Welcome,
and thank you so much for being here!
We've put together this issue with our usual goal of
providing
heart-felt and useful uplifting material, and we
certainly hope
that you're able to find something here that speaks
to you!
There is no loneliness if one is
satisfied with oneself. -
Hans-Ulrich Rieker
It
is astonishing how much more
people
are interested in
lengthening life than improving it. -
Charles
C. Colton
Laughter
lifts us over high ridges and lights up dark valleys
in a way that makes life so much easier. It is a priceless gem,
a gift of release and healing direct from Heaven. -
Alan
Cohen
Treat the earth well: it was
not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you
by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors;
we borrow it from our Children. -
Native American Proverb
Recall a time when you woke up in the middle of the night worrying about
something--perhaps a work issue or an unresolved conflict. Most likely
your mind jumped from one concern to the next, as each anxious thought reminded
you of something that in turn created another worry. Maybe you started
thinking about an uncomfortable interaction with a family member, or you
recalled the way a colleague at the office had been dismissive toward you and
as a result you felt resentful. Do you remember repeating certain
conversations in your mind and regretting what you said or didn't say, or
rehearsing what you would say next time if you got the chance? Probably
the more you thought about it, the more agitated you felt.
Or maybe you woke up and started worrying about money, about all the expenses
piling up. How would you ever manage? Did this lead to thoughts
about other people who were better off, or those who didn't have so many
financial issues? Did the envy make you more upset; did it make you feel
more helpless or angry or even more of a victim?
So there you were, tossing and turning in bed, exhausted by your own thoughts
and emotions; and to top it all off, realizing that you had an especially busy
day ahead, you got scared about not being able to get back to sleep. How
would you get through the day after having been awake all night? And this
new vicious circle of thinking continued, feeding on itself, consuming you in
its reality.
If
you recognize yourself in this scenario, don't feel
bad. This is typical of what the ego does whenever
you feel threatened or unsafe in any way, especially with
the uncertainty of a health issue or if you are in the
midst of major change. The ego simply does not know
how to deal with challenging feelings like vulnerability
and feeling out of control. When the ego is running
the show, you can notice a dynamic: One thought
generates an emotion that leads to another thought that
generates another emotion. Round and round you go
like a dog chasing its tail--well, in this case tale--becoming
increasingly agitated and upset, even if in the moment you
are otherwise fine, safe, and secure in your bed.
Meanwhile, you never even really recognize the original
feeling that triggered this mental stampede; you never
actually face it and meet it with awareness.
To get you so worked up, the ego has to make you oblivious
to the present moment, because the ego recedes when you
are fully in the Now. So to maintain itself, your
ego will yank you away from the Now--away from reality,
thought by thought. If you begin to observe what
your ego is doing (as we will soon discuss), you will
notice that when the ego leads your awareness away from
the Now moment, there are only four places it can take
you: into the past, into the future, into stories
about yourself, and into stories about others.
The good news is that you can get off this
not-so-merry-go-round as soon as you recognize that you
are not in the present. Ask yourself, "What is
actually happening now?" Look around you,
observe, and listen. What is the contrast between
your actual situation in your immediate surroundings--the
sounds, the quality of light, the colors, and so
on--versus the mental and emotional world created by your
thoughts? Become aware of your breathing and bodily
sensations. Let yourself relax. You may be
sick, but you aren't under attack, except by your own
thoughts.
Recognize what your ego has done: It has yanked you
out of the present, into memories and expectations.
Thinking about the past has created emotions of guilt,
blame, regret, or nostalgia and thinking about an
imaginary future has generated anxiety and
fearfulness. You have been overtaken by debilitating
mind-made emotion. This intense self-contraction is
the hallmark of ego at its worst. But becoming aware
that you are not in the present and realizing I'm in
the future or I'm in the past is what it takes
to wake up out of the dream and drama.
