How to maintain a balance in life and love

I’m sure you’ve been to Cirque du Soleil or some such performance where balance is such an integral part of the act that, well, you sit in awe at the genius of those performers.

Not only can they jump, fly, ride, juggle, bend, twist, run, and throw flames, they can do it standing on one foot, 20 meters above the ground, on a high wire… “how do they do that?” we gasp… and so we should, it’s amazing…

I paddle a an ocean ski. In the morning, balance is better than the afternoon. In the afternoons I need to do more focus training in order to create the same balance I automatically get in the morning. I suspect all people who test their balance in their physical life experience the same thing.

As the day goes on, and the noise of thinking accumulates, balance in the mind becomes, shall we say, less relaxed, more foggy… and I think that is understandable.

Balancing on a before they were terrorised, Phillippe Petit demonstrated the highest form of his art of balance. If you watch the film, you’ll notice one very important element of balance and that explains why afternoons are less balanced than mornings.

You see, Phillippe never looks down, or at the wire. His balance is dictated by moving his feet along the wire (means he’s in the moment 1,000%) but his mind is focused on the horizon… That’s where his balance comes from, the horizon or a nearby landmark.

As the day progresses we start to focus more and more on the moment. We become drilled down int the details of whatever it is we’re working on or doing. If we’re bored we’ll start feeling sorry for ourselves, if we’re hectic we’ll start feeling exhausted, if we’re under pressure we may even start to feel angry. As feelings go from the horizon to ourselves, to how we feel, our balance focus goes from the horizon to the rope… and will that, we have no balance at all.

Morning tea, Lunch, afternoon tea, coffee breaks are not face feeding times alone. They are times to feed the heart and soul and to do that, we need to refocus our mind on the horizon. Now, most people waste this opportunity by getting more into how they feel, more conversation about work more dialogue about the problems they are working on… so, instead of improving their balance, they actually make it worse.

For the mind, heart and soul, the horizon is the question, WHY. Why am I doing this. Where am I taking this? Where is this taking me? It all emanates from WHY…

The horizon at work is WHY… and

Balance in Relationship

Two lovers with a big WHY will sort through lots of flotsam and jetsam in their relationship. Why are we together, means, What are we creating together… and while there’s a healthy answer to that, there’s a great balance. But some couples have a WHY that’s spoken in the language of the primal self, “I am here because you make me happy.” So their horizon is the wire, and looking at the wire is no balance at all… hence, emotion, feelings, self obsession dictate the life and love they share. That is no relationship at all… it’s an emotional crutch that will eventually snap.

Work in Balance

99% of decisions that are made after 2.00pm in the day are wrong. People who train for sport in the morning are spending the most balanced, focused and productive time of the day blowing energy out the door. Instead, all great teachers of health, sport and lifestyle know to recommend the opposite. Think in the morning, sport in the afternoon. If I ran a large organisation I’d be encouraging my staff to arrive at breakfast and leave at 3.00pm… “Go Play” I’d say… and let their sport, family and friends benefit from downtime.

Live in Balance

Almost 100% of suicides take place in the afternoon and evening. Those that don’t are because the individual has stayed up all night until the early hours of the morning. So really the afternoon has just lingered on and on and on.

We’re not all suicidal, but we do get FUNK… And funk is, if left out of control, the early signs of imbalance (too much focus on the NOW) or, in other language, “SELF OBSESSION.” How we deal with funk is important, avoiding it is impossible, it just comes back later, getting therapy for it magnifies it out of all proportion and talking about it with anyone that can’t fix it, makes it worse.

Live in balance means place your feet on that wire, and feel your way along it with absolute mindfulness. Think about what you eat, drink, do, sit, breathe, stand, and walk and talk… it all has an impact on whether you stay on the wire… but that’s not going to give you balance, it’s just going to help you “TURN UP.”

Balance is the balance between the NOW and the FUTURE. Between the What you are doing and the WHY you are doing it.

When a person loses perspective and can’t link this moment in time to a vision, a WHY, a purpose an outcome, a BIG Reason, then, the odds are, they’re going to fall. Fall into self obsession, pity party, funk, fatigue, arguments, emotion and that fall, like Phillippe Petit, is a very, very black space to be…

My Suggestions:

1. Every morning Review your Vision… Add to it if necessary.. Stay hungry.. stay inspired…

2. Work, think, meet, decide, calculate, process and evaluate in the morning before 2.00pm

3. Organise, contemplate, research, review, rehearse, in the afternoon

4. Train, exercise, play, celebrate and chill down in the afternoon.

5. Sleep well

6. Be mindful that everything that goes into your body, through your eyes, ears, mouth, hands, nose and emotion, has as much impact on your day as everything that comes out your mouth, eyes, ears, nose and hands… This is how you learn to stay “TURNED UP.”

7. Never forget WHY you are doing what you are doing. Forgetting leads to arguments, disaster, sabotage and self obsession (illness)