1. Eliminate distractions. Divest
yourself of negative and draining influences, people and situations. It's
awfully hard to remain on-balance if someone or something is constantly tugging
at you, but that's just what some friends, acquaintances, and circumstances
do. The normal tendency in such cases is to humor, tolerate, and excuse them.
Wrong! Gaining or regaining balance in one's life requires that one be ruthless
in eliminating influences that would push or pull one off center. Tough to
do, but absolutely essential.
2. Establish boundaries and standards.
These are two kinds of autopilot. Boundaries ensure that others do not
intrude upon your space, time, energy, etc. Boundaries are the imaginary,
but well understood lines that tell others how far they can go or how close
they can come. For example, one of your boundaries might be that you do not
allow others to make demands upon you. They can suggest, request, advise,
and recommend, but they can't demand. Standards, on the other hand, are rules
to which you hold yourself accountable. You might, for example, have a personal
standard of always doing outstanding work, not criticizing others, or listening
more than you talk. As standards, these are simply automated choices—things
you do out of conscious habit. Having standards enables you to live life in
a more relaxed way; you don't have to re-decide in every instance, you have
only to follow the standard you have set for yourself.
3. Become fit in terms of nutrition, exercise,
and lifestyle. Fitness is a requirement for balance, because the fully
fit person wastes less time and energy getting things done and accomplishes
them more easily. Fitness involves viewing body and mind as interdevelopmental
systems in which every part performs and essential role.
4. Put self, family, work, and leisure
in proper perspective. The order here is not accidental. If you don't
put your "self" first, you cannot give your best to others. If family is more
burden than delight, you are missing both valuable learning and intimate joy.
And if work is all-consuming, that's just what it will do to you: it will
eat you alive. As the saying goes, no one on their death bed ever lamented
that they hadn't spent more time at the office!
5. Be fully present. To be fully present
is to enjoy a relaxed attentiveness that takes in all but does not judge.
It is to be able to focus on a single person, idea or topic to the extent
that all else becomes imperceptible background noise. And finally, to be fully
present is to have no preoccupations with past of future. Being fully present
takes practice and a willingness to purposefully exclude all that is not directly
relevant to the subject at hand, and to remain in the now even when drifting
off into memory or speculation might be more appealing.
6. Act deliberately. To act deliberately
is to act carefully, without haste, and in full awareness of the consequences
of your actions. Deliberate action is paced action rather than automatic reaction.
Deliberate action fosters quietness of mind and body. Deliberate action begins
with a single step, word or thought and all those that follow, each monitored
with the full relaxed awareness of total present mindfulness.
7. Listen and observe while withholding
judgment. If you can be fully present and act deliberately in all that
you do, this step is accomplished automatically. All too often, judgment is
an imposition upon experience that is designed—sometimes subconsciously—to
shield, protect, and promote ourselves. "Objective judgment" is almost an
oxymoron, for rarely can we meet the standard set by a great teacher nearly
two thousand years ago ... "as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because
I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me."
(The Bible, John:5:30).
8. Meditate. To meditate is to allow
the scales to settle into peaceful quiet balance. There are many ways to meditate—breath,
mantric, and action to name only three. The point is that regular disciplined
meditation affords mind and body a "safe harbor" from the tugs and pulls of
daily life. Meditation is the deep stillness that is revealed when all the
noise is swept away. If you don't meditate, you're robbing yourself of an
immediately available peace.
9. Become aligned. With what? With
the infinite precision and accuracy of the spiritual universe. Becoming aligned
is at first an act of extreme faith because, chances are, the world will be
screaming at you that all is NOT well, when it is! To become aligned is to
discover your place and course, not in an intellectual way, but in the form
of a quiet confidence that calms and assures. Alignment springs from the sudden
or gradual awareness that all, right now, at this moment, is RIGHT!
10. Live in integrity. Shakespeare
said it so well: "To thine own self be true, and thou canst not be false to
any man (or woman)". To live in integrity is to have no regrets for your actions,
to not need to apologize to others, to be real to yourself and to them, and
to recognize that you ARE special, unique, and precious.
