I had a heart attack followed by open heart surgery recently. I handled it really well and have been recovering rapidly. This has allowed me to head back to work relatively quickly. Which is good because my business needs my help. It has survived my “incident” reasonably well but market conditions and increased competition are causing “challenges” and I need to spend as much time as I can helping out.

Here’s the rub. The #1 thing I can do to improve my physical health as quickly as possible is to rest and take my time getting back to work. And the #1 thing I need to do to protect my financial health is to spend every ounce of my energy on my business.

Essentially the needs of two major aspects of my life are diametrically opposed. Where is the perfect balance? Does it even exist?

Many people would say “focus on your health”. And that makes tons of sense. Except that having started a business just a few years ago my personal financial situation is precarious – I’ve put everything I own into making this business work. If it fails it will cause me massive amounts of stress and duress. My heart attack was caused by a genetic predisposition accelerated by stress. Serious amounts of stress would not be good for me at all in the long term.

So my quandary? How do I find the balance between reducing my workload to reduce my short term stress and therefore heal more quickly and increasing my workload to reduce the potential for business catastrophe and huge long term stress? I’m an experienced entrepreneur who has been through some major ups and downs in my career so this is not the worries of a neophyte – the potential for business failure is very real.

So what do I do? At the moment, I’m deciding day-by-day, doing as much as I think I can without overdoing it, hoping it is enough to keep both me and my business healthy.

Fingers crossed I’m doing it well.