Maintaining Balance In Life Quotes

When we encounter the unexpected in our lives, we can challenge the battery of our interpretations and loosen our wearying preconceived notions if we keep exploring what we do not know, maintain an open mind, and take a balanced, dispassionate approach to life's vagaries. ("Looking for the unexpected")

While navigating our blind dates and relationships, let us not hesitate to apply critical thinking and maintain an offset between idealism and realism. When we balance our aspirations with the constraints of reality, we can steer the unpredictability of life with insight and resilience. ("Blind Date")

Understand: people judge you by appearances, the image you project through your actions, words, and style. If you do not take control of this process, then people will see and define you the way they want to, often to your detriment. You might think that being consistent with this image will make others respect and trust you, but in fact it is the opposite—over time you seem predictable and weak. Consistency is an illusion anyway—each passing day brings changes within you. You must not be afraid to express these evolutions. The powerful learn early in life that they have the freedom to mold their image, fitting the needs and moods of the moment. In this way, they keep others off balance and maintain an air of mystery. You must follow this path and find great pleasure in reinventing yourself, as if you were the author writing your own drama

Because there is no cosmic point to the life that each of us perceives on this distant bit of dust at galaxy's edge, all the more reason for us to maintain in proper balance what we have here. Because there is nothing else. Nothing. This is it. And quite enough, all in all.

It's the duty of all witches to maintain balance. Without balance there's no earth, no life, nothing.

There is nothing wrong with loving your work and wanting to apply yourself to it. But there is so much more to life. Balance is what is important, maintaining balance.

You see, proteins, as I probably needn't tell you, are immensely complicated groupings of amino acids and certain other specialized compounds, arranged in intricate three-dimensional patterns that are as unstable as sunbeams on a cloudy day. It is this instability that is life, since it is forever changing its position in an effort to maintain its identity--in the manner of a long rod balanced on an acrobat's nose.

I urge you to find a way to immerse yourself fully in the life that you’ve been given. To stop running from whatever you’re trying to escape, and instead to stop, and turn, and face whatever it is. Then I dare you to walk toward it. In this way, the world may reveal itself to you as something magical and awe-inspiring that does not require escape. Instead, the world may become something worth paying attention to. The rewards of finding and maintaining balance are neither immediate nor permanent. They require patience and maintenance. We must be willing to move forward despite being uncertain of what lies ahead. We must have faith that actions today that seem to have no impact in the present moment are in fact accumulating in a positive direction, which will be revealed to us only at some unknown time in the future. Healthy practices happen day by day. My patient Maria said to me, “Recovery is like that scene in Harry Potter when Dumbledore walks down a darkened alley lighting lampposts along the way. Only when he gets to the end of the alley and stops to look back does he see the whole alley illuminated, the light of his progress.

Life is a balance. We tend to forget that as we go blithely from day to day. We eat and drink and sleep and assume that we will always rise up the next day, that meals and rest will always replenish us. Injuries we expect to heal, and pain to lessen as times goes by. Even when we are faced with wounds that heal more slowly, with pain that lessens by day only to return in full force at nightfall, even when sleep does not leave us rested, we still expect that somehow tomorrow all will come back into balance and that we will go on. At some point, the exquisite balance has tipped, and despite all our flailing efforts, we begin the slow fall from the body that maintains itself to the body that struggles, nails clawing, to cling to what it used to be.

Having to be personally responsible for maintaining justice in the world is distressing. It makes it seem like maybe there’s something wrong at the Universal Fairness and Balance Department. Like maybe the higher-ups have lost control and they need help.

The Qur’an works very hard to maintain a balance between uplifting inspirational rhetoric and the realistic awareness that the world can be a very dangerous place. As a responsible guardian, the Qur’an recognizes it cannot inspire without also warning. It sees potential for greatness in all people, while also cautiously acknowledging that human beings can abuse others. In the end, the Qur’an reminds its audience that there is only one fully trustworthy guide: the Divine.

Changes in Meaning: Finally, chronically traumatized people lose faith that good things can happen and people can be kind and trustworthy. They feel hopeless, often believing that the future will be as bad as the past, or that they will not live long enough to experience a good future. People who have a dissociative disorder may have different meanings in various dissociative parts. Some parts may be relatively balanced in their worldview, others may be despairing, believing the world to be a completely negative, dangerous place, while other parts might maintain an unrealistic optimistic outlook on life

There's an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet,' Kynes said. 'You see in this beauty a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to all life. It's aim is simple: to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity. Life improves the closed system's capacity to sustain life. Life - all life - is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.

Removing toxicity from your life is essential to maintaining a peaceful state of mind and an overall quality of health. This purging can and should include any detrimental habits, including negative, controlling, and abusive people. Once you start living an empowered lifestyle that supports your own higher balance, you will find it to be an easy transition from the negative to the positive in every aspect of your life

A man matters, his experiences matter, but in a city, where experiences come by the thousands, we can no longer relate them to ourselves, and this is of course the beginning of life’s notorious turning into abstraction.“ „There is always something ghostly about living constantly in a well-ordered state. You cannot step into the street or drink a glass of water or get on a streetcar without touching the balanced lever of gigantic apparatus of laws and interrelations, setting them in motion or letting them maintain you in your peaceful existence; one knows hardly any of these levers, which reach deep into the inner workings and, coming out of the other side, lose themselves in a network whose structure has never yet been unraveled by anyone. So one denies their existence, just as the average citizen denies the air, maintaining that it is empty space. But all these things that one denied, these colorless, odorless,tasteless, weightless, and morally indefinable things such as water, air, space, money, and the passing of time, turn out in truth to be the most important things of all, and this gives life a certain spooky quality.

