I’ve been struggling with something. I call it the juggler’s paradox. Is it an actual paradox? You tell me.
Here’s what I mean.
I’ve realized I spend most of my time juggling—tossing work, relationships, responsibilities, and personal goals into the air, scrambling to keep them from crashing down. It’s exhausting.
I keep adding more balls. Each day brings another task, another commitment, another worry. The act becomes overwhelming, but I don’t stop. Why? Because I’ve convinced myself that success means keeping everything moving, never dropping a single thing.
Most of us live like this. We think we’re expert jugglers… but that’s not true. We’re mediocre jugglers masquerading as experts. We drop balls. We drop them all the time.
But what if we’ve misunderstood the game entirely? What if we were never meant to juggle multiple balls at all? What if, instead, we’ve always had just one?
That’s the heart of the juggler’s paradox. We believe we’re managing countless separate aspects of our lives, but in reality, everything we do is part of a single, unified whole. The challenge isn’t about keeping things in the air—it’s about shaping and refining the one thing that truly matters.
THE PAPER BALL METAPHOR
I like football (what Americans call soccer). It’s the world’s most popular game for many reasons, but one of the biggest is accessibility—all you need is a ball. You don’t even need goalposts. Just grab a ball, and you can have fun dribbling with your friends.
You don't even need an actual ball. All you really need is tape and paper.
Let me show you how some of us made balls as kids. Take a piece of paper, crumple it into a ball, and then wrap it with tape until it becomes a solid sphere.
Voila, you’ve got yourself a ball.
This method was a lifesaver for those of us who kept losing real balls and felt too sheepish to ask our parents for new ones.
The cool part? You had complete control over the size of your ball. You could keep layering paper, wrapping it in tape, making it bigger and bigger.
But what mattered most wasn’t the size—it was the shape.
The more paper you added, the more uneven and lopsided the ball could become. Sometimes, we had to smooth it out, pressing down rough edges or peeling away excess layers to make it round again.
That’s life. That’s how to think about it. You’re not juggling multiple balls—you’re building one big paper ball.
You start with a simple core—your values and passions. Over time, you accumulate responsibilities, experiences, and knowledge, layering them onto your life. But just like a paper ball, not everything you add improves its shape. Some things make it bulky and unbalanced, pulling you in conflicting directions.
The key is realizing that you aren’t juggling separate things—you’re shaping and refining a single whole. Every new task, commitment, or opportunity should add to your life’s direction, not distort it. Instead of mindlessly piling things on, be intentional. Make sure what you add makes the ball smoother, stronger, and more aligned with your purpose.
THE PROBLEM WITH JUGGLING
Juggling might look like control, but it’s really just controlled chaos. We toss responsibilities, commitments, and goals into the air, believing that if we move fast enough, we can keep everything from crashing down.
But the flaw is built into the act itself—we’re never truly holding onto anything. We’re just constantly throwing things away, hoping we can catch them again.
Over time, this wears us down. The more we try to keep in motion, the more exhausted we become. We mistake busyness for productivity, treating every task as equally important instead of recognizing what truly deserves our time. Without focus, we become overwhelmed, unsure of what to prioritize, and stretched too thin to make meaningful progress.
The problem isn’t that we need to juggle better—it’s that we shouldn’t be juggling at all. Instead of keeping everything in motion, we should focus on what actually belongs in our hands and let go of the rest.
PURPOSE
Purpose gives shape to everything we do. Without it, we juggle aimlessly, trying to keep everything in motion without knowing why. But with a clear purpose, we no longer need to juggle—we can focus on building something meaningful.
Just as a paper ball starts with a simple core that we add to, our lives accumulate experiences, responsibilities, and knowledge over time. But not everything we add makes it stronger. Some additions create imbalance, making it lumpy and uneven, weighing us down instead of refining our path.
That’s where purpose comes in. With a clear goal, we can smooth out the rough edges, remove what doesn’t belong, and ensure that every new layer strengthens rather than distorts our direction.
When we center our lives around purpose, everything we add has meaning, and everything unnecessary falls away. The key to escaping the juggling trap isn’t just dropping distractions—it’s knowing what you’re building toward. Without a clear goal, it’s easy to keep adding random pieces, hoping they somehow fit together. But real progress comes from intentional choices, not just movement.
Defining that goal, however, is its own challenge. What truly matters? What should our lives be shaped around? These aren’t easy questions, and finding the right answer takes time. But before we can build with purpose, we first need to understand what that purpose is.
That’s a conversation for another day. For now, the important thing is to stop juggling and start shaping.
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