Here’s my mantra:
Balance is more respectable than focus. Anyone can put their mind to something and achieve it using a combination of ability and hard work; but true achievement is to get there without allowing family, friends, body, and soul to notice.
This is out-of-whack with the whole self-help genre that pushes the idea of focusing on goals (written in pen and reviewed regularly, of course) and envisioning success. I don’t set goals, I don’t have a lot of focus, and I don’t do a lot of envisioning; which has probably resigned me to a life of rampant mediocrity that I construe as balance in my own, warped mind. So be it.