Taking care of yourself means finding a balance that works for you, then having the discipline to maintain that balance.

Life is like riding a bike. It is impossible to maintain your balance while standing still.

Moments of splendor and moments of gloom – they help maintain life’s balance. One thought is key: they all pass...

Life is like riding a bicycle. You must keep moving to maintain the balance.

Don’t work too hard. Try to maintain balance. Don’t make work your whole life.

life was a lot like being on a bike; if you’re standing still, it’s really hard to maintain your balance. But if you’re moving forward, you don’t even have to think about it. The bike pretty much balances itself.

The mind requires rest for clarity and integration, and when silence is maintained for regular interludes, the benefits help to sharpen your mind and balance your life.

They don’t discuss the real secret behind maintaining their work-life balance, mothering as if they don’t have children: it’s undergirded by their multimillion-dollar paychecks.

I had often thought that if I managed to live through the war I wouldn't expect too much of life. How could one resent disappointment in love if life itself was continuously in doubt? Since Belgorod, terror had overturned all my preconceptions, and the pace of life had been so intense one no longer knew what elements of ordinary life to abandon in order to maintain some semblance of balance. I was still unresigned to the idea of death, but I had already sworn to myself during moments of intense fear that I would exchange anything - fortune, love, even a limb - if I could simply survive.

A woman desires to be a man's last romance, her baby's first love and a person who can live with dignity all her life. As a girl matures to be a woman, her fairy tale imagination gets superseded by her struggle to be a good wife, a good mother and most importantly, a woman of virtue. As victor or vanquished, a woman keeps fighting the sequence of odds and evens throughout her life. Since nature had made women strong, society has very wisely done the reverse to maintain the balance.

Standing on the edge of another creek at fifty-five is like years haven’t happened at all. It’s a journey this life, a crossing of creeks on stepping stones where so much comes to depend on maintaining balance on every careful placing of the foot.

Bathing is not just about a quick rinse. Taking care of your whole self is essential in maintaining balance and contentment. And rituals around bathing play their part - they provide time in the day when you can focus on yourself, and clear your mind and body.

Principles of Liberty 1. The only reliable basis for sound government and just human relations is Natural Law. 2. A free people cannot survive under a republican constitution unless they remain virtuous and morally strong. 3. The most promising method of securing a virtuous and morally strong people is to elect virtuous leaders. 4. Without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained. 5. All things were created by God, therefore upon him all mankind are equally dependent, and to Him they are equally responsible. 6. All men are created equal. 7. The proper role of government is to protect equal rights, not provide equal things. 8. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. 9. To protect man's rights, God has revealed certain principles of divine law. 10. The God-given right to govern is vested in the sovereign authority of the whole people. 11. The majority of the people may alter or abolish a government which has become tyrannical. 12. The United States of America shall be a republic. 13. A constitution should be structured to permanently protect the people from the human frailties of their rulers. 14. Life and Liberty are secure only so long as the Igor of property is secure. 15. The highest level of securitiy occurs when there is a free market economy and a minimum of government regulations. 16. The government should be separated into three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. 17. A system of checks and balances should be adopted to prevent the abuse of power. 18. The unalienable rights of the people are most likely to be preserved if the principles of government are set forth in a written constitution. 19. Only limited and carefully defined powers should be delegated to the government, all others being retained by the people. 20. Efficiency and dispatch require government to operate according to the will of the majority, but constitutional provisions must be made to protect the rights of the minority. 21. Strong human government is the keystone to preserving human freedom. 22. A free people should be governed by law and not by the whims of men. 23. A free society cannot survive a republic without a broad program of general education. 24. A free people will not survive unless they stay strong. 25. "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." 26. The core unit which determines the strength of any society is the family; therefore, the government should foster and protect its integrity. 27. The burden of debt is as destructive to freedom as subjugation by conquest. 28. The United States has a manifest destiny to be an example and a blessing to the entire human race.

I remember talking to a friend about this and he told me that life was a lot like being on a bike; if you’re standing still, it’s really hard to maintain your balance. But if you’re moving forward, you don’t even have to think about it. The bike pretty much balances itself. And that is absolutely true.

Here is part of the problem, girls: we’ve been sold a bill of goods. Back in the day, women didn’t run themselves ragged trying to achieve some impressively developed life in eight different categories. No one constructed fairy-tale childhoods for their spawn, developed an innate set of personal talents, fostered a stimulating and world-changing career, created stunning homes and yardscapes, provided homemade food for every meal (locally sourced, of course), kept all marriage fires burning, sustained meaningful relationships in various environments, carved out plenty of time for “self care,” served neighbors/church/world, and maintained a fulfilling, active relationship with Jesus our Lord and Savior. You can’t balance that job description. Listen to me: No one can pull this off. No one is pulling this off. The women who seem to ride this unicorn only display the best parts of their stories. Trust me. No one can fragment her time and attention into this many segments.

