Neko Ryu General Principles: Part 8 – Life Balance

A centered life implies a general sense of calm self-control. It implies balance – a balance of your life energy such that each area of your life receives the energy required and appropriate at the time.

In Part 7 of this series I discussed spiritual balance and I equated it with “centeredness”. Being more centered than your opponent gives you an advantage in a confrontation. Centeredness is relative, however, and it affects to your entire life.

Each person acquires certain responsibilities from being a member of society. Still more responsibilities are voluntarily assumed by choices made. Choices like marriage, having children, starting a business, contracting for a mortgage, accepting an offer of employment.

Each relationship, role, and contract must be attended to. There is a minimum acceptable amount of attention and energy required to sustain each responsibility. As long as the sum of all required energy demands is less than the energy you have available then you are capable of a balanced life.

You can also choose to spend energy on non-responsibilities and that’s okay, even good for you, if you have an energy surplus after taking care of your responsibilities.

Being capable and being in balance are not the same, however. If you choose to spend more energy than necessary on some responsibilities and not enough on others; or so much energy on non-responsibilities that you haven’t enough left to satisfy your responsibilities, then your life will be out of balance.

Basic forms of personal energy are time, attention, stress, and money (essentially a store of time & attention). People have a limited amount of each form of energy, a budget if you will. Some have more than others, but no one has an unlimited supply. Warren Buffet has the same number of hours per day as you and, even with his billions of dollars, there is a limit to his money – it wouldn’t buy very many aircraft carriers.

Back to centeredness – calm self-control that preserves the ability to make reasoned decisions and take appropriate action. A centered person will nearly always be disciplined enough to take care of his responsibilities – to avoid overdrawing his bank account or his personal energy accounts through over-indulgence. He, like all others, is subject to the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and Murphy’s Law. But he maintains his life in balance so that he is not the cause of his own misfortune.

The centered person dips lightly into his stress account. In nearly all situations, he retains his mental balance and the ability to make reasoned decisions and take appropriate action.
Centeredness, if nothing else, means the having the ability to limit, control, and manage stress so that getting “stressed out” is a very unusual event.

Once again, centeredness is a relative thing. When I write of “a centered person” I mean one who is significantly more centered than average. I’m certainly not describing a “Buddha-like” figure sitting in the lotus position humming “ommmmm…” in the middle of a battle field. Still less of Jesus arousing from a nap in the bottom of a boat in the middle of a thunderstorm and commanding the storm, “Peace, be still.”

I am talking about normal human men and women who have developed their mental and emotional self-control enough to keep their mental balance under conditions in which most people would be unbalanced.

Link to other topics in the Special Report: Balance and Kuzushi