Ian Jones: The importance of balancing your buckets

You know: not having to go to the gym every day, not having my days all mapped out before I’d even woken up, not having to wear a uniform, basically just not the life of a professional sportsperson. I thought this would all be wonderful for me and my family – to come back to New Zealand (I had been playing in the UK for a few years) and to live a life like that, with no real structure or plan.

And then it happened – I got that supposedly normal life. And it was the worst thing for me.  

Physically, I started to get a lot of aches and pains. But mentally, I was just drifting and not really achieving anything. I’m not sure I was a great guy, father and husband to be around, and it was clear that something had to change.

So about six months after I finished playing rugby, I decided to make some changes that were designed to bring back some structure into my life, and get me back to the physical and mental strength I’d lost along the way. (I should also mention that I’m certainly no mental health expert – all I can talk about is what I’ve done in my life, and what’s worked for me!)

First, I started keeping a daily and weekly diary. I’d make plans for the week – places I had to be, tasks I needed to get done, training I wanted to do – everything would be mapped out. Of course, plans can always change, but it gave me a base to start from and a sense of control where I could clearly see what was on the horizon. Personally, I found having that direction made me a lot more productive.

At around the same time, as I began to up my training, I started to enter into events. This gave me a focus and an end goal for the training I was doing. It meant I had to get out of bed and train, and it really gave me something to start working towards. With just those two things – journaling and setting goals – I started transforming back into the guy I had been, a guy with a clear path, goals and direction. I learned that structure is what was normal for me, and that I needed it to function properly both mentally and physically. Everyone’s normal is different and that’s ok. 

Along that journey of getting my ‘mojo’ back, if that’s what you want to call it, I realised how much I missed the camaraderie of team sports, so I worked some of that back into my life. I might not have been organising big recreational games of rugby, but I’d meet my friends for a swim, a run or a bike ride, which gave me so much more of that social life I was missing too. And when you make those commitments, you’re less likely to come up with those excuses because you don’t want to let your friends down. It’s a win-win.

As life goes on, I think we often lose some of those connections we had when we were younger. Life gets busy, work gets in the way, kids and family responsibilities can take up so much time – but I think it’s so important to create that time and place to be with your friends, and to talk about whatever’s going on in your lives. It can be like a pressure release valve, and you all end up helping each other, whether you realise it or not. 

Another big thing that was important to me when I was putting this “routine” together was including some time to help out in our community. My wife and I feel like we are truly blessed, and so we want to share those blessings with the community around us. We set up Eddie’s Meals – you can look it up on Facebook – a community food kitchen, and we spend those Friday afternoons down at the kitchen, helping dish up food to between 30 and 50 people.

It might seem like a selfless thing, but volunteering our time like that really fills us up too. It makes us feel good, and it gives us a sense of purpose beyond whatever we’re doing day-to-day I think, when we’re looking at doing things to help us in life, we often look at exercise, eating well, making sure we’re spending time with our friends and family, connecting with people – all of those types of things. I think we can forget just how good it is to just volunteer your time or services to help other people. It’s such an important aspect of life that often just gets lost in the shuffle of the day-to-day.

Which brings me to my last point. In my family, we always talk about buckets: fitness, family, work and community. In my view, all of those buckets need to be balanced and full. When you prioritise one over the other, it all gets out of kilter.

It can be difficult to achieve, there’s no doubt about it. But for me, that holistic approach to life has helped me physically and mentally – even emotionally. I think, in our attempts to “improve ourselves”, get out of a rut, or reach that ‘next level’ of whatever we’re striving for, we can often go all-in in one thing – whether it’s fitness, work, family – and we forget that we need to take care of all those other areas too, at the same time. I’m not saying it’s the hard and fast answer, of course. But it certainly works for me.