To maintain balance in the world, in your life, you must know your true value. Not the value you feel. The value that is. And accept nothing less but something of equal value from others. If you consistently accept less than what you are from others, you will fool yourself into believing you are less. Your life will not find balance that way.

Blissful is your life when you never stop finding ways to maintain a healthy balance between taking care of yourself and helping others ease the pains that life can bring.

The change in mood is the result of not maintaining a good balance in the body. Malnutrition often causes the body to malfunction.

Maintain balance in life; not unlike a tire, a life out of balance results in a rough ride and needless wear and tear.

Creating and maintaining healthy boundaries demonstrates respect for ourselves and others and builds trust in both our work and personal relationships.

The Universe is about maintaining balance, not fairness. It is by means of balance that true fairness exists in the Universe.

Now what we call "bourgeois," when regarded as an element always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for a balance. It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct. If we take any one of these coupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately comprehensible. It is open to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seeking after God, to the ideal of saintliness. On the other hand, he can equally give himself up entirely to the life of instinct, to the lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attainment of momentary pleasures. The one path leads to the saint, to the martyrdom of the spirit and surrender to God. The other path leads to the profligate, to the martyrdom of the flesh, the surrender to corruption. Now it is between the two, in the middle of the road, that the bourgeois seeks to walk. He will never surrender himself either to lust or to asceticism. He will never be a martyr or agree to his own destruction. On the contrary, his ideal is not to give up but to maintain his own identity. He strives neither for the saintly nor its opposite. The absolute is his abhorrence. He may be ready to serve God, but not by giving up the fleshpots. He is ready to be virtuous, but likes to be easy and comfortable in this world as well. In short, his aim is to make a home for himself between two extremes in a temperate zone without violent storms and tempests; and in this he succeeds though it be at the cost of that intensity of life and feeling which an extreme life affords. A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility.

We respect and recognize the deliciously indulgent desire in life but balance that with a specific goal, an ulterior motive to maintain self-discipline and gain insight and self-mastery equally.

A pleasurable life balances health, wealth and love. Without health, it is hard to enjoy wealth or love. Without wealth, it's difficult to maintain health or focus attention on the ones we love. Without love, a long healthy life and endless riches are nothing more than an empty hollow prison. Excessive focus on any one aspect to the detriment of the other two robs us of a life worth living.

If you just can accept that your highs always will be balanced by lows – that you would not even recognize the highs without the lows – you will maintain a balanced, positive outlook about life. You will be able to relax when things become uncomfortable, instead of reacting in panic. In accepting unhappiness, you ultimately transcend it. You paradoxically achieve a higher, more unconditional form of happiness.

After all, the fate of the world rests on each new infant—tiny, fragile and threatened but, in time, capable of uttering the words and doing the deeds that maintain the eternal, delicate balance between chaos and order.

There emerges, then, a view of life which sees its worth and point not as a struggle for constant ascent but as a dance. Virtue and harmony consist, not in accentuating the positive, but in maintaining a dynamic balance.

Nature is self-renewing as it adjusts to maintain balance. Nature becomes even more vibrant as it yields to allow recycling. It is best to align with success and become nature with your health, wealth, and relationships.

Walking upright between the past and future, a tightrope walk across our times, became, for me, a way of living: trying to maintain a balance between the competing gravities of birth and death, hope and regret, sex and mortality, love and grief, all those opposites or nearly opposites that become, after a while, the rocks and hard places, synonymous forces between which we navigate, like salmon balanced in the current, damned some times if we do or don't.

TIDY UP YOUR WORKSPACE BEFORE YOU CALL IT A DAY. When you go to an office, you can leave your messy home, well, at home. Not so for remote workers. And this is a problem, because working in a messy space zaps your concentration. Research shows clutter can trigger the release of cortisol (the stress hormone). Messy homes are also linked to increased procrastination. Before you clock out each night, spend five minutes putting things away, organizing your papers, and removing dirty glasses. You’ll appreciate your efforts when you sit down to your desk the next morning.

maintain muscle and other protein-containing tissues. But when you observe a human over a number of weeks of adaptation to a low carbohydrate diet, most of this initial inefficiency in protein use goes away[27]. Thus, once you are keto-adapted, your body’s need for protein isn’t much higher than during a ‘balanced diet’. This is a key fact in our understanding that low carbohydrate diets used in the long term do not need to be particularly high in protein. All the protein we eat (with the exception of stuff that is rubbed or cut off, like skin, hair, and nails) eventually gets burned for energy, yielding 4 Calories per gram. And you can’t “push” your body to build muscle by eating extra protein – muscle is built up under the stimulus of exercise (or illicit pharmaceuticals) as long as adequate protein is available at the time. No one has ever shown

There’s an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet,” Kynes said. “You see in this beauty a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to all life. Its aim is simple: to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity. Life improves the closed system’s capacity to sustain life. Life—all life—is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.” This

There are videos of women from Sheryl’s inner circle—all white, beautifully lit and shot—working out in their palatial home gyms, playing with their photogenic children, and relaxing with their mutely supportive husbands. All of these mothering fables are careful to edit out the role played by the phalanx of nannies and other help who usually do the bulk of the actual labor of raising children. Mothering in form, not function. They don’t discuss the real secret behind maintaining their work-life balance, mothering as if they don’t have children: it’s undergirded by their multimillion-dollar paychecks.

