Did you know that Life Itself involves using a mental sandwich to maintain balance and that you can use this to promote balance in your kids lives? The four parts of this mental sandwich are: part work, part play, part serious thinking, and part restful enjoyment. You can teach it to them with great benefit!

A balanced life is a great idea for kids but extends, really, to all things. Back in the 1980s, I worked for a man who started a business in his basement. Over the course of his working life, he built that business up to the point where he eventually sold the business for over $220 million dollars. After all his business success, he ended up selling it because none of his five children had been taught to run it after he retired. In fact, none of them was capable of working. The suffered the misfortune of having too much bounty simply handed out to them.

Having money is great. Can you have too much? It's a trick question. Having too much isn't the issue. Although the family was blessed with an abundance of money, that ended up being a problem, with the underlying issue being an inability to balance life's challenges. The family was all about money and not much of anything else. What if, with all that money, he would have made them get jobs, earn things, work hard? A more balanced life for each of them would have resulted.

Here's another example of not living a balanced life: I used to work with a successful lawyer who, when he hit 50, became depressed. He had three children who were all off to college, and he told me he really didn't know them because the entire time they were growing up, he had been in meetings. He would work Monday through Friday until 9:00 at night. He would often work on Saturdays and Sundays. Being a success in your career is not a sin, but my friend lacked the skill of creating balance between his life and his work. His career was all that mattered. He would never agree with that, and his actions spoke louder than his words.

Whatever your children like to do, whether it's swimming, soccer or science projects, encourage them to work really hard at it, but then, teach them to walk away from it. If you teach your kids to take a break after they push really hard, they'll gain a long-distance perspective on it.

If you focus on all four parts of the mental sandwich of life, their school work, eventually their careers and their relationships will be in balance with all the rest of the things that make their lives successful, enjoyable and satisfying. The key to a balanced life is using all four parts of the mental sandwich.