What helps YOU to balance your thoughts and behavior?

Jennifer Goble
September 13, 2021 at 9:00 a.m.
Categories: Local News

I haven’t written about the power of balance for a while. Shame on me—balance is a magic ingredient in the recipe for mental awareness, health, and wellness. We’ll topple like a three-legged stool with one broken leg without it. Balance is a word we could, would, and should keep in our thoughts as we live each day.

I have a friend who said, “I do everything in moderation.” I felt envious because she made it sound natural and easy. It isn’t, for me.

I had a conversation this week about the COVID testing, masks, and vaccine, and I also watched a panel comprised of men and women challenged with losing a family member to QAnon ideology. In both, I knew balance, or lack thereof was the culprit. If we fall too far from the center on any issue, we are likely to think, look, and behave in ways to embarrass our parents–a trusting benchmark. We most likely will associate with people of the same mindset instead of listening to other points of view, which helps us maintain a healthier balance.

Think about what we’ve heard repeatedly:

Balance your checkbook.
Stay between the ditches.
Dial down.
Eat a balanced diet.
Build to scale
Balance work and home.
Do everything in moderation.

We know it is better to live between ten and two o’clock, and we also have a brain for reasoning, but yet we find ourselves overdoing yard work, staying awake until wee hours of the morning, too many or no house rules, and binging or starving. Without balance, our image in the funhouse mirror becomes a reality.

American life for many is full of abundance, information, options, chocolate, alcohol, hobbies, and habits. Add those up, and we stand vulnerable to being pulled, pushed, or enticed off-center. It can be overwhelming and confusing whether it involves weight loss, politics, religion, education, or science. Our world also includes people with radical thoughts and strong voices who feel motivated to recruit more members. Balance is what we need to remember—it is our most potent weapon between falling over the edge and injuring ourselves or others and standing stable in a reasonable range of logic.

Think how proud you were as a kid when you could ride your bike with no hands. That was feeling good about having skills to keep yourself upright. That’s our goal: to ride, run, and live in balance.

Imagine BALANCE as an acronym:

B – Benefit
A – Accomplishment
L – Lifeline
A – Awareness
N – Necessity
C – Collaboration
E – Equity

Having easy reminders to keep me grounded helps me feel satisfied with my decisions.