To have a balanced mind and body is to experience a state of equilibrium within your lifestyle choices, relationships and work habits. At times you may notice yourself falling off kilter and tipping the scales toward excess and overindulgence, other times you are slipping in the other direction towards lack and deficiency.
When you deviate from the path of holistic symmetry, you can suffer from a host of problems that affect you mentally, physically and emotionally. Poised on the proverbial scale somewhere between too much and not enough is where you will find yourself at your healthiest, happiest and most productive.
Buddhist philosophers for example, strongly believe that the practice of being in balance supports inner peace. A lot can be learned from steeping our perspective in the idyllic waters of what the Buddha called 'the middle way'.
By neither clinging to nor taking for granted the inevitable highs and lows of life, you can discover your own inner balance, and experience sustainable peace and contentment throughout your life.
The following tips help to simplify what it means to live in balance, and will assist you in your practice of walking the path of 'the middle way' for optimal enjoyment of your life.
Tip #1, Lifestyle: See the Big Picture
A lot of people experience repetitive cycles of suffering in the form of guilt as a result of over indulging. This type of behaviour typically expresses itself through over eating, over imbibing or getting caught in the paralysis of laziness.
By taking a step back and analysing the bigger picture of your life and habits, you can get a clearer view of the regularity of healthy habits verses the not so healthy habits.
If you find that most of the time you eat well, refrain from heavy drinking and get adequate exercise, a few moments of debauchery can be celebrated instead of lamented, as nothing more than just being human.
Allow yourself time to experience life fully, but if distressing behaviours are slanting the scales toward dis-ease, it may be time to re-evaluate your choices, and tip the scales back into a healthy balance.
Tip #2, Relationships: Be a Reclusive-Socialite
Monks, swamis and sages devote a lot of their time in silence and isolation. While being alone is important in developing keen awareness and precise intuition, spending quality time with others also has its own set of magical benefits. Too much time alone can strip you of necessary human connection just as too much time with others can rob you of truly knowing who you are.
When you are alone, you can deepen your connection with an ever-present source of peace and energy within. When you spend quality time with others, you become at ease with giving, receiving and sharing of yourself. And that is balance.
While being out of balance can foster uncomfortable social anxieties or bring out an aversion to being alone. Spend time alone to find yourself and seek connection with others to share in the beauty of what you find.
Tip #3, Work: Drive in Neutral
When you embark on a goal, task or assignment at work, make sure you experience emotional neutrality between success and failure. Both will have an affect on you, adding to the necessity to remain detached from either. Playing tug of war between triumph and disappointment can make you stiff with pride and conceit, or weigh you down with guilt and shame.
Instead, practice detaching from outcomes and resist the urge to be overly competitive and judgmental of others and yourself.
Having balance will ultimately reduce the harmful pressure of either feeling disgusted and afraid of failure, or addicted to the need for success. Do your work as best as you can and let go of the rest.
Walking the path of 'the middle way' is one example of how to experience sustainable contentment throughout your life. Give yourself permission to be human, spend equal time with yourself and others, and express gratitude in both success and failure. Find balance on your path through life and let it be one of inner peace and joy.
How do you find balance in your life? What helps you?
Read more posts from Jill Lawson at Body in Balance