How to Live a Balanced Life

In part one we discussed the power of living a balanced life. The power of a well-balanced life is truly profound. Living in balance means that you live in harmony and tune with your body, which aids in centering your being and allows you to stand in your own power. Not only that, but it also allows you to integrate both the positive and negative aspects of your being into something more powerful: balance.

This part will show you what you can do to balance your life.

How to live a more balanced life?

1. Be authentic

“What has authenticity to do with living a balanced life,” you might ask. Well, that’s a good question so let me explain why I think that authenticity has a lot to do with balance. When you are authentic you are true to yourself, no matter how bad external pressures attempt to twist you. It means that you stay true to your values and beliefs, without bending over backward just to please everyone. Authenticity is the inner strength that helps you to remain unaffected from the various external pressures that want to change you. I’m speaking of the many social pressures and influences that try to trap your mind within a box.

With authenticity comes the fortitude of being able to meet decisions that are not influenced by the demands of others. Even more important: the decisions you make are not influenced by constant worries what others might think of you if you meet this or that decision.

Once you meet the majority of decisions based on what is good for you, there will be no longer the need to bend over backward. Subsequently, you remain balanced in your true authentic center as you meet healthier and wiser decisions that create no longer an imbalance within you. Therefore, authenticity gives you the power to remain in balance. It is unlikely that others will be able to bring you out of balance with their (imbalanced) behavior if you are authentic and true to yourself.

2. Avoid the drama

What external influence creates a significant imbalance between people? Drama does it! By “drama” I do not mean the category of performance in theaters, novels or movies. The specific kind of drama that I mean is the overreaction to things that are insignificant. If a person is used to make a big deal over something unimportant that person is likely a “drama queen”. Finding balance in life means to avoid the drama.

Drama causes a disruption in the centeredness of a person. Instead of being content with balance it is the emotional rollercoaster that many people prefer. Being dramatic and emerging in drama provides the lifestyle with excessive highs and exorbitant lows – just like a self-created rollercoaster of feelings.

Finding the right balance is a continuous effort

Modern life can be seen as an extreme challenge: you are confronted with hundreds upon thousands of – what I call – “drama vortices” in your day to day life. These drama vortices can be anything; from the drama-based television show, many engulf themselves daily, up to the regular drama-outbreaks about minor or even irrelevant things in life. No matter where you go and what you do – you can be sure that there will be a drama vortex waiting for you. It is, however, up to you if you allow yourself to be drawn in by that vortex or not.

Drama vortices have the purpose of attracting your attention so that your mind gets fully immersed by it. They draw energy from you, but most important of all: the drama drags you gradually into an existence that is out of balance. Often times I have the feeling that people just love to wander around unplugging and plugging in from one drama-vortex to the next one, which diverts them with even more ego-related, imbalanced chatter.

Returning to your balanced center means that you consciously start to identify the various drama-vortices that have sneaked into your life – and remove them one by one. Living in balance gives you the strength to cease your involvement with most of the drama reality comes up with, simply because there will be no longer the need to be immersed in it. See the drama for what it is: a self-centered, egomaniacal concept that does nothing to improve your life. All that it creates is an imbalance. It literally drags you into disequilibrium. Don’t allow this to happen; don’t allow the drama to capture your mind.

3. What causes an imbalance within you?

In order to establish a life that is in balance and harmony, it is of greatest importance to understand what is holding you in an imbalanced state of being. For me, watching television is a major player that is causing a disturbance of balance within me. This is mainly because the “storylines” of many TV shows are deliberately drama-based, e.g. sitcoms like “Everybody Loves Raymond”, “King of Queens”, which brings me back to #2 of this article – avoid the drama, at any cost. Most TV programs drag me down into disharmonic states, which is why I stopped watching TV in a large part. If you doubt what I’m saying, turn on the TV and consciously count how often the protagonists in both previously named sitcoms are arguing/fighting with each other in one episode. Yes, it’s funny, but watching 9 seasons of this drama-rollercoaster will leave you wondering what the power of balance actually is.

Besides television there are many other sources that can prevent you from living life in a balanced way:

• Aimless use of the internet
• Unhealthy food, one-sided nutrition
• Insufficient exercise
• Excesses of any kind
• Stress, hectic
• Consuming media without a second thought, e.g. living the life that media portrays as worthy to live (“self-centeredness”, “materialism”, “attention seeking behavior”, etc.)
• Drugs, cigarettes, alcohol

It is often a combination of the above-named factors that are noticeably responsible for feeling not as centered as you could be. Too little sleep, stress at work combined with unhealthy, processed foods and fear-based news reports were enough to drag me into a considerable disequilibrium when I was younger.

In order to establish a balanced lifestyle, it is important to recognize what is creating disparity in you. It takes sincerity towards yourself, as you will discover that many things you held dear are responsible for the imbalance in your life. But once you take this step it is by far easier to replace each and every factor that is causing an imbalance with another one that is more in harmony.

4. Discover the source of balance within you!

At this point, you might already know what prevents you from experiencing the power of balance and how you can avoid the various influences that cause imbalance. It is, however, similarly important to know the exact opposite as well: the source of balance within you.

Ask yourself this: “What helps me to remain balanced and calm; to remain centered and in harmony?” Think about the activities that help you to regain the balance in your life. Discover what allows you to re-energize after a stressful week in your job. What aides you in centering your being? You might also want to ask yourself what other people do that allows them to have a balanced life.

By asking yourself these questions, you can find out what gives you balance so that you can intensify these activities. To me, these are the things that allow me to find my center:

• Exercising
• Listening to music – preferably not mainstream music
• Spending time in nature
• Meditation
• Healthy nutrition
• Meeting with friends
• Writing an article – reflecting on my life
• Listening to podcasts that widen my perspective
• Studying topics that provide me a bigger perspective on life
• Abstaining from the media outlets
• Being open-minded, looking at things from many perspectives

5. Integrating the positive and the negative

As this article focuses on the power of balance I find it important to also include the process of integrating the positive and negative. I think we all might agree that discovering the positive/light side of your being is relatively pleasant. It’s easy to discover various aspects of you that are magnificent. However, your light side is only one part of your being. You also have a dark side, but this side is much tougher to face. Most avoid this. They tell themselves that they have no such thing as a dark side.

But as there is only room for growth during disparity, balance can only be found by the understanding of the whole spectrum of polarity. Being in balance means that you have understood and integrated the positive and negative. A person that does not want to face its shadow self has only met with one side of the polarity spectrum and is therefore not whole – not in balance that is.

This article about living a balanced life is the second part of the series about balance. You can find a link to the other part here:
Part I: The Power of Balance
Part II: How to live a Balanced Life

What are your tips and tricks that help you to live a well-balanced life?