The best and safest thing is to keep
a balance in your life, acknowledge
the great powers around us and in us.
If you can do that, and live that way,
you are really a wise person.

Euripides

  

Weakness and strength are necessary for balance.  No one or nothing is only weak or only strong.  But some of us overlook our weaknesses, and even deny that we have them.  That can be dangerous, because denying there is a weakness is in itself a weakness.  Likewise, accepting that we have weaknesses becomes a strength.  And by the same token, overestimating strength is a weakness.  You should not be blinded by your strengths.  The feeling of strength is not the same as having strength.  Neither should you ignore your weaknesses.  Know them well, too.

Joseph M. Marshall III

      
Learning not to grapple with every little thing that comes along is quite a struggle for many of us.  The eggs are too runny; the coffee is not hot enough; the clothes don’t fit exactly perfectly.  Some of us have so fashioned our lives around perfecting the details of the small stuff that we never catch a glimpse of the bigger picture.  We so distract our lives with details and convincing ourselves that everything matters that we live out of harmony and out of balance.

Anne Wilson Schaef
Meditations for Living in Balance
  
Living in balance and purity is the highest good for you and the earth.

Deepak Chopra
   
We in the West don't think much in terms of balance, and obviously we should.  Even the very thought of an exquisite union and balance of all our forces, both physical and mental, has a gentle, hopeful ring to it. . . . All of us must find a bridge between our physical and spiritual parts.  When that balance is achieved, what a happy comfort for ourselves!

Edward J. Lavin
 

We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium
in the face of any situation rests within ourselves.

Francis Braceland

   

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The cost of success will be too high if
you choose not to lead a balanced life.

Linda Stryker

   

As I grew up, I had no real examples of balance.  My family was constantly
in a state of imbalance, and I learned that as a norm--we were all just
waiting for the next terrible thing to come along and throw our world out
of whack.  It wasn't just that I wasn't able to be balanced; rather, I had
no idea what balance was or what it felt like.  As I've grown up, though,
I've come to learn that much of what I've seen as problems is actually simply
a question of me focusing too much on one or two negative things rather than
allowing them to be part of a greater whole, a whole that is in a healthy
balance as I focus also on the positive and the healthy.  This doesn't mean
that I ignore the bad or pretend it doesn't exist.  It simply means that I give
the bad its due, just as I give the good its due--and no more than its due.

tom walsh

   

Life is often messy, uncertain, and unpredictable.  Sometimes it's a string
of troubles that seem to never end.  That's normal.  Ups and downs
are normal.  Being ill on occasion is normal.  Feeling peaceful and happy
are normal.  Occasional low-energy days are normal.  According to Chinese
medicine, it is accepted as natural that we fluctuate from being in balance
to being out of balance.  Peace of mind comes from not attaching a great
deal of significance to either state.  We simply note our moods and
physical states and gently move toward balance as best we can,
accepting it all as part of the flow of life.

Charlotte Davis Kasl

   

   

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Balance in your life between work and your personal life is
very important.  Without balance, you eventually burn out,
negatively affecting your performance at work.

Byron Pulsifer
   

Are you balanced?  Do you share your time, your energy, your life, as much
with yourself as you do with those around you?. . . . Know your limits.
You are one of the most important people you need to look after and love.
Balance your time, your energy, your life with those around you.  You'll be able
to give more freely and joyfully as a result, and you'll be more open to the
gifts of the universe.  It's not wrong to give to others.
But it's okay to say yes to ourselves, too.

Melody Beattie

   

Fortunate indeed are the people who take exactly the right measure of themselves and hold a just balance between what they can acquire and what they can use.

Peter Latham

Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life.  It starts with recognizing your talents and finding ways to serve others by using them.

Thomas Kinkade

Live a balanced life--learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Robert Fulghum

Sameness is not always balancing.

unattributed

    

  

Balance is the perfect state of still water.
Let that be our model.
It remains quiet within and is not disturbed on the surface.

