Thursday, September 29, 2011

Premises


I’d be a pretty terrible liar if I said that I could talk about balancing life without a bit of bias. First, know that I don’t think I’m there--far from it, and as life changes, I’ll always need to make adjustments.

I get the information in this blog from a number of great sources. First and foremost, I get truths about life from a collection of ancient texts that have proved themselves to be true for thousands of years--the Bible. I’ll pull information from other historical writings as well.

There are a whole bunch of guys who lived life well and wrote about it--I’ll be quoting from authors much older and much much wiser than me. The rest comes from my own personal experience in cultures and with people from around the world--from sipping tea with the poorest of the poor in a 3rd world country, to designing military equipment in a cubical, to shaking hands with a Sultan in his own palace.

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Key Parts of Life


In the rest of this blog, we’ll take a look at the 7 key aspects of life that need to be in balance. We’ll stand on a desk chair and hold a measuring tape to the ceiling. We’ll take good notes on where each blade passes the tape, and then we’ll come up with a plan to make those adjustments. It won’t be easy--sometimes it’s hard to loose a screw and sometimes you have to take the blade off completely and bend the supports a little, but the end result is worth it. Your wobble might be barely noticeable or it could be scaring everyone around you--no matter where you’re at, it could use some adjustment.

The first blade we’re going to look at is career. Some people make career the entire focus of their lives and pour all their energy into climbing the ladder. Others make career a distanced (and often despised) part of their lives that has little connection to the rest life.

We’ll take a look at the social blade. As human beings we live in constantly shifting communities. We have a need for people--not just people we meet on the street but casual friends who can get coffee with us on Tuesdays and those two or three people who stuck with you through everything.

Money is a key part of our lives--the financial blade. We break our backs trying to earn it. We borrow it to build or buy stuff. We give some of it to organizations to keep the rest of it safe. If we don’t understand our money, it can easily drag us away to places we never wanted to go.

We’ll take a look a the greatest tool you’ll ever have--your body. The physical blade. We’ll look at  common ways to destroy it, and great ways to keep it running well. This is the only body I’ll have this lifetime, and that is the only body you get this lifetime. Let’s plan accordingly.

It’s tempting to leave academics back in school, but we’ll look at the intellectual blade. We need to keep growing and learning--this world has a lot of great stuff to learn, pick something you like--then pick something you’ve never considered.

Everybody has or had a family--whether they’ve been present or not, a good influence or not. The family blade is key in understanding where you came from and where you’re going. Friends come and go, but family will always be family.

Lastly, we’ll look at the spiritual blade. Humans were made with a desire for the supernatural. We’ll take a look at where that comes from and how to incorporate that into our lives in a healthy way.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Effects of an Unbalanced Life

In college I rented a house that had a ceiling fan right above my bed. On cooler nights, I’d turn it on and watch it speed up; and the whole fan would wobble in a circle. It was somewhat soothing to watch it slowly and rhythmically go in circles. On the warmer nights, watching the fan on medium was less than comforting; the small wobbling circle turned into a larger more erratic circle. I never put the fan on high for more than a few seconds--for fear that it would rip itself out of the ceiling.
I took it upon myself to fix this rogue fan by measuring the height of each blade from the ceiling and making small adjustments to each blade. I had to add a washer or two, one blade required enough pressure to bend the metal support to make it right. It took time and it took effort; but in time, I could use the high setting without fear. There is still a little wobble, but hey, it’s a work in progress.
As it tuns out, our lives are a lot like that ceiling fan--we keep going faster and faster with a few wobbles here and there. Sometimes we make adjustments, sometimes we don’t, but we all see the warning signs. Ignoring the wobble won’t hurt anything for the time being, but as we speed up and take on more and more, it becomes dangerous. When we don’t make adjustments to the various parts of our lives, we wear ourselves out, and eventually we’ll rip ourselves from the ceiling and do incredible damage to ourselves and everyone around us.