Life is nothing but a balancing act

I’m not a religious person, but I believe deeply in the "Yin and Yang" philosophy. Your life is balanced whether you like it or not. Everything is. The key is to navigate that line between light and dark gracefully. For instance, if you shove all of your negative emotions down, you’ll eventually blow. Without balance, those feelings would just go away. But no, they come back hard, evening things out. A scientific fact: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. That’s balance. Spend too much time working? You’ll probably burn out eventually or live a shorter life due to excess stress. You have a finite amount of energy that you will eventually use up.

Lazy and don’t work enough? Well, eventually, you’ll likely find yourself in a monetary crisis. You have to find that middle ground and dance around it like a pro. Everything should be in moderation. Don’t dip too far into either Yin or Yang. If you do, you may become out of balance, but it probably won’t last long. The universe corrects itself without consulting us about it. You have like 16–18 hours in a day if you sleep well enough. If you have control over your own hours, dedicate half of your day to work and chill as much as possible for the rest of it. If you don’t have control over your hours, just do the best you can.

Living a balanced life for me, means giving myself time for everything I want to do and need on any given day. It means incorporating Mind, Body, Spirit. Workaholics don’t make enough time for family, friends, their children. I think our children deserve our attention, our love our interest in them. Cat’s in the Cradle song comes to my mind here… There is an Indian axiom or proverb that I try and instill in those I know. “There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.”

Balance is somewhat of a subjective term and achieving a “balanced life” is often a goal or something to achieve and maintain in our fragmented lives that are often filled with a continued stream of demands (family, education, work, social, personal interests). These demands, when coupled with more and more distractions thanks to social media’s growing influence on the world can make balance a very challenging thing to aspire to and achieve. I think that a “balanced life” will vary depending on a person’s circumstances. Do they have a lot of family or work commitments? Do they have a lot of personal interests? Do they enjoy being involved in a lot of things or in only a few things? Since we all have the same amount of time available it really boils down to perception and what things we place at a higher value.

I believe that everyone has an approximate amount of time they would like to use towards certain aspects of their lives (work, family, personal, etc) and the feeling of balance comes into play when this is fully aligned with the actual amount of time they spend in each area. Personal time: One person might feel balanced when they spend 20 hours a week in pursuit of hobbies, interests, and exercise while another person might only need a few hours each weekend for their own pursuits to feel balanced. Family time: Some people might need to sit down to a meal with their family every morning and evening to feel balanced while someone else might only need a few times a week to feel the same.

It’s a great thing to consider on a regular basis since I think it fits in well with being content and living a life that brings more satisfaction and less regret. A balanced life, is when you do everything equally. This could mean different thing, for different age groups. For example, if you are an university student; it means you would spend equal amount of portions doing something different. This could mean you study for a while, you go to the gym for a while and you could relax for a while. Hence, you won’t just be doing one thing for a long portion of time.

Whereas, if you are a working adult and you have a family. Then you would set aside time for your family, for your health and for your work. Living a balanced life seems so simple yet it’s so hard to accomplish. Not many people achieve this There are so many factors that could influence this. A lot of people including me are always just focused on thing and forget to do the rest. But for the people that do achieve this, will live a very healthy lifestyle.

Obviously, if you want to live a balanced life. Then maybe, you could try drawing up a schedule for each day which would specify what you will do and how long you will do it for. That could be a start for you. Balancing all you can like exercise and relaxing, work and play, time with others and time with yourself, eating good foods and eating sugary or junk foods, everything. And it doesn't mean half and half, you have to find the balance for each thing it's different for everyone probably. Cheer!