Justice exists for the good of the universe. To maintain balance. It does not exist to ignite hatred among humans. Furthermore, I do not have the power to administer justice to the Emperor of Meluha. The universe does. It will deliver justice when it is appropriate. In this life or in the next.’ Parshuram

The Jedi have a duty to protect life and maintain balance, so working with the Republic government is a given. But the Jedi follow the Force. We are the light, and we cannot blindly follow any other edict but that one. We go where we can best chase away the darkness in the galaxy, and we must not serve any other cause but that.

So for me the essence of life is very simple. It is just this, awareness that allows us to trust in our own truths (without feeling any need to convince others), living gracefully amidst the chaos, maintaining a sense of balance (not being pulled around by the supposed opposites or false paradoxes), and being able to choose how we direct our lives.

But they don’t only dream, though – they work towards making their dreams come true. They will work hard, but they also need to maintain that delicate balance between their personal life and their professional one. The importance of this cannot be overestimated, because Libra depends on this sense of equilibrium in order to keep their emotional life in check.

Phaethon asked: “Do you think there is something wrong with the Sophotechs? We are Manorials, father! We let Rhadamanthus control our finances and property, umpire our disputes, teach our children, design our thoughtscapes, and even play matchmaker to find us wives and husbands!” “Son, the Sophotechs may be sufficient to advise the Parliament on laws and rules. Laws are a matter of logic and common sense. Specially designed human-thinking versions, like Rhadamanthus, can tell us how to fulfill our desires and balance our account books. Those are questions of strategy, of efficient allocation of resources and time. But the Sophotechs, they cannot choose our desires for us. They cannot guide our culture, our values, our tastes. That is a question of the spirit.” “Then what would you have us do? Would you change our laws?” “Our mores, not our laws. There are many things which are repugnant, deadly to the spirit, and self-destructive, but which law should not forbid. Addiction, self-delusion, self-destruction, slander, perversion, love of ugliness. How can we discourage such things without the use of force? It was in response to this need that the College of Hortators evolved. Peacefully, by means of boycotts, public protests, denouncements, and shunnings, our society can maintain her sanity against the dangers to our spirit, to our humanity, to which such unboundried liberty, and such potent technology, exposes us.” (...) But Phaethon certainly did not want to hear a lecture, not today. “Why are you telling me all this? What is the point?” “Phaethon, I will let you pass through those doors, and, once through, you will have at your command all the powers and perquisites I myself possess. The point of my story is simple. The paradox of liberty of which you spoke before applies to our entire society. We cannot be free without being free to harm ourselves. Advances in technology can remove physical dangers from our lives, but, when they do, the spiritual dangers increase. By spiritual danger I mean a danger to your integrity, your decency, your sense of life. Against those dangers I warn you; you can be invulnerable, if you choose, because no spiritual danger can conquer you without your own consent. But, once they have your consent, those dangers are all-powerful, because no outside force can come to your aid. Spiritual dangers are always faced alone. It is for this reason that the Silver-Gray School was formed; it is for this reason that we practice the exercise of self-discipline. Once you pass those doors, my son, you will be one of us, and there will be nothing to restrain you from corruption and self-destruction except yourself. “You have a bright and fiery soul, Phaethon, a power to do great things; but I fear you may one day unleash such a tempest of fire that you may consume yourself, and all the world around you.

The pace of this modern age is not conducive to maintaining one’s consciousness. Glued to our electronics, we are blind and deaf to the world around us. Run down by our long work days, we are too exhausted to think and too hurried to feel. The day ends in a haze of strained thoughts, numbness, and fatigue. And we rise the next morning only to start the cycle again. In this age of distraction, if you desire to fritter away your life with empty diversions, there is an abundance of gadgets available to aid you. Quietness is a characteristic of ages gone by. Our generation is the one it died with. Connected to the virtual world, we ignore the presence of those in our home. One can only hope we will awaken to the need for balance before we look up from the screen to find our loved ones have gone, and our life has passed us by.

relationships, to meet human needs, and to enjoy spontaneous moments on a daily basis. As a result, many people have become turned off by time management programs and planners that make them feel too scheduled, too restricted, and they “throw the baby out with the bath water,” reverting to first or second generation techniques to preserve relationships, spontaneity, and quality of life. But there is an emerging fourth generation that is different in kind. It recognizes that “time management” is really a misnomer—the challenge is not to manage time, but to manage ourselves. Satisfaction is a function of expectation as well as realization. And expectation (and satisfaction) lie in our Circle of Influence. Rather than focusing on things and time, fourth generation expectations focus on preserving and enhancing relationships and on accomplishing results—in short, on maintaining the P/PC Balance. QUADRANT II

The First 5 in 5 × 5 × 5: The Health Defense Systems There are five health defense systems in your body: angiogenesis, regeneration, microbiome, DNA protection, and immunity. These systems maintain your health in a state of perfect balance. When mild disruptions occur in your health, the systems adjust themselves to take care of the problem and continue functioning behind the scenes, so you don’t even notice—that’s what you want your health to be like your entire life.

You cannot think of a better arrangement materially: in terms of healthcare, insurance, cars. You have more comforts and conveniences than any previous generation. But people are suffering immensely. In affluent societies almost every fifth person is on some kind of medication just to maintain mental balance. When you have to take a tablet every day to remain sane, this is not joyfulness. You are on the verge of breaking down because you have made a small aspect of your life the whole of your life.