As you restore yourself to the present, the inner turmoil
recedes because you have stemmed the tide of thoughts that
had been creating and sustaining it. You are cutting
through delusions. As you begin to use the power of
your awareness to come back to the present moment, you
become more embodied, more awake to your true self, and
able to address the demands of your life with clarity.
Every time you leave the Now, you inevitably identify with
a story you tell yourself, about yourself, your health, or
your life. It is as though you've fallen down the
rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland into an
imaginary universe. But unlike Alice, who knew that
she was in a fantasy world, most of us are totally
convinced that it is real.
This is crucial to understand, because blind
identification with your stories will continue forever
unless you recognize the pattern and expose it to the
light of Now-moment awareness. You are only your
authentic self when you wake up and take your rightful
place as the aware being watching the whole show but no
longer captured by it.
The process of awakening into greater awareness and
presence is sometimes referred to as the death of the
ego. In fact, many spiritual teachings talk about
killing the ego. But the ego doesn't and indeed
shouldn't die as you develop a high degree of presence;
rather, it ceases to rule your mind and determine your
experience. Thereafter, it serves awareness by
providing your unique point of view, but no longer in a
way that defines your identity, separates you, and makes
you special. As the ego recedes and awareness
prevails, your identity as a separate self becomes less
dominant, and at last you really taste the fullness of
being.
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What do you need to feel safe in the
world? It's the same set of skills that
children need.
The acceptance of your physical
characteristics. Are you careful not to
tease children about their physical image?
Are you comfortable with yours?
Friendships with people of both sexes. Can
you trust both men and women?
Emotional independence. Can you separate
yourself from the adults who parented you?
Can you survive alone? Do you see yourself
as a separate individual? Do you encourage
your children to take care of themselves?
Do you have a clear set of personal
values? Not values that are an imitation
of your parents', but ones you have carefully
thought out and chosen to live by?
Are you involved in your community? Some
contribution to the larger good is essential to
well-being. Children need early
involvement in giving and being a part of their
community.
Can you stand alone economically? Economic
independence is essential to peace of mind.
Parent your children with these thoughts in mind
and consider them yourself. A safe
personal foundation allows you and them to take
risks and to choose a fuller and more creative
life.
Living
Life Fully, the e-zine
exists to try to provide for visitors of the world wide web a
place
of growth, peace, inspiration, and encouragement. Our
articles
are presented as thoughts of the authors--by no means do
we
mean to present them as ways that anyone has to live
life. Take
from them what you will, and disagree with
whatever you disagree
with--just know that they'll be here for you
each week.
You
can kiss your family and
friends good-bye and put miles
between you,
but at the same
time you carry them with you in
your heart,
your mind,
your stomach,
because you do not just live in
a world but a
world lives in you.
Frederick Buechner
Strategies for
Finding Balance
I've often been out of
balance, and I still am from time to time. It's easy for me
to get out of balance for two main reasons: I grew up in a
family that hardly knew any balance at all, and I live in a
society in which balance not only is neglected as an important
personal trait, but is actually discouraged by the marketers who
want me to spend more time and money on their products. Ours
is also a society in which overworking has actually become a norm
for many people, and the work/rest balance is one of the most
difficult of all for many people to find.
Most of my strategies for finding balance are highly dependent
upon mindfulness, for it's almost impossible to even know that I'm
out of balance unless I'm mindful of my current situations.
For example, if my mind is hyperfocused on one stressful situation
that is keeping me feeling awful, I have to be able to recognize
the fact that I'm out of balance if I want to do anything to
re-establish the balance I so desperately need.
And that's one of the major myths we grow up learning: the
situation is what's causing us stress. Actually, most often
it's our reactions to the situations that are causing the stress
because we allow our lives to fall out of balance in order to (we
think) cope with the situation. The reality is that if we
maintain our balance, almost all situations are fairly easy to
deal with because we're able to recognize them for what they truly
are--probably important, but not nearly as drastic as we make them
out to be.
