Health: Balancing Peace of Mind

Part of maintaining your health includes maintaining a healthy peace of mind. This may seem simple, yet many find it challenging to balance everything in life to give them that consistent peace of mind. Stress can often become overwhelming and difficult to manage. Society has become so busy and demanding resulting in people feeling more and more pressure and anxiety or worry rather than time to be at peace.

Have you ever thought how nice it would be to just wake up without the alarm clock, to take your time and read through a devotional or meditate in the morning? Go for a run or work-out without feeling rushed allowing yourself to just enjoy the routine? Shower and groom yourself in preparation for a nice breakfast before heading off to start your day enjoying all those little things and simple pleasures? What about coming home at the end of the day - do you feel relaxed and ready to just enjoy the time you have or are you depressed, worried, or stressed out about something that happened, things you still have to accomplish today, or what may come tomorrow?

I think it's safe to say that many of us have many challenges we need to face on a daily basis that make it difficult to find and maintain that stress/relaxation balance. What is balance really?

The definition of balance, defined by Webster's Dictionary: is an instrument for weighing, esp. one with two matched hanging scales; a state of equilibrium in weight, value, etc; bodily equilibrium; mental or emotional stability; equality of debits and credits, or the difference between them...

Our health and everyday spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, and overall life relies on balance in many ways. For example, if we do not drink enough water we will become dehydrated which can cause symptoms of not feeling well because our water levels and electrolytes are out of balance. If we are surrounded with too much negativity or are generally negative Nancy's then we will be mentally and possibly emotionally out of balance. If we fall into worldly things and lose sight of feeding our spiritual side we will be spiritually out of balance. The list can go on and on.

Consider this as well - we need enough income to make our expenses to create a zero balance to live. However, this is living paycheck to paycheck and we can often stress because nothing can go wrong to miss work in order for that paycheck to be affected so that we can continue to make the payments we need to maintain our current lifestyle. On the flip side, because we are living paycheck to paycheck it becomes challenging to add things that may come up whether a trip, Johnny's shoes become too small, or the car brakes down. We don't have savings to pull from to cover these unexpected costs.

To create a true balance we need to have some positive income into an interest bearing or savings account to set us up for success helping to prevent or eliminate future stress or inability to pay on those items that come up. We want to avoid taking out loans that can cost us much more in interest. We want to be able to pay cash.

The same is true with our health in maintaining that balance and peace of mind. We want to bring in more positive than negative to be able to have a savings of positive tucked away in all areas of life to help us prevent worry, depression, anxiety, and overwhelming stress when life throws us lemons.

We have set ourselves up, to instead, make lemonade and be able to move on and grow to become better versions of ourselves all while maintaining that peace of mind and health.

For example, you build on your spirituality or your higher being within you, you exercise to keep your body agile and strong, you eat nutritious meals to feed your body the nutrients needed to maintain and promote proper function, you read positive books/listen to positive music/fill yourself and surround yourself with positive things or people. You try to leave people better than when you found them regardless of how they have treated you. This ultimately and even subconsciously helps you to build that positive "savings".

In the meantime you are learning, growing, and practicing application of what you are learning while building your relationships and faith.You have understood and found a general routine that works for you to maintain balance throughout the day to day.

You understand that you are not striving for perfection, but becoming a better version of you which in turn helps you create a healthy balance and peace of mind. You can impact others in a positive way. You are blessed and can be a blessing. You are following the path set for you and striving for more without becoming stagnant in a positive way. You are constantly preparing and "saving" knowledge, positive thoughts, positive motivation, encouragement, and habits to pull on when life throws you those lemons making it second nature to make lemonade rather than life becoming more stressful and bitter.

Certain things in life are out of our control and we can hurt, can cause us stress and grief but that is when the Serenity Prayer comes into play.

God, grant me the serenity to

accept the things I cannot change;

Courage to change the things I can;

and the Wisdom to know the Difference.

Think about your life and challenges you are facing today.

Think about challenges that you have failed to overcome. Reflect on why you feel you haven't overcome them without blaming someone or something else. Look at what YOU can do to change or overcome what that challenge is.

Think about all the challenges you have overcome in the past. Have you learned from them and grown or have you become sour and bitter? (Did you make lemonade or are you still stuck with the lemon?)

Reflect on how you can make changes or create habits that will help set you up for success in creating lemonade in all aspects of life rather than being stuck with lemons. How can you find that balance and maintain it throughout life on a daily basis all while creating that "savings" for yourself?

Last, but not least, reflect on ALL the BLESSINGS you currently have big and small. Realize how blessed you are already and focus on the positive before the negative. Be solution seeking for negative that comes up and use that savings when needed to help you turn the negative into that sweet positive lemonade and enjoy the ride of life in health, peace, and balance. *

*Note, that some people do suffer from actual mental and physical disorders that can place them at a clinical risk for depression and anxiety. It is always best to seek help through National Crisis Hotline, your Primary Care Physician, counselor, or mental health professional if needed.