone calls I need to make, how many appointments I need to make. I just focus on my daily behaviors because the accumulation of my daily behaviors is kind of like compound interest; it all adds up, and the reward will be achieved.

Kheng: I’m glad we’re not the same, John.

Nichols: Yeah. Well, we’re not quite the same.

Kheng: Different strokes for different folks, but it all works at the end of the day for each of us.

Nichols: I think you bring up something really important, and I have a mantra for that as well: “My race, my pace.” I’ve run 13 marathons and it’s like, “You’ve run 13 marathons. How in the heck did you do that?” Well, my race, my pace. I tend not to compare myself to Carol or to other runners because you know what? They just have a different makeup. There are many runners who are much faster than me, and then there are some runners who are a little slower than me. I don’t focus on that. I focus on me and on my race, my pace. I pick up ideas from people like Carol, and certainly MDRT has provided a host of ideas that I then adapt to my life or to my lifestyle and then implement in my way that fits my world, as opposed to trying to be somebody else.

Kheng: That’s exactly the spirit of MDRT — the ability to learn from each and every member who is willing to share their lives and what has made them successful. But it is also up to us how much we want to use that in our lives and whatever works would be different from the other.