Fellowship of Reconciliation, a nonviolent pacifist organization founded during World War I. Its members and leaders had included Jane Addams and Norman Thomas; its message was the possibility of bringing an unruly world into good order through acts of conscience. As Lawson was to put it, “Nonviolent revolution is always a real, serious revolution. It seeks to transform human life in both private and public forms… involves the whole man in his whole existence… maintains balance between tearing down and building up, destroying and planting.

The unconscious is the psyche that reaches down from the daylight of mentally and morally lucid consciousness into the nervous system that for ages has been known as the "sympathetic." This does not govern perception and muscular activity like the cerebrospinal system, and thus control the environment; but, though functioning without sense-organs, it maintains the balance of life and, through the mysterious paths of sympathetic excitation, not only gives us knowledge of the innermost life of other beings but also has an inner effect upon them.

Sattvik actor is not egoistic. Does not have the I-am-the-doer attitude. And is free from attachment. With no preferential relationship binding him to the world. Besides, a sattvik actor possesses steadfastness, dhriti and enthusiasm, utsaha. He is energetic, cheerful and joyful in what he does. And does it with consistency of purpose until the work is done. All along his course of activity he remains disinterested in the result thereof. Success or failure means nothing to him. He maintains a balance of mind through the fluctuations of life’s experiences.

Now what we call "bourgeois," when regarded as an element always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for a balance. It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct. If we take any one of these coupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately comprehensible. It is open to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seeking after God, to the ideal of saintliness. On the other hand, he can equally give himself up entirely to the life of instinct, to the lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attainment of momentary pleasures. The one path leads to the saint, to the martyrdom of the spirit and surrender to God. The other path leads to the profligate, to the martyrdom of the flesh, the surrender to corruption. Now it is between the two, in the middle of the road, that the bourgeois seeks to walk. He will never surrender himself either to lust or to asceticism. He will never be a martyr or agree to his own destruction. On the contrary, his ideal is not to give up but to maintain his own identity. He strives neither for the saintly nor its opposite. The absolute is his abhorrence. He may be ready to serve God, but not by giving up the fleshpots. He is ready to be virtuous, but likes to be easy and comfortable in this world as well. In short, his aim is to make a home for himself between two extremes in a temperate zone without violent storms and tempests; and in this he succeeds though it be at the cost of that intensity of life and feeling which an extreme life affords. A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility.

Sometimes the male flowers rise to the surface when there are not yet any pistillated flowers in the vicinity. And at other times, when low water permits them easily to reach their companions, they still break their stems no less automatically and uselessly. I maintain here, once again, that the whole genius rests in the species, in life or nature, and that the individual on the whole is stupid. Only in mankind do we find true emulation of the two intelligences, an increasingly precise and active tendency toward a kind of balance that is the great secret of our future.

The business of living is not in the least special. In a sense it all comes down to two things: eating and excreting. These activities are common to all life forms. Every creature on earth is born, through eating and excreting helps maintain the balance of the great chain of being, and dies. In the realm of nature, these activities are essential to the continuity of life, and they give value to each being's life. People are no different. If human life has meaning, it lies above all in the essential fact of our physical existence in this world. This is what I strongly believe.

In a very real sense, it was a game, the very subtle and entirely serious game of comparative rank which is played by all social animals. It is the method by which individuals arrange themselves—horses in a herd, wolves in a pack, people in a community—so that they can live together. The game pits two opposing forces against each other, both equally important to survival: individual autonomy and community welfare. The object is to achieve dynamic equilibrium. At times and under certain conditions individuals can be nearly autonomous. An individual can live alone and have no worry about rank, but no species can survive without interaction between individuals. The ultimate price would be more final than death. It would be extinction. On the other hand, complete individual subordination to the group is just as devastating. Life is neither static nor unchanging. With no individuality, there can be no change, no adaptation and, in an inherently changing world, any species unable to adapt is also doomed. Humans in a community, whether it is as small as two people or as large as the world, and no matter what form the society takes, will arrange themselves according to some hierarchy. Commonly understood courtesies and customs can help to smooth the friction and ease the stress of maintaining a workable balance within this constantly changing system. In some situations most individuals will not have to compromise much of their personal independence for the welfare of the community. In others, the needs of the community may demand the utmost personal sacrifice of the individual, even to life itself. Neither is more right than the other, it depends on the circumstances; but neither extreme can be maintained for long, nor can a society last if a few people exercise their individuality at the expense of the community.

Gaia isn't some mystical mumbo-jumbo conjured up by a bunch of superstitious idiots. Nor is Gaia simply a name for a power beyond our understanding, one we follow blindly like primitive nature lovers or stoned hippies. Simply put, Gaia is life — all life, from the single-celled organism up to the blue whale. But it's even more. It's also the world that life inhabits, the complex, evolving, self-regulating system that makes existence possible. It is through Gaia the atmosphere and the seas and the forests combine to maintain the ecosystem sustaining life. Everything in this world has a beginning, an end, and a purpose in maintaining the balance in which we exist.

