Don’t Try So Hard – Achieve Balance In Your Life

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Don’t Try So Hard – Achieve Balance In Your Life

Many people in this day and age have forgotten how to enjoy life. Through the hectic pursuits of their goals, people today accumulate stress and anxiety, failing often to achieve their desired outcomes, instead finding a life completely out of balance where their health suffers.

When things go wrong, when you experience sudden reversals and disappointments, your natural tendency will be to respond with negativity, fear, and anger. Whenever you feel hurt or threatened by loss or criticism, you react to protect yourself with the fight-or-flight response.

Well don’t, you have to take firm control over your mind and emotions, and then you will be able to take control over the situation. There is always something that can be done to resolve a problem or improve a situation.

Focus on what you can control, your next decisions and actions.  To be your own turnaround specialist, to take complete control over your life and every crisis that comes along, the first thing you must do is to accept 100% responsibility for yourself and for everything that happens from this minute forward.  Accept responsibility and take charge.

You especially must keep yourself positive and focused.  Above all, refuse to blame anyone for anything.  As soon as you stop blaming other people for what has happened and take responsibility for the future, your negative emotions reduce dramatically, your mind becomes calm and clear, and you begin to make better decisions.

You need to show a level of resilience in response to the inevitable ups and downs of modern life. What I want you to consider, is, are you trying to do too much? Maybe you set your bar to high. Your expectations are too great. Being happy, having a good life that provides emotional, psychological, and spiritual fulfilment and satisfaction is a target that everybody should pursue, first and foremost.

You can indeed have anything you want, there are fewer barriers to individual advancement and opportunity than ever before, but you can’t have everything. You have to be selective. You don’t have the time. No matter how many technological advances our society is now benefiting from, there are still only twenty-four hours in a day and seven days in a week.

There aren’t enough hours in the day to devote yourself to everything you would want to. There aren’t enough days in the week for you to devote yourself to every area of life, to achieve your utmost in each of them. To become the best in any one area will require you to give short shrift to other areas. If you want to be best, you have to show single-minded devotion to that one aspect of your life, at the expense of everything else.

If you are the type of person whose brains is wired so specifically that reaching the top of one aspect of life is so important and only this will lead to happiness and fulfilment, and you are prepared to do this at the expense of everything else, then so be it. But I think for most contentment is achieved from having a more multifaceted life, one in which we do the best we can in a number of different areas by making compromises and choices.

The quest for personal fulfillment doesn’t have a simple solution. There isn’t a one fit all solution that works for everyone. Equally important, the belief that most people have, is  that if they devote most of their waking hours to work, it will provide most of their non- monetary needs, and therefore enable them to reach contentment. Alas, in most cases it doesn’t work out like that.

Rather than look to one aspect of your life to meet all of your needs, you have to balance things out between them all.  You must give time and energy to everything in your life, all its different aspects, and by doing this you give yourself the best opportunity to meet all your different needs. It is so important to understand that for you to achieve contentment,  you need to make compromises and choices. Learn to be selective.

It is time for some internal reflection.  You need to do some thinking and soul-searching. You must determine which areas of your life are taking up too much of your time and energy and leading you to short change other areas in your life. That’s certainly not a simple task. But when you do it, and discover the answer, you must make changes. From then on you must resolve to set aside time each day, or at least each week, to each of the areas of your life that are important to you.

You have to do the best you can in each area, and not allow any of them to suffer. You can’t give 100% effort to everything, you can’t spread yourself that thin, and your health can’t take it.

You may be surprised by the outcome. You actually may find that you achieve more in the individual areas of your lives by creating a more balanced use of your time. Sometimes less really is more. Your best performance may come after you’ve decided you don’t need to give 110% and you remove the pressure for perfection.

So stop trying so hard and focus more on establishing a balanced way of life. Know that finding balance in life can be the key to long lasting happiness.

We all want to be healthy, happy and balanced.  Live a full life with happiness and joy each day.  Achieve balance by slowing down and no longer trying so hard to fit everything in.

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About the author: Larry Lewis
My name is Larry Lewis, Health & Wellness Life Coach, Founder of Healthy Lifestyles Living, contributor to the Huffington Post, recently featured in the Sunday Mail Newspaper and somebody who went from being an owner of a chain of gyms and fitness fanatic, to a visually impaired overweight and incredibly sick person. Read about my illness to wellness story.
8 Comments
  1. I often wonder if part of our problem in our inability to take the sound advice that you have offered us, stands a little bit from the training regarding individuality, success, and the illusion of happiness. From the time I was little, I was often told that happiness can be found by being the very best you that you can be, in the very best you that you can be means that you have found success, socially and financially, and are well respected by individuals within your society. But often success doesn’t come from just being the best you that you can be, and then there is a sense of failure if you are not, for example, top 10% of the economic ladder.

    For me, I have tried to drop out from that group–rhetoric in society, and drop into a personal society which stresses happiness in everyday life as a way to success. But it would be nice if we lived in a world that also viewed such a philosophy. Just a thought.
    So how do we combat the training we get day after day, week after week, news commentary after news commentary about what constitutes the successful you?

    • LarryLewis says:

      Rebecca what a fantastic comment and what an intriquing lady you sound. I’m one of those that does have goals which inspire me, and drive me forward. Yet there achievement isn’t exclusively what brings me happiness. To me you have to be happy now, right at this moment, even when you apire for more. When we are content that doesn’t mean we no longer want to grow and excel. So i completely are in tune with where you are. Only when you are happy, with yourself in particular, can success come your way. It is within ourselves that we should measure our success and not be forced to meet other people’s aspirations for us. thank you so much for your great comment

  2. Jessica Brant says:

    Larry,

    Balance it is : )

    xoxo

    Jessica

    • LarryLewis says:

      Yes Jessica balance, it really has a tremendous benefit for us. We can’t stay in our blogging zone 24/7. It will always be there when we come back to it

  3. Grady Pruitt says:

    I know for myself, it seems I am either trying too hard or I’m not trying hard enough. It can be hard to find. And yet until we find a balance, we never truly seem to find happiness. We must learn to give our goals our all while balancing our need to take time for ourselves and to enjoy life.

    Thanks for sharing this great post!

    • LarryLewis says:

      As always Grady a great comment. Life is always going to present a hard balancing act. I am very much a goal setter, and every goal i give myself i am determined to achieve BUT never at the cost of living a balanced life. It is possible to get the right balance and still be very much goal driven

  4. Deeone says:

    Good day, Larry!
    I can certainly relate to this post. I used to do exactly what you stated here, I tried to master different aspects in my life all at once. The ending product was I never mastered any of them. It wasn’t until I learned and started practicing moderation in my life that I was able to obtain stability to the more important areas. Moderation and balance is definitely key components. When an individual grasp this concept they soon will find that balance in their life isn’t that hard to obtain. It does however require daily practice on the individual’s part. Enjoyed reading this post, mate. 🙂

    • LarryLewis says:

      Deonne moderation and balance, a key concept, hard to implement initially, but you are 100% right, successfully achieving this can lead to far more fulfilment and happiness, and it will enable you to actually achieve so much more. wesome point you’ve made mate, thank you

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