Life's Scales

Balance

Like pieces of a puzzle, the many different aspects of your being come together to form the person that you are. You work and play, rest and expend energy, commune with your body and soul, exalt in joy, and feel sorrow. Balance is the state that you achieve when all of the aspects of your life and self are in harmony. Your life force flows in a state of equilibrium because nothing feels out of sync. While balance is necessary to have a satisfying, energetic, and joyful life, only you can determine what balance means to you.

Achieving balance requires that you assess what is important to you. The many demands of modern life can push us to make choices that can put us off balance and have a detrimental effect on our habits, relationships, health, and career. In creating a balanced lifestyle, you must ascertain how much time and energy you are willing to devote to the different areas of your life. To do so, imagine that your life is a house made up of many rooms. Draw this house, give each part of your life its own room, and size each room according to the amount of importance you assign to that aspect of your life. You can include family, solitude, activities that benefit others, healthy eating, indulgences, exercise and working on self. You may discover that certain elements of your life take up an inordinate amount of time, energy, or effort and leave you with few resources to nurture the other aspects of your life. You may want to spend less time on these activities and more on the ones that! fulfill you.

A balanced lifestyle is simply a state of being in which one has time and energy for obligations and pleasures, as well as time to live well and in a gratifying way. With its many nuances, balance can be a difficult concept to integrate into your life. Living a balanced existence, however, can help you attain a greater sense of happiness, health, and fulfillment.

The Daily Om

How Balanced is Your Lifestyle
By Maria Moratto

H ow many times in your life have you checked if your lifestyle is truly balanced? If you are like most people, consider yourself lucky if you have done it once if at all.

Nowadays, we are so used to doing tons of things for everybody else and every cause that sparks our passions, that we forget that our lives are out of balance and consequently in danger of consuming us, leading us to a life of complete automation.

We do things like robots, without becoming aware of our actions. We live, love, socialize, and work, all in auto-pilot. We don’t even stop at our birthdays to question what on earth is happening to us or in which direction life is going. We just do what we usually do and forget that we are incredible beings, capable of having the grandest and most fulfilled life.

Now, that has to stop. So let me give you some suggestions on how you can make your life a terrific adventure traveled on a sacred path.

First of all, evaluate the major areas of life and give them each a "score" from 1 to 10, 1 being the lowest, most scarce and scary score and 10 describing an absolute bliss.

Think in terms of the following areas (not in order of importance or priority):

1. work
2. leisure
3. social life
4. money
5. family
6. love
7. sex
8. exercise
9. time
10. health, etc.

Now, you may say: "I don’t have any fun, but it is all right because I have other priorities." Well, let me advise you to look at the big picture. If you do this you are skewing the balance of your lifestyle, and that goes against the principle of happiness.

In our modern world these, among other areas of life, are what makes us happy and totally fulfilled. And I am not talking about values, meaning that you should only pursue what you value the most.

No, I am talking about a balanced, rounded, centered lifestyle and if you want to achieve this balance in all the areas of your life need to score a 10, or at least a 9 each of them. Remember that there is always room for improvement.

I will give you an example. I used to be a very successful professional when I was younger. I was the quintessential career woman, with the added benefits of having a great social life, money, health, time, etc. You could say that I had everything.

But no, I was missing a family. I wanted to have children. I wanted to experience motherhood and I didn’t have that. Deep inside I was the epitome of a very dissatisfied person. Though I had my family, I didn’t have a family of my own. And that tipped the balance of my life to an extreme that made me a very unhappy person.

So, what area is lacking in your life? Money? Good nutrition? Sex? A committed relationship? And what are you going to do about it?

After you have done your evaluation from 1 to 10, make a chart. Check which areas require the most urgent action towards change. Plan how you are going to solve each "issue." Step by step.

And then go for it: walk the path you have designed. It will bring much joy and you will live in bliss.

Both your posts hit home, my life is very unbalanced and with reading this i can see that now. I have been way to hard on myself pushing myself to the brink of losing my mind. I have never experienced this kind of impatience that has been affecting me. I will say it is tough very tough to come back to reality and become more aware. What i have learned in life is that sometimes you may think everything is wonderful and that life is balanced, but sometimes you need a wake up call from friends, family, or a support group of some kind. I am grateful to have all of you in my life, and i know with all your help i will overcome this impatience that has a hold on me. "Break the chains"

Many Blessings

If one can achieve the balance of mind and body that is a good thing in life.
To feel new again and achieving what we would like our lives to be.

The hardest test of all.