FLOURISHING LIFE SOCIETY
  • Flourishing Life Society
    • Flourishing Favorites
    • Articles by Year Published
    • Privacy Policy
    • About Us
  • Psychology Fanatic
  • Psychology Definitions
  • Psychology of Wellness
    • Psychology of Emotions >
      • Emotional Data Base
    • Psychology Article Archive
  • Personal Development
    • Health and Fitness
    • Personal Development >
      • Personal Development Archive N-Z
  • Relationships
Home  | Human Flourishing  | Personal Development  | A Life in Balance
BY: T. Franklin Murphy  | March 2017 (edited March 7, 2022)
Stepping stones in the water with an orange sunset in the background. A Flourishing Life Society article on finding wellness through living a balanced life.
Adobe Stock Images
Experience comes in many flavors and colors—bitter and sweet, bright and dull. Finding balance between conflicting and differing elements of life is essential for wellness.
There’s no perfect life. Or perhaps there is no flawed life—everything is just the way it should be. You choose which philosophy works best. What’s the perfect life, anyway? Some achievement of a golden set of ideals? Some hopefully reach to reside in heaven, while the rest of us march around the realities of earth. Creating a better life usually requires more than a simplistic step-by-step process. Wellness, I have found, is all about balance.

The tones, texture and mood of a mural may differ but still convey beauty. A work of art may communicate warmness or coolness, simplicity or complexity, unvarying and smooth or varied and broken; each stroke of the brush whether wide or petite, adds meaning and creates character. Our task is finding balance to the many opposing demands, creating a beautiful harmony of the many colorful choices.
"​The challenge is to balance what we must do with what we enjoy and choose to do."
Z. Hereford
​Our lives are a thing of wonder, to be curiously explored with delightful awe—not wastefully discarded, hatefully judged or constantly berated. Stop! Appreciate the moment, feel the emotion and delve into the richness of living.

Embracing Varying and (Sometimes) Conflicting Goals

Openness to life requires nourishing many conflicting sectors. We embrace peace but also courageously stir up the tranquility by stepping outside of comfort. We enjoy the present but integrate the past and future into the now. Intimate relationships require dependency without abandoning individuality. We seek security but allow vulnerability.
 
Life requires balance—blending of needs. The contrasting colors create beauty
Our lives are a thing of wonder, to be curiously explored with delightful awe—not wastefully discarded, hatefully judged or constantly berated.
We continually adjust, adding and subtracting. The complex maze of choices both excites and frightens—this is the richness of experience.  Remaining balanced requires effort. The high cost of imbalance limits experience. Crudely expecting life to be the way we want it, ignoring the complexity of wants, needs and hopes of those around us.
We judge, we demand, and we project our biases on others. Throwing too much weight on our side of the scale. We expect others to conform to our limitations. No beauty is found here. Take on the challenge, reach a little further, work towards openness and expansion--find balance. Let go of simple solutions and enjoy the rich rewards of balancing your life in the complexities.
Please support Flourishing Life Society with a social media share or by visiting a link:
Twitter Reddit LinkedIn Email
Psychology of Wellness Banner link to Flourishing Life Society articles
Human Flourishing. What is a Flourishing Life? A Flourishing Life Society Link

​Other Flourishing Life Society articles of interest on this topic:

Link: We can't expect a life of ease. The world we live in is unpredictable. Our happiness and success depends on our resilience to the challenges of living.
FLS Link. Realistic Optimism: Optimism brings energy to action, motivating persistence in the face of difficulty. Our wellness benefits most from optimism when it is based in reality.
A Flourishing Life Society article link. Balancing Life's Opposing Demands
Life has its challenges. Often the weight of demands drags us down. We need healthy escapes to rejuvenate and lighten our load.
A Flourishing Life Society article link. Cognitive Dissonance
We live in a dynamic environment. When planning, we can't account for all possibilities. We must be flexible.
Internal Link: Flagship article. Ten Beacons of Light. Improving our lives isn't from following items on a simple list. Science, however, has provided some helpful clues to our pursuit of wellness. These ten beacons of light provide direction, lights that illuminate a path to growth.
Eudaimonia: Living Well and Doing Good. A Flourishing Life Society article link
Opptimisitic mindsets can improve our emotions
We need to attend to the balances in our lives. Impulses, demand and others interfere and knock us out of balance.
Putting on My Happy Shirt. Living a Joyful Life. A Flourishing Life Society article link
Flourishing Life Society article link. Nine Pillars of well-being
Wellness: It's All About Balance. Discovering Wellness by Living a Balanced Life. A Flourishing Life Society article
  • Flourishing Life Society
    • Flourishing Favorites
    • Articles by Year Published
    • Privacy Policy
    • About Us
  • Psychology Fanatic
  • Psychology Definitions
  • Psychology of Wellness
    • Psychology of Emotions >
      • Emotional Data Base
    • Psychology Article Archive
  • Personal Development
    • Health and Fitness
    • Personal Development >
      • Personal Development Archive N-Z
  • Relationships