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Wellness: It's All About 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.

Key Definition:

A balanced life gives attention to all aspects of one's life:

relationships,
work,
fitness and
health,
and emotional well-being.

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.

Key Flourishing Concept:

Wellness is a multi-pronged task, requiring mindful attention to many key areas essential for health and wellbeing.

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.

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T. Franklin Murphy

Wellness. Writer. Researcher.
T. Franklin Murphy has a degree in psychology. He tirelessly researches scientific findings that contribute to wellness. In 2010, he began publishing his findings.