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Balance Quotes

    “We must be disciplined about our discipline and moderate in our moderation. Life is about balance, not about swinging from one pole to the other. Too many people alternate between working and bingeing, on television, on food, on video games, on laying around wondering why they are bored. The chaos of life leads into the chaos of planning a vacation. Sitting alone with a canvas? A book club? A whole afternoon for cycling? Chopping down trees? Who has the time? If Churchill had the time, if Gladstone had the time, you have the time.”

    Ryan Holiday, Stillness is the Key (Page 240)

    Pico Iyer Quote on Leading A Balanced Life

      “In the end, we need two things to lead a balanced life – a sense of the world and a sense of ourselves; it’s like breathing in and breathing out.  And if you can only get to know the world by stepping out, and losing yourself in experience, you can only get to know the self by stepping back, and finding yourself in contemplation.  One without the other leads to a kind of madness.”

      Pico Iyer

      Beyond the Quote (17/365)

      I think at some point in our lives we all fantasize about traveling the world and living the life of a nomad.  We could wander from one place to the next and fill our days with spontaneous adventures while meeting new and interesting people.  We could explore new cities, take beautiful hikes, have campfires in the woods, listen to new music, and read stories from people who have come before.  We can hitchhike in cars, catch cross country trains, sleep in the back of busses, and take red-eye flights.  Every day would be different and every day would be filled with a wealth of experience that we could easily get lost in.  Sounds pretty great right?

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      Jordan Peterson Quote on Winning—About Letting Growth Taking Precedence Over Victory

        “You have a career and friends and family members and personal projects and artistic endeavors and athletic pursuits.  You might consider judging your success across all the games you play.  Imagine that you are very good at some, middling at others, and terrible at the remainder.  Perhaps that’s how it should be.  You might object: I should be winning at everything!  But winning at everything might only mean that you’re not doing anything new or difficult.  You might be winning but you’re not growing, and growing might be the most important form of winning.  Should victory in the present always take precedence over trajectory across time?”

        Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 88)

        Beyond the Quote (15/365)

        If you’re winning all of the time, every time, at everything, then one of two things has gone wrong: either you’re playing the wrong game(s) or you’re playing the wrong people.  Who cares if you win against a two-year-old in chess all of the time, every time?  There’s no challenge, which means there’s no growth, which means there’s no value.  Either you need a new game to play or you need to find a new person to play the game against.  Even if you were playing chess against one of your peers, and you were crushing them every time, it’s the same issue—no challenge, no growth, no value.

        Read More »Jordan Peterson Quote on Winning—About Letting Growth Taking Precedence Over Victory

        James Patterson Quote on Keeping Priorities Straight In Life

          “Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls…are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”

          James Patterson

          Beyond the Quote (14/365)

          When you’re young, you only have one ball to play with (no juggling required): the family ball.  Your family is your lifeline and they do all of the juggling for you (those were the days, eh?). As you grow older, you slowly start to gain more and more responsibility and you begin to accumulate more and more balls that you eventually need to start juggling.  Next might be the friends ball, then the school ball, then the integrity ball, then the health ball, then the work ball, then a family ball of your own, etc., and this continues until you reach your juggling limits and can no longer properly keep all of the balls suspended in the air. Either something has got to give and one (or more) of them drops, or you stop adding more balls and you get better at juggling the ones you already have.

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          Stephen Covey Quote on Keeping Success Balanced Across All Areas Of Life

            “Many people seem to think that success in one area can compensate for failure in other areas. But can it really?… True effectiveness requires balance.”

            Stephen Covey

            Beyond the Quote (13/365)

            The example that comes up immediately is the widely popular cultural pursuit of work success at the expense of just about any other area of life.  But can workplace success compensate for failed friendships?  Failed marriages?  Failed family life?  Failed integrity?  Failed health?  …I would say confidently, that it cannot.  Real success in life requires balance.  And if we are to become effective at living a life of balance we have to be mindful of, take action on, and make constant adjustments to our priorities.

