The Viable Alternative

I promise you, this isn’t going to be one of my “longish” rants. This is going to be short and sweet. 😀

Had you ever tried walking on one of those balance beams you had in gym class when you were a kid? You’d walk carefully, and sway to the left and to the right, sometimes falling off, until you’re able to find stable footing between the extremes and are able to walk down the middle of the beam After a while, you get the hang of it and are able to balance of it and get used to walking down the beam without losing your balance.

I’ve noticed that such is the same thing with life.

A truly successful person has a healthy balance between the many different aspects of his or her life comprising of relationships, finances, health, fitness, work, personal recreation/leisure, and if he’s into some sort of spirituality, that component as well. Because these components are balanced, they’re able to work synergistically to nourish the whole being of the person.

Many of us look at such people with awe and envy as to how they could be so disciplined, blessed, and perhaps even “lucky” to have such a life. What is not understood by many of these people looking in from the outside is that such balanced people learned to be balanced by first being completely imbalanced.

For the last few months, I was totally down on myself for not waking early enough to go to the office and getting an early start to my work day. As an independent contractor, I wanted to be in the office latest 9:30, but the average time I got to the office was around 11. However, within the last two weeks, I decided to buckle up and get my proverbial “crap” together and start a routine of coming to the office before 9:30 am. I would then work hard all day and wind up staying at the office sometimes up to 10 pm.

This started turning into a debacle, as I noticed that I’d be in the office 7 days a week without taking a day off, I stopped going to the gym because I was busy with work at the office, and I had little time to myself, as when I got home, I just had energy enough to cook some simple food, eat, and then crash. I’d be too tired to even read.

Me trying to get on point in one area caused me to fall off in other areas.

Noticing this has caused me to reevaluate my actions and think of a way how I can get to the office early so I can be more productive, and make more efficient use of my time so I can have enough time and energy to go to the gym consistently in the evening, and also cut back on the amount of days I work during the week so I can have more time to myself to work on other things that I’m involved with in my life.

Like walking on a balance beam, or balancing a scale, striking a balance between different “ends” involves swaying back and forth between the different ends until you find a formula that works for you on how to stay in the middle. Becoming unbalanced in a particular area of your life as you work on creating an ideal life for yourself doesn’t necessarily mean you’re irresponsible, stupid, a failure or some sort of loser, it actually just means you’re walking on unfamiliar terrain and part of the process of mastering new terrain is falling down on it over and over again, so STOP BEATING YOURSELF UP.

Being unbalanced is a necessary part of the process of learning to be balanced because balance in itself is determined by the equilibrium of a point between the different ends, and you normally don’t find that equilibrium until you bump up enough times against the different ends to know how to stay away from them.

Those who’ve been able to achieve successful balanced lifestyles simply were able to learn from being unbalanced enough times to finally strike a chord in the middle.

This is The Viable Alternative.

Hope this helps,

Ike Love