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
It's now fairly
easy for me to recognize when I'm out of
balance. I'm stressed out, I'm worried, I'm
disliking something that I normally like, I'm not
getting work done that's usually easy for me to do,
I'm not enjoying the company of people I normally
love to be around. When I recognize these
symptoms, instead of getting annoyed with myself, I
now tell myself that something is out of balance,
and I find a place to be alone in the quiet so that
I can find out what it is. Sometimes I'm
worried because one job has become so pressing that
I'm neglecting another one; sometimes social or
volunteering commitments have taken up much more
time for a while, and something else has fallen by
the wayside--perhaps I've been running less, and
running is one of my most effective means for
dealing with stress.
I've even gone through times in which one job has
basically taken over my whole life for a period of
time, and when that has happened, I've simply
acknowledged that for that period of time, there
will be no balance, and I commit myself fully to the
tasks at hand, knowing that I will get back to the
state of balance soon (being in the Army during
wartime was one of those situations, as was leading
a group of students on study abroad programs in
Spain).
So what are the strategies for dealing with being
out of balance? Since there are so many areas
of our lives that are part of any equation, it's
important to figure out just where the changes need
to come. For example, our work and family
lives may be out of balance, while our rest time is
still fine. If work is taking away from our
family lives, we need to recognize this and make
some adjustments. Perhaps I'm working extra
hours because I want the promotion, but my
relationships with my wife and children are
suffering. Could it be possible that your
family would much prefer your presence to the extra
income that the promotion would bring? Is it
possible that you could adjust your work schedule to
go in earlier in the morning when family time isn't
as important? Perhaps you could put off the
promotion for a year in order to strengthen your
family ties. Or you could sit down with your
family and tell everyone what's going on, and make a
promise (which you'll keep, of course) that when the
promotion comes, you'll be spending more time with
them.
Or perhaps it's time to find a job that doesn't ask
so much of a sacrifice from you. There are
wonderful jobs out there that do allow for the
people who do them to have a happy and fulfilling
family life.
Many of us find it difficult to balance what we earn
with what we spend, and the easy availability of
credit has made this even more of a problem.
We're now able to spend money we don't have, and we
don't realize that we're ransoming our futures when
we do so. Part of this problem arises from our
inability to distinguish between what we want and
what we need--we spend money because we think we
need something, and then we end up rarely using
it. This is not an effective strategy for
managing our finances. The most effective
strategy that I've found is simply to wait--when I'm
in a store and I see something I think I need, I
often force myself to wait a week before I buy
it. It's amazing how many of those things I've
ended up not needing at all.
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
Another
strategy that I use is to write down things that I
need and want under two headings--needs and
wants. Once I'm writing them down with the vow
of being honest to myself, I'm often surprised by
just how many of the things that I thought I would
write in the "needs" column end up in the
"wants" column. The items in the
needs column, of course, get the highest priority;
the items in the other column then need to be
prioritized.
But what about those days when you're feeling
stressed out and you just can't seem to figure out
why? Those are days when eventually I come to
my senses and simply say to myself, "Wait a
minute. If I'm feeling this way, something has
to be out of balance." Otherwise, I
wouldn't be feeling that way. Then I take
stock of what I'm doing and what I'm thinking about,
with an eye out for the area that is
unbalanced. Perhaps I'm worrying about money
and not focusing on the work I'm supposed to be
doing. Maybe I'm thinking about a problem at
work and not paying attention to my family, even
though I'm with them.
In those cases, I have to be stern with myself and
force myself to stop what I'm doing--the thinking or
the stressing--and refocus my energy towards the
areas that are being neglected. If I find that
I'm neglecting my need for recreation, I'll take a
walk or go for a run. If I'm neglecting my
family, I'll make sure that I spend time with them
very soon. If I'm neglecting work, I'll
identify the most important thing that needs to be
done for work right now, and then I'll sit
down and do it.
