How to get more value and Balance in your Daily Life
Getting both value and balance out of your life is a learning process. Priorities change, events happen that throw you into turmoil, and the biggest learning event in my life was death. Suddenly everything had a different perspective, and I began to understand how to make my life more valuable and balanced knowing that you only get one shot at it, and that getting it wrong wasn't an option for me.
Priorities
In life, you are always facing new challenge. It's almost as if you reach crossroads without sign posts and have to make decisions on which way to make your life go. If you have set priorities, and values, the choices become clearer. I have met many ambitious people, not happy in their lives and unsure of exactly what they are aiming at. Those same people with goals would be able to move forward much more easily, because goal setting and priorities surrounding those goals are so valuable when hit in the face by choice.
What do you want to achieve?
Knowing the kind of person that you are is valuable. Many waiver between one kind of characteristic and another, never balancing out their good points, or making allowance for their weaknesses. In recognizing your good points, you can continue with these as moral values, whilst working on those facets of personality that are holding you back. People are quick to criticize, though how many look at who they are, how they are perceived to others, their value in life and how to make the most of it ?
These are all questions and the old sixties expression of finding yourself comes to mind, although every day of your life is a journey of discovery. People that accept their bad points and don't work on them to try and make them better are accepting less than life offers them. For example, I am weak in concentration levels. As I get older, I lose memories that are dear to me, and work on retaining them. It doesn't sound important perhaps to outsiders that don't have these problems though recognizing that I can do something about it really does matter.
I am a writer. I wanted to hone those skills that I have, though worked for years on little bits of stories creating nothing. Whilst many writers say that they are in the process of writing a book, how many have the concentration to put that much time of their lives aside to achieve it ? I decided it was time for action, and joined the Nanowrimo, where a writer has a target of one month to complete their novel and in fact completed two novels on consecutive years.
What this did was give me confidence that I can in fact achieve goals within my life, as long as I am willing to put myself out to try.
Knowing what you want to achieve and making it a realistic target helps you to get through all the self doubt that stops you going forward and making the most of your life.
The lesson of death
When I lost someone for the first time, I realized how fragile life is, and that no one can judge how long they are going to be on the earth. With this in mind, I set values for my life, in order to live it to the best of my ability in harmony with those around me. One of the stabilizing influences in my life if the premise that what goes around comes around, and I strongly believe that what I get back from my life depends totally upon my giving, and knowing that I did the best I can.
We are not all world leaders. We are not all going to win accolades for our actions, though by setting personal moral codes and values about who we are and the way we perceive life and our aims within that life, what we gain is individual strength of character that is lasting and strong, and belief in ourselves. It took a long time for me to realize I had value. I am just this grain of sand person that is no more special than anyone else, and circumstance kicked me into touch at an early age. Seeing my husband dead at the age of 31 years old put me at shame for the waste of life, and not just his. My own life was laid open to question.
It was time to stop feeling sorry for myself. It was time to make a clear picture of the morals and values that would take me into the future as the best person I was capable of being. The balance was hard. Sometimes, I thought that the whole world was ganged up against me, and that the bricks life kept throwing at me were unmerited and unfair. Dwelling on the unfairness of life doesn't help a human being advance. What does is looking at the bigger picture.
When my mother died, here was a woman who had given very little love to me all my life lying on her deathbed with a whole host of regret too late to do anything about it. I spoke to my doctor about the feelings of grief that I was experiencing as I wasn't sure why I felt such sorrow. As she lay in her bed, my thoughts were not of me, but of her. With a family of six children, I could not understand why the others were not doing their share in being there for a woman who needed her family around her and it wasn't a case of whether she merited it. No human being no matter what they have done in their lives deserves to be so lonely, angry and bottled up with regret.
When she died, I said my goodbyes to her, and the one lesson I learned from my mother, and one I shall always be grateful for is humanity, humility and the value of being the best that I could be and instead of blaming her, I celebrated her life because of the negative lessons she taught me, and the stunning revelation that those lessons made within my life as to the pitfalls to avoid.
It is only when you see the bigger picture that you learn to make your life more valuable and balanced. Understanding grows and as long as you put everything you are into the life you live, are honest and true to the people within your life, then the value of your life becomes substantial. All the pettiness of life like jealousy, hate, greed don't have a place in my day to day living as it is these negatives that eat away at the substance of the value of a human being.
Changing negatives to positives
Taking each one of the negative traits you possess and looking at them from a different perspective helps you grow. Jealousy is counter productive. What are you jealous of? If it is possessions, get it in perspective. Possessions don't make you a better person. If it's looks, grow out of it. You are who you are. Accept that and do the best you can with the material God gave you, and what emerges is more beautiful than aesthetics. It is a beautifully whole person. Hate is destructive. Instead of hating, look at the traits within the human being that you hate, and instead of seeing them as negative, see them as a demonstration to you of traits to avoid, i.e. A lesson in values, and suddenly without hate, your life becomes more meaningful and valuable.
Every negative aspect of a human beings life can be turned around and learned from. Failure is a wonderful lesson. It teaches you humility and keeps the competitive nature of your spirit alive and wanting to try harder. Depression is a stage of life where you want to stop the roundabout and get off, though what it teaches you is appreciation of friendship, and how to be a better friend. Any negative aspect of your life that becomes obsessive will take away value and balance, though this is what many people with negative feelings fail to grasp. The answer lies within their reach, though choosing not to reach, stay stuck in the negative.
Moving forward
When you do get off the roundabout for a while, observe, learn, see the positivity of the world and use it as a lesson in value and balance, and get back on life's roundabout a more complete person.
Spring is here, the flowers are awakening from their winter hibernation, and just as nature demonstrates a cycle of growth, so can you as a human being, letting that budding flower turn into a fully flowering and sustained human being that has both value and balance.