Everything that exists has a counterpart. The Word is only half of the equation, Nest. The Void is the other half. The Word and the Void — one a creator, one a destroyer, one good, one evil. They’re engaged in a war and they’ve been fighting it since the beginning of time. One seeks to maintain life’s balance; the other seeks to upset it. We’re all a part of that struggle because what’s at risk is our own lives. The balance isn’t just out there in the world around us; it’s inside us as well. And the good that’s the Word and the evil that’s the Void is inside us, too. Inside us, each working to gain the upper hand over the other, each working to find a way to overcome the other.

Society’s structure exists to maintain the power and wealth of a few privileged persons. A person must resist society’s attempts to bully him or her into living a diminished life of a conformist. I must be wary that my defining character is neither effaced nor compromised and rebuff men of weaker temperament attempting to repress my uninhibited joy for life. I need to demonstrate the inventive spirit of an opportunistic doer. I will allow myself to run wild in the eyes of the world of watchers and establish a lifestyle that allows the physical body room to flex its fibrous muscles. I shall live in a manner that enables the mind the opportunity to construct a secure shelter that encourages mental and spiritual exploration. I aspire to establish a workable balance between retreating to my private cave to seek solace and striking meaningful engagements with the larger world.

A flow state is the experience of being “in the zone” and fully immersed in an activity. Scientists have tried to quantify this feeling. They found that to achieve a state of flow, a task must be roughly 4 percent beyond your current ability. In real life it’s typically not feasible to quantify the difficulty of an action in this way, but the core idea of the Goldilocks Rule remains: working on challenges of just manageable difficulty—something on the perimeter of your ability—seems crucial for maintaining motivation. Improvement requires a delicate balance. You need to regularly search for challenges that push you to your edge while continuing to make enough progress to stay motivated. Behaviors need to remain novel in order for them to stay attractive and satisfying. Without variety, we get bored. And boredom is perhaps the greatest villain on the quest for self-improvement.

I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN most interested in the question of what makes a house a home. What are the elements that move a house beyond its physical structure and provide the warmth that we all crave? In my fifteen years as a designer, I’ve come to understand that the answer is simple: It is about surrounding ourselves with things we love. (...) And in this case, the beauty comes from the owners’ love of books. Books are beautiful objects in their own right—their bindings and covers—and the space they fill on shelves or stacked on coffee tables in colorful piles add balance and texture to any room. And just like any other part of a home, books require maintenance: They need to be dusted, categorized, rearranged, and maintained. Our relationship with them is dynamic and ever changing. But our connection to them goes beyond the material. In each house we visited, the libraries were the heart of the home, meaningful to the collectors’ lives. In this book, we tried to capture what they brought to the home—the life and spirit books added. Some subjects have working libraries they constantly reference; others fill their shelves with the potential pleasures of the unread. When we visited the homes, many people could find favorite books almost by osmosis, using systems known only to themselves. (...) As we found repeatedly, surrounding yourself with books you love tells the story of your life, your interests, your passions, your values. Your past and your future. Books allow us to escape, and our personal libraries allow us to invent the story of ourselves—and the legacy that we will leave behind. There’s a famous quote attributed to Cicero: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.” If I suspected this before, I know it now. I hope you’ll find as much pleasure in discovering these worlds as we did.

And on the horizon, along the Cordillera where rock and sky met, there was that strange color, somewhere between violet and purple, which he had seen reproduced on so many Indian skirts and shawls and on the woolen bags the campesinos hung from the ears of their llamas; for him it was the color of the Andes, of this mysterious, violent sierra. Besides, thanks to these hills, Naccos had an aura, a magic power. Danger always attracts us. Doesn’t it represent true life, life that’s worthwhile? But security is boredom, it’s stupidity, it’s death. These mountains are full of ancient tombs.Without those presences there wouldn’t be so many spirits in this part of the Andes. In the old days people had the courage to face great troubles by making sacrifices. That’s how they maintained the balance. Life and death like a scale with two equal weights, like two rams of equal strength that lock horns and neither one can advance or retreat.

In the past, people practiced the Tao, the Way of Life. They understood the principle of balance as represented by the transformations of the energies of the universe. They formulated exercises to promote energy flow to harmonize themselves within the universe. They ate a balanced diet at regular times, arose and retired at regular hours, avoided over stressing their bodies and minds, and refrained from overindulgence of all kinds. They maintained well-being of body and mind; thus, it is not surprising that they lived over one hundred years.“These days, people have changed their way of life. They drink wine as though it were water, indulge excessively in destructive activities, drain their jing – the body’s essence that is stored in the Kidneys – and deplete their qi. They do not know the secret of conserving their energy and vitality. Seeking emotional excitement and momentary pleasures, people disregard the natural rhythm of the universe. They fail to regulate their lifestyle and diet, and sleep improperly. So it is not surprising that they look old at fifty and die soon after.

