Clear vision helps balancing act in life

Azim Jamal 

In Summary

The minimum is the least you can get by with. The maximum is the most you’re capable of. The optimum is the amount or degree of anything that is the most favourable toward the ends you desire.

To master the balancing act in life, you must have a clear vision and a commitment to make the vision a reality. You can’t waste motion pursuing all the possibilities that are out there for you. You must decide which possibility you want to zero in on, and focus everything you do on this objective.

You must also understand all the aspects of your life and keep them in balance. Taoists represent this as a balance between Ying and Yang. Ying and Yang represent the balance of opposites in the universe. When Ying and Yang are in balance, all is calm. When one outweighs the other, confusion and disarray set in.

Buddhism recommends the “middle path” – the one between the opposite extremes of luxury and hardship. Buddha believed that we all must take responsibility for ourselves and must practice self-control. The laws of the “Eightfold Path” were designed to guide people without making life too strict or too easy. They represented a “Middle Path” of living for Buddhists. They represent balance.

Staying in balance requires that you understand your whole being. You must know your physical, mental and spiritual needs, and you must bring them into congruence. If you don’t understand how each contributes to the whole of your being, you may end up catering to one facet of your life at the expense of the whole. If you understand the whole in relation to its parts, you can determine the amount of time and effort to invest in each facet.

To acquire balance means to achieve that happy medium between the minimum and the maximum that represents your optimum. The minimum is the least you can get by with. The maximum is the most you’re capable of. The optimum is the amount or degree of anything that is the most favourable toward the ends you desire.

Nido, in his book Stairway to Success, gives the example of the automobile. It may be capable of a maximum speed of more than 100 miles per hour, but if the end you desire is to have reliable, safe, and comfortable transportation, you’ll never drive it at top speed. At 100 miles an hour, you’d be subjecting it to excessive wear and the likelihood of a fatal crash. At the other extreme, your car could crawl along at 5 to 10 miles per hour, minimizing the chances of your losing control on a curve, of crashing head-on into an object, or of rear-ending the vehicle ahead. But, at such speeds, your car would be highly inefficient as a means of transportation. It would be wasting time and horsepower, and if other traffic were travelling at normal freeway speeds, it would also be posing safety hazards.

Your car’s optimum speed is a steady pace somewhere between those high and low speeds – probably between 60 and 70 miles per hour on an Interstate highway. That speed range usually provides the best combination of safety, fuel mileage, engine wear, and travel time.

Nido’s Stairway to Success also points to the example of the Marathon runner who goes all-out for the first mile. This person will take an early lead, but the victory will go to the runner who strikes the highest sustainable pace. If your pace is too slow, the others will pass you. If it’s too fast, you’ll run out of energy before you reach the end of the race. You have to choose a happy medium.

You need to strike the same kind of balance in your personal habits and behavior. If at work you try to produce the maximum, you may face burnout. If you go for the minimum you will get poor results and will not tap into your potential.

Let us look at some aspects of your life that call for balance between Ying and Yang; that call for pursuing the “Middle Path”; that benefit from adopting the fastest sustainable pace.