Confucius

   
Balance will never be attained once and for all.  That's just the
way life is.  That is the human condition.  We can either accept
it or keep trying to live in illusion. . . . The most balancing thing
we can do for ourselves is accept the joy of feeling balanced
when we do, recognizing that the balancing and rebalancing of
ourselves is an ongoing process that offers us
a minute-by-minute opportunity.

Anne Wilson Schaef
Meditations for Living in Balance
   

The Amish love the Sunshine and Shadow quilt pattern.  It shows
two sides--the dark and light, spirit and form--and the challenge of
bringing the two into a larger unity.  It's not a choice between
extremes:  conformity or freedom, discipline or imagination,
acceptance or doubt, humility or a raging ego.  It's a
balancing act that includes opposites.

Sue Bender

   

To strike the right balance in life is one of the supreme essentials of all
successful living.  We must work, for we must have bread.  We require
other things than bread. They are not only valuable, comfortable, but
necessary.  It is a dumb, stolid being, however, who does not realize
that life consists of more than these.  They spell mere existence, not
abundance, fullness of life.  We can become so absorbed in making a
living that we have no time for living.  To be capable and efficient in
one's work is a splendid thing; but efficiency can be made a great
mechanical device that robs life of far more than it returns it.

A nation can become so possessed, and even obsessed, with the idea
of power and grandeur through efficiency and organization, that it
becomes a great machine and robs its people of the finer fruits of life
that spring from a wisely subordinated and coordinated individuality.
Here again it is the wise balance that determines all.

Ralph Waldo Trine
"The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit"

   
   
We all need balance in our lives.  Very few of us would survive an
existence that is totally filled with fear, doubts, and negativity.  Just
as rain nurtures beautiful green grass and sunlight can kindle a sense
of warmth and inner peace, so challenges can compel us to seek for
a greater understanding--engendering new beliefs and ideas about life.
Happy times can provide for pleasant memories to relive during the
difficult experiences, and, like old friends, good memories can fill the
void when we mistakenly feel like everything joyous has abandoned us.

John Marks Templeton
Worldwide Laws of Life
   

We need to find the "middle way" in our own lives.  It is the art of
finding balance.  Reflecting upon our lives, we soon discover what
serves us well--nurturing calmness, ease, and simplicity.  We also
discover what it is that leads to entanglement, confusion, distress, and
anxiety.  Wisdom is being able to discern the difference, then knowing
what we need to nurture and what we need to learn to let go.

Christina Feldman

  

   
The Balanced Self
Wilferd A. Peterson

The man walks out on the high wire over empty space, sways above the breathless crowd, defies the law of gravity. . . .

The successful living of a life can be compared to walking across a high wire.

The indispensable quality needed is balance.

The balanced self is the well-integrated self.  A harmonious combination of all the constructive elements of personality makes the self whole.

The balanced self practices moderation, avoids extremes, follows the maxim "Not anything too much."

The balanced self meets the challenges of life with equanimity.  It is neither exalted by success nor dejected by failure.  It meets despair with hope and climbs the heights with humility.

The balanced self maintains mental equilibrium. It has ideals without illusions.  It separates fact from fancy.  It keep a level head.

The balanced self is mature.  It considers everything from a grown-up viewpoint balanced by a child's simplicity.

The balanced self balances dreams with action.  It uses the power of inner thought to inspire outer achievement.  And it uses action to stimulate further dreams.

The balanced self guards against quick emotional reactions.  It does not jump to impulsive conclusions.  It delays action until it has had time, calmly and fairly, to balance all the factors involved.

The balanced self is resilient; it is flexible to change.  Like a tree in the wind, it bends without breaking.

The balanced self knows the error of constant effort.  It renews itself through prayer and relaxation, that it may apply a higher impact of energy and creative power to the task at hand.

The balanced self lives a balanced life.  It balances work and play, love and worship.

The balanced self maintains the I AM of the spirit at the center of self, in full command of its destiny.
  

    

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Life has already set it up by making indulgence in extremes self-policing.
When we swing too far to one end of the pendulum, we are forced in
the opposite direction.  After experiencing both polarities, we extract the
best of both worlds and find a middle way that works.

