by Randy Petersen
In the book The Happiness Principle, we learn that the path to a balanced life is through moderation. For instance, you can become very rich and successful by working at your career 60 or 70 hours a week. Unfortunately, by investing so much time in just one area, other facets of your life must suffer. If you have a family, they will surely feel the results of your absence and this imbalance can cause long term problems for everyone involved. Another example might be if you played video games all night, almost every night of the week. While subsisting off of fast food and soda pop, you experience little physical activity other than the exercising of your trigger finger. Again we see obvious imbalance here as such an obsessively excessive behavior would lead to imbalance in the areas of poor physical and social health, just to name a few. Of course, the best way to bring greater equilibrium to both examples is through the power of moderation. While the above examples are extreme, we all have areas in our life that could use the blessing of balance that moderation can deliver.
In the book The Happiness Principle, we learn that the path to a balanced life is through moderation. For instance, you can become very rich and successful by working at your career 60 or 70 hours a week. Unfortunately, by investing so much time in just one area, other facets of your life must suffer. If you have a family, they will surely feel the results of your absence and this imbalance can cause long term problems for everyone involved. Another example might be if you played video games all night, almost every night of the week. While subsisting off of fast food and soda pop, you experience little physical activity other than the exercising of your trigger finger. Again we see obvious imbalance here as such an obsessively excessive behavior would lead to imbalance in the areas of poor physical and social health, just to name a few. Of course, the best way to bring greater equilibrium to both examples is through the power of moderation. While the above examples are extreme, we all have areas in our life that could use the blessing of balance that moderation can deliver.
Perhaps you're a parent that has their children on the run constantly from school to dance to music lessons to soccer practice to a pile of homework to bed to the next day, on and on, over and over again. Perhaps your kids have begged for some of the pressure to be taken off of them, but you know that if they stay busy they will stay out of trouble and all of these activities will help them in their adult lives ahead. But what if you moderated their schedule a little and planned more family activities or just gave them more time to be kids. It’s possible that this added balance might benefit them more not only in the future but the present.
So take a breath and take a look at your life. When you find areas of excess, moderate them. Too much work, add a little leisure. Too much leisure, get to work. Are you stuck in front of the TV most nights? Moderate it. Go visit a friend or family member and brighten their day. Go to the park and shoot some hoops or throw some horseshoes or just take a walk. Most importantly, if you have kids and you are not spending much quality time with them... get to it. In fact spending time with family is the one area of our lives that shouldn't be moderated; it should instead be our greatest earthly priority. This said, with most things, if you’ll mix it up and moderate it, you will find the balance in life that lends itself to real personal peace and of course, happiness.
No comments:
Post a Comment