The Art of Balance

I recently just finished reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert、which is an emotional, vivid, witty, and soul-cleansing tale of self-discovery about a divorced and heartbroken woman's journeys to Italy, India, and Indonesia where she learns to find pleasure, spirituality, and finally ends with her learning how to balance the two. Only after achieving balance did the author experience true happiness and content in her life.

I have to agree that there is something to be said about the art of balancing, and not just strictly in the physical sense of how long you can stand in tree pose during a yoga session, or Elizabeth Gilbert's balance of pleasure and spirituality, but more about balancing the needs, demands, priorities, and pleasures in life. Everything in life can more or less be broken down into three types: there are things you must do, things you should do, and things you want to do, with possible overlaps between two components. For example, I must go to class everyday. I should write in this blog once a week. I want to hang out with my friends and boyfriend more often. As an overachiever, I try to attend to all of the musts, shoulds, and wants in my life, but what often results is frustration and general unhappiness. There is only so many hours in a day, and only so much ebullient energy a person could have. Trying to attend to everything generally leads to less quality time and less positive experiences in each, which ups the frustration and stress levels, which in order to compensate leads to more musts, shoulds, and wants.


I am in no way an authority of how to perfect the art of balancing, as can be seen by my insane 9am to 6pm (sometimes 10:30pm) schedule everyday. I am guilty of biting off more than I can chew and not tasting before swallowing, and then complaining how the food doesn't taste good. However, I would like to quote my Introduction to Entrepreneurship professor, R.F. Culbertson, who said to make a list of your musts, shoulds, and wants. If there is anything under your shoulds column that has been there for god knows how long, toss it. Unless you make that should a must, it's not going to happen. And here, I will extrapolate from his idea about wants. Unless your wants fits the sentence "I must do/have ________, because it makes me happy and feel like a better person", you should also toss it. You want to de-clutter all the distractions, and focus on putting in quality time and effort in the musts and only in the important wants and shoulds.

One thing I have been trying to work on (only partially successfully) is to de-clutter my life in all ways possible. I have recently cleared out unused clothes and books from my closet and donated to Goodwill. Now, I need to work on de-cluttering other distracting elements from my life, and hopefully find that perfect balance that will satisfy all my wants, achieve all my musts, and still find time for my shoulds.

It will be a work in progress. Hopefully, dear reader, you are being more successful than I currently am.