Alan Cohen
The Tao Made Easy

   

To live in a harmonious balance of
commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.

Jane Rule

   

Balance (harmony) is never static.  One does not achieve a state of balance
that, once achieved, will stay that way forever.  We may want to get our bodies
in shape--and we can.  Yet those bodies are a process, and being in shape is
ongoing, not something one accomplishes and then moves on to bigger and better
things.  We may want to get our cars or our houses just the way we want them,
and we can do that.  And the balance we seek for our houses or cars is fleeting
at best.  Life is just like our checkbooks.  We need to learn the tools for bringing
them back into balance, for once we get them balanced, they will only have a
possibility of staying that way if never use them again.
Living in harmony is an ongoing process.

Anne Wilson Schaef
Meditations for Living in Balance

  

Balance in all things doesn't mean balance in your actions, but balance
within.  When you are balanced and at one with yourself, your actions
will reflect your inner serenity.  Stop giving yourself expectations and
an ideal to live up to.  Stop thinking of the outcome.  Surrender to your
instincts, your heart, and your faith.  Doing what feels harmonious
with your true feelings is always the right decision.

Lacey M.

    
   
Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes.  If it were always a fist
or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.  Your deepest
presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as
beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings.

Rumi
The Essential Rumi
  

The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us. . . .
The madness of this planet is largely a result of the human being's
difficulty in coming to virtuous balance with him- or herself. 

Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love

  

The major work of the world is not done by geniuses.  It is done
by ordinary people, with balance in their lives, who have
learned to work in an extraordinary manner.

Gordon B. Hinckley

  
There is no such thing as work-life balance.  Everything
worth fighting for unbalances your life.

Alain de Botton
  

When everything is in its right place within us,
we ourselves are in balance with the whole work of God.

Henri Frederic Amiel

   

  
It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance between two conflicting needs:  the most skeptical scrutiny of all hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great openness to new ideas.  Obviously those two modes of thought are in some tension.  But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes, whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble.

If you are only skeptical, then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new.  You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.)  But every now and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and progress.

On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot distinguish the useful as from the worthless ones.

Carl Sagan
  
Balance is the key to my serenity.  I attain balance by listening to my
inner wisdom and to the wisdom of others.  There is no situation in which
I cannot find a point of balance.  There is no circumstance in which I
cannot find inner harmony.  As I ask to be led into equilibrium and clarity,
I will find that my answers come to me.  I am wiser than I know, more capable
of right action and attitudes than I yet believe.  In every event, I seek
the balance point of God's action through me.

Julia Cameron
  

I believe we're called to give our best to God; our work should be
done with gusto and quality.  But we're also called to lives of
balance, and when we get out of balance, our work becomes
a legalistic going-through-the-motions, not something filled with
heart.  Our work becomes more important than the people whom it's
intended for.  Our lives are guided by our heads and not our hearts.

Bob Welch

  

One of the things I find fascinating about God’s creation is the
way he seems to temper the negative environmental elements with
corresponding positive ones.  For instance, without the nearly
ceaseless rains of the northwest, no incomparable green scenery
would greet the eye from all directions.  And the snow that snuggles
atop Mt. Hood, Mt. Rainier, and Mt. St. Helens would not exist if, at
lower elevations, there were no rain. . . . God’s creative style ensures
that something wonderful will offset something less than wonderful.
In everything God seems to be balanced.

Marilyn Meberg

  

  
  

When Walker first steps onto the road, he has no thoughts, no history, no memories, and no clothes. As he travels and meets people and learns from them, he comes to know more about life, living, and becoming the person he's meant to be. Walker is a parable for all of us who wonder what might be the purpose of life, why bad things happen with almost as much regularity as good things, and how we can learn from the bad examples and experiences in our lives as much as we can learn from the good things. Tom Walsh's parable is a story of the ages, a timeless exploration of ideas and thoughts that all of us wonder about, a sincere and heartfelt portrait of a man who has no past and no future, but who learns to make the most of each precious present moment as it comes.