BALANCING
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving”.
-Albert Einstein
The balance is difficult at first, but once you get some speed and put on momentum, it is completely natural to stay in balance. It does not guarantee that we won't ever fall off, but it greatly increases our chances of staying in balance for future. Riding a bicycle symbolically connotes a simple life and here, it also suggests that living simple will help you to create balance in your life.
Acquiring balance means achieving a joyful middle between the lowest and the highest. The lowest is the least you can do with, and the highest is the maximum you are capable of. The optimum is the sum or degree that is most constructive towards the goals of life.
The definition of balance could be poles apart from person to person. Some of us will find an entirely new approach to balance and some will fine-tune with small changes. It can't happen over-night. Achieving balance in your life will be an ever shifting experience, resulting into smoother and better-quality life.
A warrior was on fight. As long as the battle lasted, he took care of his horse as his fellow-helper in all emergencies. He fed him cautiously with hay and corn.
As soon as the warfare was over, he allowed the horse only chaff to eat and made him lug heavy loads of wood, and treated him ill. War was announced again. The Soldier put its military accessories on horse and mounted on it. The Horse fell down right away under the weightiness and said to the warrior:
“You must now go to the war on foot, for you have malformed me from a Horse to an Ass; and don’t expect me to turn into a horse within a minute.”
We don't know how we are turning issues of life into ass and expecting them to be horse. Possibly, the best way to understand this is to go step by step, slowly but surely.
In micro life, you are having five issues- physical, mental, Social, Emotional and Spiritual and in macro life there are three- family, work and society. The generic optimum is to keep an eye on every issue and make efforts to keep
micro and macro both the aspects free of struggle, independently and jointly. But it lies in your jurisdiction how you position your priorities. For some of us, dealing with boss is like a trial i.e. work; for some of us our mom is a challenge i.e. family; sometimes health issues are so prominent or disinterest is overriding you i.e. physical; or own life style seems to be a threat i.e. emotional; and so on and so forth. What is your order of priorities? Which issue you want to address first, and then second and third… How are you going to fine-tune them in the best possible ways to reach your optimum?
BALANCING MICRO LIFE
Who doesn't wish for a fit body, flooding finance, stress free life, bliss of intelligence and name in society? When you are busy to the extent to be driven by your work, you are off- balance. You are the driver of your life and only you have the freedom to choose the turn.
Life is full of turns and twists; primarily there are six broad stages- infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood, mid-life, and old age. There are many transition phases associated with these stages like switching to a profession or business or job, marriage, divorce, abroad education, migration, etc. and moreover we are always at one of the life's four positions- happy, loss, suffering, and hope. At a particular time, we are the product of the particular stage of the life associated with the transition phase and life's position. Every such span of life requires Common Sense.
Infants and children are taken care by their parents and the Common Sense is required on parents' front. As soon as a child is transitioning to adolescence, Common Sense has to be encouraged in child's action so that he/she may be able to explore, acknowledge and carry out Common Sense for him/her in the later stages of life.
Table No 2. explains how the prominent issues of life changes in different stages.
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Issues of Micro Life |
Stages of Life |
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Adolescence |
Adulthood |
Midlife |
Old Age |
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Physical |
Personal Hygiene, Cleanliness, Playing, Physical Trainings; variety of foods, Nutrition and Sleep as recommended for the age depending on geography. |
Regular Endurance, Strength and flexibility exercises in proportion of need, succulent food. |
Regular but comparatively lighter exercises, Routine normal health check-ups, light and fresh food. Comple-mentary nutrition. |
Regular walk and light exercises, Proper health monitoring, food suitable as per medical prescription. |
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Mental |
Focus on thorough studies in school, Test your inborn ability and work on it, Participate in extra curricular activities, Do mental exercises like quizzes, games etc. |
Continue your education, update yourself with the current knowledge in concerned field, Observe and research the area working in. |
Work to become veteran of your field, concentrate on the macro of the field, and learn by educating others. |
Spread your knowledge through tools and techniques you are comfortable in, Stay connected to the current. |
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Issues of Micro Life |
Stages of Life |
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Adolescence |
Adulthood |
Midlife |
Old Age |
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Emotional |
Have faith in family and its values, Believe in yourself, enjoy whatever comes your way so as to learn utmost. |
Create your own mission statement and align your actions with it, hone EQ, work with emotional indifference. Believe in yourself |
Hone your EQ upto becoming ‘Sound Board’, take your achievements/ failures as the gift of god. |
Mingle with and enjoy the younger generation, understand the spiritual aspects of life, live your hobbies and nature. |
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Social |
Know your surroundings, Follow social skills and other etiquettes, Do small acts of kindness, Have abundance mind set. |
Seek first to understand then to be understood, Be proactive and synergize to strengthen relationships, think win/win, work on different roles. |
Cultivate relationships, refine social values, spread awareness and help society to break the shell, promote interdependence. |
Interact with children, help them grow, Make clubs, social groups to address social causes, join spiritual/ religious group. |
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Spiritual |
Pray regularly. |
Explore your own way of spiritual peace. |
Read religious/ spiritual literature; reproduce your knowledge into wisdom. |
Read spiritual writings, worship. |
Table 2 : Issue of Micro Life in Various Stages of Life
All these issues are important but at some point of time, the same issues turn into urgent. Like if an adolescent is not keeping personal hygiene, he/she may counter illness. Personal hygiene is important but illness is urgent.