            Read More »Stephen Covey Quote on Keeping Success Balanced Across All Areas Of Life

              “If you want close, supportive relationships with friends and family members when you’re eighty-five, trace a series of moves leading up to that, all the way back to the present time.  Pleasant, right?  That’s the universe telling you to spend more time with people you care about.  If you want a life of purpose, don’t you think you’d better start finding your purpose now?  You may not get there by working more hours, coming home late, putting off time with your friends and family.  Maybe you want a different job, a long talk with your son, a move to a different part of the country.  Maybe the answer is ending a marriage in which you’re no longer helping each other grow.  I never said this was going to be easy.” ~ John Leland, Happiness is a Choice You Make (Pages 16-17)

                “Be cautious when you’re comparing yourself to others.  You’re a singular being, once you’re an adult.  You have your own particular specific problems—financial, intimate, psychological, and otherwise.  Those are embedded in the unique broader context of your existence.  Your career or job works for you in a personal manner, or it does not, and it does so in a unique interplay with the other specifics of your life.  You must decide how much of your time to spend on this, and how much on that.  You must decide what to let go, and what to pursue.” ~ Jordan Peterson, via 12 Rules for Life (Page 92)

                  “I might intuit that someone feels uneasy or distrustful, and so I would focus on meeting that person’s eyes or speaking warmly and directly to them.  Or my gut may feel tight, in which case I’d scan for signs that someone isn’t being fully honest and exercise greater caution in how much information I share.  Often I feel someone’s negative, needy energy, and I strive like hell to avoid that person or minimize the impact.  I will leave the room when I sense the negativity of a person who has me in his or her radar.  If I can’t excuse myself politely for some reason, I visualize a protective shield surrounding my body that won’t allow any negative energy through.  This works well to keep me balanced in meetings.” ~ Mark Divine, The Way of the Seal

                    “When you spend a lot of time in a hospital and you know a lot of other people with your condition you start to see patterns emerge in the way that they take care of themselves.  I saw these two different extremes: There were these patients who did not give any sh*ts and just never did their treatments, were completely un-compliant, would hide under their covers and not talk to any of the doctors, and were pretty much just giving a giant, “F U” to life — and then there were the patients who were overly compliant, that were perfect with their treatments, that were perfect with their health care, and wanted so desperately to be a good patient.  And I saw both of these extremes fail.  I saw people who spent every single waking hour of the day focusing on their health and trying to get better and I saw them pass away before I did.  I saw them pass away without having become anything more than just a patient.  I saw them pass away without having made anything in the world that they were proud of.  And of course the other end didn’t work either because they happened to die as well.  So I was trying to find some kind of balance.  If I only lived to get better, if I only lived for fixing myself, for getting healthy—then what was I actually contributing to the world?” ~ Claire Wineland (20), EEM LA 2018

                    Balance is the key. In everything you do.

                      Balance is the key. In everything you do.

                      Picture Quote Text:

                      “Balance is the key.  In everything you do.  Dance all night long and practice yoga the next day.  Drink wine but don’t forget your green juice.  Eat chocolate when your heart wants it and kale salad when your body needs it.  Wear high heels on Saturday and walk barefoot on Sunday.  Live high and low.  Move and stay still.  Embrace all sides of who you are.  Be brave, bold, spontaneous and loud and let that complement your abilities to find silence, patience, modesty and peace.  Aim for balance.  Make your own rules and follow your own path and don’t let anybody tell you how to live according to theirs.” ~ Rachel Brathen

                        “Eventually, happiness was just a speck on the horizon, way off in the distance.  The closer I got, the farther I had to go.  Turns out that I’d been running as fast as I could in the wrong direction.  Oops.  The stuff wasn’t doing its job; it wasn’t making me happy.  Depression set in when I no longer had time for a life outside of work, laboring eighty hours a week just to pay for the stuff that wasn’t making me happy.  I didn’t have time for anything I wanted to do: no time to write, no time to read, no time to relax, no time for my closest relationships.  I didn’t even have time to have a cup of coffee with a friend, to listen to his stories.  I realized that I didn’t control my time, and thus I didn’t control my own life.  It was a shocking realization.” ~ The Minimalists, Everything That Remains

                          “The more you have and do, the harder maintaining fidelity to your purpose will be, but the more critically you will need to.  Everyone buys into the myth that if only they had that – usually what someone else has – they would be happy.  It may take getting burned a few times to realize the emptiness of this illusion.  We all occasionally find ourselves in the middle of some project or obligation and can’t understand why we’re there.  It will take courage and faith to stop yourself.” ~ Ryan Holiday, Ego is the Enemy