I recently came across the concept of ‘rubber balls and glass balls’ have you ever heard of it? It really made me think differently about the way we all define success. Especially for high achievers, because if there is one thing I have noticed about driven professionals, it’s that we often treat everything like it carries the same weight. The deadline. The email. The client request. The meeting. The project. The family obligation. The personal commitment. Each one of these and everything feels urgent. Everything feels important. Everything feels like if we let one thing drop, something will fall apart. But here’s the truth I learned not too long ago, not everything we are carrying is created equally. Let me explain.
Priorities
One of the biggest challenges in leadership and life is learning the difference between what needs attention and what needs protection. Some things are flexible. They can move. They can wait. They can be adjusted without creating lasting consequences. These things are the rubber balls.
The inbox that isn’t completely empty. The task that moves to tomorrow. The small inconvenience that feels significant in the moment but won’t matter a month from now. Yet so many of us spend enormous energy trying to keep every rubber ball perfectly in the air while the things that matter most quietly compete for whatever attention we have left. And what happens when we try to juggle too many things? Yep, we end up dropping them all and in a worse position that when we started picking things up!
Perspective
The glass balls are different. They represent the things that don’t always announce themselves as urgent, but they are incredibly valuable. Your relationships. Your health. Your family and children. Your integrity. Your peace. Your ability to be fully present with the people and moments you can’t recreate.
The difficult part is that glass balls are usually quiet. They rarely demand attention the way work does. They don’t send calendar reminders and they don’t create notifications. We often overlook them and this means they don’t always feel like a crisis until we realize we haven’t protected them.
Achievement
This is where many successful individuals and driven professionals struggle. We become very good at responding. Responding to requests. Responding to expectations. Responding to everyone and everything that needs something from us.
Being dependable becomes part of our identity. But sometimes being great at keeping everything moving means we never stop long enough to ask whether everything deserves to be carried. The goal isn’t to do everything perfectly. The job is to understand what really deserves your energy.
Permission
One of the hardest lessons for high performers is accepting that something will always drop. Take it from me, I know this feeling well. There will always be an unfinished task. Another email. Another goal. Another responsibility waiting for your attention.
The question isn’t whether you will drop something. The question is whether you are intentionally choosing what gets placed down. Because dropping a rubber ball is adjustment and dropping a glass ball is regret.
Awareness
The longer I work with leaders, the more convinced I become that success isn’t about holding more. No, not convinced, I know this is true! It’s about choosing better.
The strongest people I know aren’t the ones who carry everything without struggle. They’re the ones who have learned what deserves to be protected. I guarantee, in the near future, the majority of us probably won’t remember how quickly we responded to every message or how perfectly we completed every checklist.
We’ll remember the conversations we had. The people we showed up for. The moments we were actually present enough to experience. How we made people feel versus what we ended up doing.
So maybe the real question isn’t, “How do I keep everything from falling?” Maybe the better question is: “Am I protecting the things I could never replace?”
I want to hear from you.
Have you ever realized you were protecting the wrong things? What is one “glass ball” in your life or leadership that you refuse to drop? How do you decide what truly deserves your attention?
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#Leadership #ExecutivePresence #ProfessionalGrowth #WorkLifeBalance