Living a Balanced Life

We live in a life of extremes.

Extreme sports, extreme homes, extreme food.

There's a new TV show called "Extreme Couponing." I watched several episodes. While I admired the participants amazing results it saddened me. I wish these people would spend those coupon clipping hours on a few more relationally important things. I mean, how much free deodorant can one person or family use?

It seems as if we're expected to live our lives in an all or nothing attitude.
Push, strive, succeed.
All work no play.
All play no work.

No wonder most of us live on autopilot as we frantically attempt to please someone or no one. It's too much (or too little?).

I believe that most of us rush off headlong into one of these pursuits despite our friends, family and church telling us to cool it and chill out.

Somehow it doesn't seem right to be just...satisfied. We're supposed to want more.
Do more.

Be more.

Yet the opposite is true; we're not supposed to hyperfocus on only one aspect of living. True health and vitality is composed of variety in our lives that result in balance.

Balance of rest, work, play, relationships, fun, sunshine, God, giving and receiving. Leave any component out and we're at risk of spinning out of whack.
Keep it up and we'll eventually WHACK into something.

It's hard work to rest, be content and concentrate on the right priorities. But trying to recover from imbalance is even harder.

I challenge you to invest time in people, places, and things.

TV provides all sports channels, all shopping channels, all cooking channels but
ultimately, we control the remote.

The same is true for real life.

Balance includes and involves involvement; it lets people in and lets you get off the hamster wheel of over-achievement.

If you're going to strive, strive on making your life as healthy as possible. None of this extreme stuff is ultimately going to have meaning.

After all, when your life is over, you can't take all those coupons with you.