“Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. John Lennon
“Live as if you were going to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were going to live forever”. Mahatma Gandhi
What does it mean to have, or lead, a balanced life? This is a question that crosses almost everyone’s mind at some point in life. So, what does it mean to live a balanced life?
Do you envision a life where you spend equal amounts of time in the different areas of life? Spending x amount of time with family, the same amount of time for yourself, and yet again, the same amount of time with work? If so, life can be both stressful and happiness…elusive.
Or, is balance measured by your sense and feelings of happiness, accomplishment, and contentment? Are your feelings of balance and contentment realized when you see or receive feedback (verbal or nonverbal) from those around you?
For myself, balance was expressed and ordered in my life in terms of what was most important and least important. However, I might spend 2 hours on the “important” aspects of my life and 5 hours on the things that were…not so important. The questions then became: Did I spend my time effectively? Did I accomplish the important objectives and goals? Am I, or was I, happy with how things turned out?
Balance in life is subjective to the person and their views of what’s important in their life. So, how many of us take time to truly determine what is the most important aspect of our lives today?
Our lives today can be categorized as living in the Age of the Internet. For those of you born today, born after 1980, the internet has been as significant an influence in our lives as any teacher, parent, partner, or friend. The internet is a 24-hour, 7-day-a-week resource that can influence your actions, decisions, and mood. Unlike ANYTHING developed in the past, the internet is unlike anything ever invented or developed in the past. The internet, for many of us is another entity to factor into the influences that dictate our lives.
Unlike the first such “influencers”, the Gutenberg Press, commonly known as the Printing Press, or the telephone, both of which expanded our ability to contact and inform our society or friends, the Internet cannot be as easily set aside as the newspaper or telephone. Both the newspaper and the telephone were static devices. They existed, you read, or spoke into it, and then simply put it down or threw it away, and walked away. However, the Internet is not so easily discarded. Your phone has now morphed into a computer, now with AI, that is truly capable of being “your best” (in some cases, your ONLY) friend. Neither the printing press nor the original version of the telephone possessed such a capability. Your phone is with you 24 hours a day, and, God forbid, if anyone should try to take it from you, or you lose it, a massive panic attack sets in until it’s located or replaced!
When it comes to the concept of finding balance in life, the Internet can..and too often, does impact how we see our lives in terms of balance, happiness, contentment, and value! For some of us, unfortunately, we place too much emphasis on the Internet’s influence and sometimes find it too difficult to reconcile the life we actually have…in contrast to the life the Internet tells us we …should have!
For me, and what I have come to suggest and offer to many of my former students as well as my friends and acquaintances of today, TURN OFF the Internet. Disconnect from any social media that seeks to comment on or direct your thoughts or actions, or what it thinks your happiness should be or look like. Your happiness, your balance in life, should be determined by you, by what you feel is most beneficial and rewarding. However, those are personal aspects and realities that only you can truly determine and act on.
But, I also realize that for many of us born into the Internet Age, we have developed a dependence on the Internet that has evolved into an addiction and a dependency that knows no boundary in our lives. This dependency has made the process of finding balance in life almost impossible. Every day we wake up with the Internet telling us “how we can make our lives better”..”how we need to live our lives to improve and contribute more”.
How can you find balance in life when, every morning or every week, you are told how to be better, be something different than what it told the day or week before?
Finding balance is a lifelong pursuit. When we are young, our goals, motivations, and desires are broad and all-encompassing. We want a good job, a career direction, a partner in life, and we want money and the security of knowing that we will be able to take care of ourselves and those we care about.
As we get older, in most cases, our pursuits and goals in life become a bit narrower. We focus more on our career and, if married, the safety and security of family and the obligations taken on. As we get older still, our goals become more oriented to our health and finding new aspects and considerations of what it means to be happy with ourselves and our lives.
For some of us, such as myself, we start to think,” Have I contributed anything positive to life? Have I had a positive or negative impact on life and those who have been, or are, in my life now?
As you go further in this life, if at all possible, engage in reflection of your own concept of what balance in life means to you. Forget the Internet (easier said than done) and see if you can honestly find the inner peace necessary to answer, or discover, these energies in your life.
I promise you, the insights, freedom, and energy you can find from this process can be life-changing.