How do you keep your life in Balance?

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T.A.Stobie_SFO

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Here I go again. šŸ˜ƒ

:hmmm: Think about ā€œHow do You Keep Your Life in Balanceā€ and share your thoughts with everyone else. Consider all aspects of your life. :hmmm:

(I will post my answer later today, to give others a chance to answer.)
 
T.A.Stobie:
Here I go again. šŸ˜ƒ

:hmmm: Think about ā€œHow do You Keep Your Life in Balanceā€ and share your thoughts with everyone else. Consider all aspects of your life. :hmmm:

(I will post my answer later today, to give others a chance to answer.)
Click to expand...
I donā€™t! I work at it daily, and it is a work in progressā€¦ I suppose when I reach that balance I will be ready for the next step??? šŸ‘
 
I donā€™t either. I am constantly praying though. I am constantly lifting my heart to God with sometimes verbal or structured prayers like the rosary, but at other times I just lift myself up and try to hide in the Immaculate Heart of Mary and the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

This is very comforting. Whenever I worry or start to ā€œlose itā€ I tell Jesus about it and give it to him and he gives me the gift of peace. I am constantly trying to let go and let God. I fight the worry and fear that constantly attacks all of us all of the time. Yet I consider it a gift because then I see always how small I am.

I pray for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit all of the time.
 
Balance? Are you kidding? Lol. Iā€™m standing in the smoking ruins of a million good intentions. I have zero idea why Iā€™m still hanging on, but maybe itā€™ll be clearer at Mass todayā€¦
 
We all experience times when our lives are out of balance. Some more than others.

As many saints have said, ā€œPray as if everything depended on God and Act as if everything depended on you.ā€
 
Iā€™m not sure my life is in balance! :o I have a natural tendency towards being off kilter.

For me, itā€™s helped to honestly identify my personality type and learn to work with it. For example, Iā€™m a bingey type person. I can work extremely intensely on project that others would not attempt.(Right now Iā€™m building a stone prayer hut in my backyard). OTOH, I seem to lack the ability to deal with the mundane daily grind, such as a 9-5 job would entail.(My job as a nurse is parttime, with a mix of 8 and 12 hr shifts)

I used to feel inferior and incapable because I didnā€™t have the ability to fit into the world in the same way, but now Iā€™ve learned to ride these waves of inspiration, making as much of them as I can until they dissipate.

Also, as Iā€™ve become more devout, seeking God constantly, it has been an incredible solace to me throughout the day. I even started praying the Litugy of the Hours, which I canā€™t believe since, as I said, Iā€™m terrible at daily tasks. But, even in that Iā€™ve tried to approach in my unique way, because thereā€™s more than one way to skin a cat!
 
Lately, I just try to make it through my day without doing anything that I need to go to Confession forā€¦

I have noticed that the degree of insanity in my life is inversely proportional to the amount of prayer I do. As St. Francis de Sales put it: ā€œEveryone should pray for half an hour each day, except when they are very busy. Then they should pray for an hour.ā€
 
I never could keep balance in my life, but the more I put God first (and most of the time itā€™s just remembering to think of Him instead of yelling at someone or working eight hours straight at the computer), the most balance just seems to come naturally.

Itā€™s like when I put God first, those things that kept me off-balance become far less important and arenā€™t unable to affect me that much. Peace is with you when God is with you, calmness, and the balance seems to quite naturally follow.

JELane
 
I donā€™t knowā€¦sometimes I look at the amount of activities I am involved with in life and I wonder how I keep my sanity but it all works outā€¦
  1. Spiritually, I pray, read and attend Sunday mass with an occasional Catholic event like a conference every once in a while
  2. Physically, I run 3-4 days a week and lift weights about 3 days a week (on a good week), I make exercise an absolute priority.
  3. Work-wise, I have one full-time job, a part-time private practice and two part-time ad junct faculty positions.
  4. Community wise, I am on the board of directorā€™s of a prolife group and of a group that helps people with disabilities. I am vice chair of our county Young Conservatives group and I am a 2nd degree member of the nights of Columbus. All of these groups meet on a regular basis.
  5. Family and social wise, I try to have as much fun on the weekends as I can. My wife and I are almost never home on the weekends (or week days for that matter). We are constantly exercising, going to baseball games, camping, going to plays, etc. My saturdays start at about 8:00 AM and go to past midnight.
Somehow I manage to balance it all. If there is one thing that suffers from time to time it is my spiritual life. That is the easiest thing to ā€œpush asideā€, so I have to always be on guard against that.

One thing that makes it easier is that my wife and I share so many interests that I am able to include her in almost everything I do. She comes to the Catholic events, the prolife events, the conservative meetings, she runs with me, goes to the gymn with me, etc etc.