In 1969, NASA scientist James Lovelock noticed something unusual happening in the earth’s atmosphere: inexplicably, its balance of oxygen and other gases was regulating itself like a thermostat. But what was doing the regulating? He looked at other planetary processes—including the stable concentration of ocean salinity and the cycling of nutrients—and came to a startling conclusion: the earth is alive. He proposed that the earth is a superorganism—one giant living system that includes not just animals and plants but rocks, gases, and soil—acting together as if the planet was a single living being. Its bodily systems, such as the water cycle and nitrogen cycle, are balanced to maintain life on earth. The throb of the tides was the systole and diastole of the earth, and water coursed like blood through its veins. We proud humans may simply be microbes on the surface of a superbeing whose entirety we cannot fully comprehend. Like the bacteria in our body, is it possible that we, too, are part of a larger living earth, a speck on the eyeball of the universe? Tree roots break the sidewalk. Dandelions spring through the cracks. Insects grow resistant to pesticides

To maintain the P/PC Balance, the balance between the golden egg (production) and the health and welfare of the goose (production capability) is often a difficult judgment call. But I suggest it is the very essence of effectiveness. It balances short term with long term. It balances going for the grade and paying the price to get an education. It balances the desire to have a room clean and the building of a relationship in which the child is internally committed to do it—cheerfully, willingly, without external supervision. It’s a principle you can see validated in your own life when you burn the candle at both ends to get more golden eggs and wind up sick or exhausted, unable to produce any at all; or when you get a good night’s sleep and wake up ready to produce throughout the day. You can see it when you press to get your own way with someone and somehow feel an emptiness in the relationship; or when you really take time to invest in a relationship and you find the desire and ability to work together, to communicate, takes a quantum leap. The P/PC Balance is the very essence of effectiveness. It’s validated in every arena of life. We can work with it or against it, but it’s there.

When we ingest a drug or a drink, our system instantly floods with an absurd amount of dopamine — from two to ten times the natural amount — causing an intense uprush of pleasure and focus, essentially shortcutting the brain’s natural reward system. That feels really, really good. Then a couple of things happen. The hippocampus — the part of the brain responsible for creating memories — lays down “tracks” or “records” of this rapid sense of satisfaction. So essentially the brain remembers: I can cut straight to the good feelings with this simple little thing. Next, the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions and survival instincts, creates a conditioned response to the stimulus (for me, it’s alcohol; for you, it’s whatever your “thing” is), and as a result, the brain produces less dopamine or even in severe cases eliminates dopamine receptors in an effort to maintain balance, causing the activity that once used to be the fast track to pleasure to become less and less pleasurable over time. Now, repeat this cycle a few thousand times, and the brain’s reward and learning functions change significantly. The actual pleasure associated with the behavior subsides, yet the memory of the desired effect and the need to re-create it (the wanting) persists. The normal machinery of motivation no longer functions rationally. “You were literally out of your mind,” she said.

It was up to him to solve the unknown variables and balance the equation. Everything in life was an equation, and unbalanced equations set off chain reactions and became chaos. In a perverse sense, he considered himself a bookkeeper, maintaining the ledgers of madness that mankind perpetually unleashed on itself and the world at large. When the books were balanced, a fragile sort of peace persisted until the tireless agents of entropy began their work anew. What is peace but war held in check? What is life but entropy held at bay? He could not remember when the thought first occurred to him that good and evil could be—must be—understood in mathematical terms. Entropy is the true devil in the universe, not some cackling, fiery satyr with horns and a pitchfork. Entropy is the great destructor, the root of all disorder and chaos. What are the seven deadly sins, if not a failure to resist the decay of one’s moral fiber? What is war, if not an alliance with entropy to bring chaos and destruction to an ordered world? It took 182 years to build Notre Dame de Paris—182 years of effort, energy, and discipline to construct a magnificent cathedral from sand, wood, and stone unhewn. But with only one Mark 83 general-purpose bomb, this beautiful triumph over entropy could be reduced to rubble. Would the bombing of Notre Dame be a sin, even with no human casualties? Yes, because the very existence of such a structure in the universe is good.

I soon found my feet, and was much less homesick than I was at prep school. Thank God. I learned that with plenty of free time on our hands, and being encouraged to fill the time with “interests,” I could come up with some great adventures. A couple of my best friends and I started climbing the huge old oak trees around the grounds, finding monkey routes through the branches that allowed us to travel between the trees, high up above the ground. It was brilliant. We soon had built a real-life Robin Hood den, with full-on branch swings, pulleys, and balancing bars high up in the treetops. We crossed the Thames on the high girders above a railway bridge, we built rafts out of old Styrofoam and even made a boat out of an old bathtub to go down the river in. (Sadly this sank, as the water came in through the overflow hole, which was a fundamental flaw. Note to self: Test rafts before committing to big rivers in them.) We spied on the beautiful French girls who worked in the kitchens, and even made camps on the rooftops overlooking the walkway they used on their way back from work. We would vainly attempt to try and chat them up as they passed. In between many of these antics we had to work hard academically, as well as dress in ridiculous clothes, consisting of long tailcoats and waistcoats. This developed in me the art of making smart clothes look ragged, and ever since, I have maintained a lifelong love of wearing good-quality clothes in a messy way. It even earned me the nickname of “Scug,” from the deputy-headmaster. In Eton slang this roughly translates as: “A person of no account, and of dirty appearance.