Of course, if I'm looking for true balance in my
life, these things will need sustained effort, not
just today's small attempt to put things back in
balance. And that sustained effort depends
upon our ability to make decisions that will
maintain balance rather than destroy it--I need to
decide that I'm going to spend a certain amount of
time on my favorite hobby and then do so if that
hobby is going to be beneficial to me. I need
to decide that I'm not going to become overwhelmed
with work and then constantly make decisions that
allow that original decision to become my reality.
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
Sue's words
here are important to keep in mind. Many of us
aren't able to recognize that some things aren't all
there is--we don't have to spend seventy hours a
week at the office to be good at our jobs. We
don't need to be the next Olympian in our sport and
spend all of our spare time training if our work and
families are crying out for our attention. We
can't spend all of our spare time sitting in front
of the television when there are other parts of our
lives that need our attention.
When we talk about regrets later in life, many of
them come from our inability to balance our lives
earlier. Much of what people regret are the
things they've neglected in favor of other things
that have turned out to be not nearly as fulfilling
as they thought they would be. Wherever we are
in life right now, it's extremely important that we
start to pay attention to balance, for when our own
lives are well balanced, then we can actually be
much more helpful to the other people who need our
help in life.
If we fight
against the waves
that pass
over us in life, we are
overpowered. If we move with
the waves in life
as they roll
over us, the wave passes on.
Pesikta Zurtarti
A few years ago, on a liner bound for
Europe, I was browsing in the library when I came across a
puzzling line by Robert Louis Stevenson:
"Extreme busyness, whether at school, kirk, or
market, is a symptom of deficient vitality."
Surely, I thought, "deficient" is a mistake--he
must have meant "abundant." But R.L.S.
went merrily on, "It is no good speaking to such
folk: they can not be idle, their nature is
not generous enough."
Was it possible that a bustling display of energy might
only be a camouflage for a spiritual vacuum? The
thought so impressed me that I mentioned it next day to
the French purser, at whose table I was sitting. He
nodded his agreement. "Stevenson is
right," he said. "Indeed, if you will
pardon my saying so, the idea applies particularly to you
Americans. A lot of your countrymen keep so busy
getting things done that they reach the end of their lives
without ever having lived at all."
Arthur Gordon
If
we could but recognize our common humanity, that we do
belong together,
that our destinies are bound up in one another's, that we
can be free only together,
that we can be human only together, then a glorious world
would come into being
where all of us lived harmoniously together as members of
one family, the human family.
Desmond Tutu
We do not succeed
in changing things according to our desire,
but gradually our desire
changes. The situation that we hoped to
change because it was
intolerable becomes unimportant. We have
not managed to surmount the obstacle, as we were absolutely
determined to do, but life has taken
us around it, led us past it,
and then if we turn around to gaze at the
remote past, we can
barely catch sight of it, so imperceptible
has it
become.
Marcel
Proust
Yes, life
can be mysterious and confusing--but there's much of life that's
actually rather dependable and reliable. Some principles apply
to life in so many different contexts that they can truly be called
universal--and learning what they are and how to approach them and use
them can teach us some of the most important lessons that we've ever
learned.
My doctorate is in Teaching and Learning. I use it a lot when I
teach at school, but I also do my best to apply what I've learned to
the life I'm living, and to observe how others live their lives.
What makes them happy or unhappy, stressed or peaceful, selfish or
generous, compassionate or arrogant? In this book, I've done my
best to pass on to you what I've learned from people in my life,
writers whose works I've read, and stories that I've heard.
Perhaps these principles can be a positive part of your life, too! Universal Principles of Living Life Fully. Awareness of
these principles can explain a lot and take much of the frustration
out of the lives we lead.
Explore all of our
quotations pages--these links will take you to the first page of each
topic, and those pages will contain links to any additional pages on
the same topic (there are five pages on adversity, for example).
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