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Osho Quote on Balance and How Both Happiness and Sadness Are Needed In Life

    “Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.”

    Osho

    Beyond the Quote (191/365)

    We don’t go through life, we grow through life. We don’t move along a timeline from birth to death in a unilateral direction. We move bilaterally through life—both upward and downward—like a tree. A tree doesn’t just grow a trunk and branches and leaves in a singular direction towards the sun. It grows roots, too—it grows downward. And without a proportional amount of roots the tree cannot stand. And neither can we.

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    Mark Manson Quote on Experiences and How To Find The Ideal Balance Between Breadth and Depth

      “Yes, breadth of experience is likely necessary and desirable when you’re young—after all, you have to go out there and discover what seems worth investing yourself in.  But depth is where the gold is buried.  And you have to stay committed to something and go deep to dig it up.  That’s true in relationships, in a career, in building a great lifestyle—in everything.”

      Mark Mason, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

      Beyond the Quote (163/365)

      With every major category in life—relationships, career, lifestyle—we must choose how to optimally invest our time. With time being our most precious resource, this is no easy task. How much time should we spend with our family versus our friends? With our current friends versus new friends? On our career versus our vacations? On tasks related to our career versus tasks that might expand our career options? On consuming things produced versus producing things to be consumed? On acquiring more versus minimizing and using less? What Manson points to above, however, is a fundamental insight that can help guide you in this effort.

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      Susan David Quote on Having Emotional Agility and Staying Balanced in the Face of Complexity

        “How we deal with our inner world drives everything. Every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead. The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic. We need greater levels of emotional agility for true resilience and thriving.”

        Susan David, Ph.D, Mindful

        Beyond the Quote (127/365)

        As a result of people being in quarantine because of COVID-19, there have been two conversations that have been happening at large. One group has been pushing for productivity. The idea is to use all of this extra time to do more of that you felt you never had time to do before. Start that blog; write that book; lose that weight; create that website; become that person. The other group has been pushing for conscientious recovery. The idea is that this global pandemic has radically affected all of our lives and has redefined “normal.” We need to be taking this time to mindfully cope with all of new unknowns and pay close attention to our mental health during this global crisis. Both of these schools of thought should be carefully considered by everybody.

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        Miyamoto Musashi Quote on Making The Warrior Walk Your Everyday Walk and Living With Balance

          “One must make the warrior walk his everyday walk.”

          Miyamoto Musashi

          Beyond the Quote (126/365)

          One concept that gets focused on intensely in Martial Arts training is balance. Having good physical balance is important, of course, as you need to be able to kick, punch, and block without falling down or getting tripped up in poor technique. But, balance runs much deeper than just the obvious ability to execute moves without falling. In order to perform optimally in self-defense situations and, more importantly, in life situations as a Martial Artist, we need to be balanced physically, mentally, and emotionally.

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            “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.

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                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.

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                      “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