Moreover, there are things we need to do to reach the goals and there are things we long for doing. At times, you may feel like having leisurely time but your goal doesn't allow you, it suggests you some action. You want to have a routine in life but you are a mother of newly born baby and you have to carry your responsibilities. You love social working, but you have yet to stand on your feet. You want to live with family, but it is a suburb and growth opportunities are few. You love spirituality but you have to gather social security first. You want to switch your job for higher package but you love the culture you work in.
Self awareness and independent will helps to strike the right balance between the important, the urgent and what we long for.
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Self awareness and independent will helps to strike the right balance between the important, the urgent and what we long for. |
Generally we mind urgent works first as they are emergencies and dangers. They have to be taken head-on for they create constant burden. After the sigh of relief, the next sight appears which is imperative for future. It includes preclusion, value refinement, forecasting, scheduling, moderation and keep-fit activities. Focusing on these issues reduces the probability of emergency and dangers. Elimination of make-believe working like inconsequential communication, needless pauses and meetings, good- fornothings, and jabbers etc. daunts your motion towards your goals. Handle your future imperatives and emergencies and only then think of extending to something else.
To take it in practice, you may use the table Number 3. You may choose what you are going to do in a particular aspect this week, month or year. You can set goals in all the sub-issues of each issue or you may choose one or two sub-issues from each or you may choose a single sub-issue of any. Your weekly goals could come from monthly and monthly goals from yearly or you may choose them independently. To concentrate more than four sub-issues in a week could be an extraordinary effort, take one by one, slowly but steadily. This table will make you keep track of all the issues related to your life, their position and the consequences of the construction by you.
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Issue |
Week Later |
Month Later |
Year Later |
Reason |
Action |
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Mental |
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Continuous, systematic, disciplined study and education, |
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Cultivation of self-awareness, |
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Learning by teaching and doing. |
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Spiritual |
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Faith in natural laws |
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Integrity - being true to one’s highest values and conscience |
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Meaning - a sense of contribution to people and causes |
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Voice - aligning work with one’s innate desire. |
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Table 3 : Balancing Micro Life
Arrange your urgent, important, and long for in a manner to be most effective. Here, we have to choose what comes first. While the opting process, you may ask four simple questions:
- If I am going to do this what is the reason?
- For how long am I going to do it?
- If I am not able to do it what is the reason?
- For how long am I going to drop it?
Say, a mother may not be able to set goals for her personal life since the child is of at least five. You can not pass leisure time until you are employed. You can not serve others until you serve yourself first.
Your physical health and mental health are closely interconnected, the same way spiritual and social/emotional aspects accompany each other. Rest assured, whatever issue you take up first, you are moving towards the same optimum.
Balancing Macro Life:
In macro life, we have three issues: Family, Work and Society. Macro is the front-end and micro is the back-end, and both have to be integrated. Empowering micro empowers macro without much extra efforts. You have to brush it up by working on different roles you have set in family, work and society. You may choose the roles the way you have chosen goals in micro life; all, one or any preferred amalgam.
A blind man was waiting at a busy street for somebody to offer to escort him across the road. suddenly he felt a pat on his shoulder.
"Excuse me," said the tapper, "I'm blind - would you mind escorting me through the road?"
The first blind man took the arm of the second blind man, and they both crossed the road.
It is like that.
Empower yourself to empower others through modeling and building relationships with them, to come out with a cumulative strength to overpower the challenges and fallacies of life. That is balancing.