It will be interesting when children enter into the equation.
 
Heh. Iā€™m funny.

I saw this in a book for lawyers about keeping your life in balance. Here are the steps:
  1. Write down your priorities, in rank order (e.g., 1. Family, 2. Health, 3. Job, etc. (note: I am not asking for criticism of my priorities. Thank you.)).
  2. For a week, keep track of how much time you spend on each of your priorities AND keep track of how much time you spend doing things that arenā€™t priorities.
  3. Feel really sad.
  4. Readjust your priorities. Maybe you spend a lot of time paying bills, and thatā€™s doesnā€™t fall into one of your priority categories. You need to add a new category or redefine one of the ones that already exists.
  5. Readjust your time usage. If you spend time on things that arenā€™t priorities, STOP. For me, it helps to block out specific sections of time every day. For instance, tonight Iā€™m going to run 5 miles after the kids are in bed. Before I start running, Iā€™ll throw a load of laundry in the washer.
I have to write this all down, or it doesnā€™t happen.
  1. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It helps a lot. The larger point is to be aware of what you are doing at all times, and be aware of why you are doing it. Good luck.
 
T.A.Stobie:
Here I go again. šŸ˜ƒ

:hmmm: Think about ā€œHow do You Keep Your Life in Balanceā€ and share your thoughts with everyone else. Consider all aspects of your life.
Click to expand...
Pray alot and donā€™t say ā€˜yesā€™ to too many things. ā€”KCT
 
I spent many days praying on this topic a couple of years ago and I came up with the meditition Living our Lives in Balance.

I do modify the meditations that I have written as I gain more insights.

Enjoy. šŸ™‚
 
Well, I am going to have to be different from the most of you. My life is in psuedo-balance. Okay, maybe it is organized chaos, but I am going strong. I find that by pre-planning and looking at what needs to get done before a deadline is percievable helps me to ā€œhandleā€ things. I have learned to delegate, ask for help, and to remain focused on my goals. Goals really help to see how far you have come. I try to keep a running tab of what I have to do and have completed (it is important to see those accomplishments too!).

Going to daily mass, not only allows me to spend time with my Lord, but allows me to relax in His comfort! We have adoration almost daily, so this allows me to have an even more intimate time with God! So all in all, balance for me is achieved through God, self, and family.šŸ™‚
 
10 years of marriage, 3 kids under age 6, just coming out of sleep deprivation with our 4month old sonā€¦I can only imagine my well organized and manageable days of pre-children, but absolutely no regrets, only more of a challenge and matter of kid priorities. I do look forward to getting enough breathing room to implement my legal pad priority and goal setting agendaā€¦and reestablishing regularity in my daily prayer time. I have learned to become more creative in adapting new ways to stay connected to God in prayer in the absence of opportunity for alert, undistracted time for daily personal prayer. I can relate to the experience of JELane that by putting God first, things take their proper place and priority and Godā€™s economy more often usehers in. I have found that the more I commit to taking care of first things first (God, familyā€¦), the better sense my days make, and those other things fall into place, hence an operationally balanced life according to Godā€™s agenda.

Felra
 
Only by Godā€™s Grace Friends, and by takinā€™ it one day at a time!

AMEN?
 
Captain Napalm:
As St. Francis de Sales put it: ā€œEveryone should pray for half an hour each day, except when they are very busy. Then they should pray for an hour.ā€
Click to expand...
I really like that qoute šŸ™‚

The best way for me to keep my life in balance is to read my Bible every night, and then spend some time in prayer. It is amazing what a difference this makes for me. Sometimes I have to stay up later than I would like, and I rarely have time to watch TV anymore, but itā€™s worth it. I have had 2 occasions where I missed a few days since I started doing this, and my stress level went through the roof both times.

Something that also helps me is the ability to say no. I have been offerred all kinds of after hours work, but I always turn it down. I feel like I already have more than I need or deserve, so I have no need to spend every waking minute working.
 
Extremism is a danger we run into when living our lives. Seldom, it is all or nothing, but rather somewhere in between.

Watch for when something is becoming all consuming or totally missing. This may be a warning sign that extremism as snuck in.
 
In our Spiritual Life, Balance is important. There are many ways we can deepen and practice our spirituality. Usually a single-minded approach leaves us only partially filled yearning for something we are missing. Studying books alone does not fulfill us. Serving others alone, usually leaves us run down feeling empty. A few are called to contemplate God always, but most of us are not.

To truly be happy, we need a balance of study, service, and contemplation, along with regular reception of the Sacraments all wrapped in a comprehensive prayer life, where everything we do is a prayer.
 
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