Finding balance in life is one of the most difficult things to discover. It’s a constant struggle to make sure you are not neglecting your mind, body, or spirit in your life. You likely know when you haven’t been in a balanced state when you start to feel depressed one day, or perhaps even over the course of a long time. I have found that not playing games with my friends or family for too long causes me to feel I am lacking in maintaining my significant relationship in my life. At the same time, if all I do is play games for hours and hours every day, it doesn’t completely make me feel fulfilled in life. Yes, playing video games with loved ones is important to maintain relationships in my life!
I think it takes constant mending and re-balancing what we do in our lives to keep us content with the way life is going. Not necessarily happy, but content.
I’ve come up with 5 essential things that must be in balance to achieve a sense of fulfillment:
1. Be productive in your work.
The big corona virus scare probably has made more people aware of this than ever. If you aren’t productive in your work, it can feel like you are not really expressing the full extent of your talents. I think this leads us to believe we are underutilized, and even stagnant in our development as even stronger workers.
2. Be wise in your words to others and yourself. Live by the contents of your heart.
Learn to have empathy for those you meet, and for yourself. Speak only truths, and stay humble enough to know you could be wrong about something.
3. Be vigilant of negative or contradicting thoughts, and determine quickly if there is truth to those thoughts.
If you find something is bothering you internally, first define it and write it down. That will help you narrow down precisely what it is you are thinking about yourself. Then determine if it is true. Your most trusted people in your life are the ones that will be able to help you with this if you struggle to determine if it is really true on your own. If you do determine there is some truth to the negative thoughts you have – seek information, counseling, and wisdom to grow in that area in your life.
4. Learn to know that you have no more and no less value than the day you were born. You have always possessed greatness in you. The goal is to discover and harness all the strength that was gifted to you at birth. The question isn’t if you have value or not. Every person has been gifted with a heart capable of loving, and is worthy of being loved. The only question left is, “how do you learn to wield the full power of your heart?” Or from another perspective, "are there things that are making you blind to seeing how loved you actually are?"
5. Stay active and regular – both your mind, body, and spirit. Make each day an opportunity to work on at least one but ideally all 3 of these. If you aren’t growing, I think that’s where we get bored, even depressed because we feel we aren’t moving forward in our lives. We feel stuck in a way.
This is a short summary of items I have discovered to be key for whole-hearted living. I will be expanding on these ideas in many different ways in future posts.