Now what we call "bourgeois," when regarded as an element always to be found in human life, is nothing else than the search for a balance. It is the striving after a mean between the countless extremes and opposites that arise in human conduct. If we take any one of these coupled opposites, such as piety and profligacy, the analogy is immediately comprehensible. It is open to a man to give himself up wholly to spiritual views, to seeking after God, to the ideal of saintliness. On the other hand, he can equally give himself up entirely to the life of instinct, to the lusts of the flesh, and so direct all his efforts to the attainment of momentary pleasures. The one path leads to the saint, to the martyrdom of the spirit and surrender to God. The other path leads to the profligate, to the martyrdom of the flesh, the surrender to corruption. Now it is between the two, in the middle of the road, that the bourgeois seeks to walk. He will never surrender himself either to lust or to asceticism. He will never be a martyr or agree to his own destruction. On the contrary, his ideal is not to give up but to maintain his own identity. He strives neither for the saintly nor its opposite. The absolute is his abhorrence. He may be ready to serve God, but not by giving up the fleshpots. He is ready to be virtuous, but likes to be easy and comfortable in this world as well. In short, his aim is to make a home for himself between two extremes in a temperate zone without violent storms and tempests; and in this he succeeds though it be at the cost of that intensity of life and feeling which an extreme life affords. A man cannot live intensely except at the cost of the self. Now the bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self (rudimentary as his may be). And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he does comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire. The bourgeois is consequently by nature a creature of weak impulses, anxious, fearful of giving himself away and easy to rule. Therefore, he has substituted majority for power, law for force, and the polling booth for responsibility.

Collateral Capacity or Net Worth? If young Bill Gates had knocked on your door asking you to invest $10,000 in his new company, Microsoft, could you get your hands on the money? Collateral capacity is access to capital. Your net worth is irrelevant if you can’t access any of the money. Collateral capacity is my favorite wealth concept. It’s almost like having a Golden Goose! Collateral can help a borrower secure loans. It gives the lender the assurance that if the borrower defaults on the loan, the lender can repossess the collateral. For example, car loans are secured by cars, and mortgages are secured by homes. Your collateral capacity helps you to avoid or minimize unnecessary wealth transfers where possible, and accumulate an increasing pool of capital providing accessibility, control and uninterrupted compounding. It is the amount of money that you can access through collateralizing a loan against your money, allowing your money to continue earning interest and working for you. It’s very important to understand that accessibility, control and uninterrupted compounding are the key components of collateral capacity. It’s one thing to look good on paper, but when times get tough, assets that you can’t touch or can’t convert easily to cash, will do you little good. Three things affect your collateral capacity: ① The first is contributions into savings and investment accounts that you can access. It would be wise to keep feeding your Golden Goose. Often the lure of higher return potential also brings with it lack of liquidity. Make sure you maintain a good balance between long-term accounts and accounts that provide immediate liquidity and access. ② Second is the growth on the money from interest earned on the money you have in your account. Some assets earn compound interest and grow every year. Others either appreciate or depreciate. Some accounts could be worth a great deal but you have to sell or close them to access the money. That would be like killing your Golden Goose. Having access to money to make it through downtimes is an important factor in sustaining long-term growth. ③ Third is the reduction of any liens you may have against these accounts. As you pay off liens against your collateral positions, your collateral capacity will increase allowing you to access more capital in the future. The goose never quit laying golden eggs – uninterrupted compounding. Years ago, shortly after starting my first business, I laughed at a banker that told me I needed at least $25,000 in my business account in order to borrow $10,000. My business owner friends thought that was ridiculously funny too. We didn’t understand collateral capacity and quite a few other things about money.

As the Princess performs the impossible balancing act which her life requires, she drifts inexorably into obsession, continually discussing her problems. Her friend Carolyn Bartholomew argues it is difficult not to be self-absorbed when the world watches everything she does. “How can you not be self-obsessed when half the world is watching everything you do; the high-pitched laugh when someone is talking to somebody famous must make you very very cynical.” She endlessly debates the problems she faces in dealing with her husband, the royal family, and their system. They remain tantalizingly unresolved, the gulf between thought and action achingly great. Whether she stays or goes, the example of the Duchess of York is a potent source of instability. James Gilbey sums up Diana’s dilemma: “She can never be happy unless she breaks away but she won’t break away unless Prince Charles does it. He won’t do it because of his mother so they are never going to be happy. They will continue under the farcical umbrella of the royal family yet they will both lead completely separate lives.” Her friend Carolyn Bartholomew, a sensible sounding-board throughout Diana’s adult life, sees how that fundamental issue has clouded her character. “She is kind, generous, sad and in some ways rather desperate. Yet she has maintained her self-deprecating sense of humour. A very shrewd but immensely sorrowful lady.” Her royal future is by no means well-defined. If she could write her own script the Princess would like to see her husband go off with his Highgrove friends and attempt to discover the happiness he has not found with her, leaving Diana free to groom Prince William for his eventual destiny as the Sovereign. It is an idle pipe-dream as impossible as Prince Charles’s wish to relinquish his regal position and run a farm in Italy. She has other more modest ambitions; to spend a weekend in Paris, take a course in psychology, learn the piano to concert grade and to start painting again. The current pace of her life makes even these hopes seem grandiose, never mind her oft-repeated vision of the future where she see herself one day settling abroad, probably in Italy or France. A more likely avenue is the unfolding vista of charity, community and social work which has given her a sense of self-worth and fulfillment. As her brother says: “She has got a strong character. She does know what she wants and I think that after ten years she has got to a plateau now which she will continue to occupy for many years.” As a child she sensed her special destiny, as an adult she has remained true to her instincts. Diana has continued to carry the burden of public expectations while enduring considerable personal problems. Her achievement has been to find her true self in the face of overwhelming odds. She will continue to tread a different path from her husband, the royal family and their system and yet still conform to their traditions. As she says: “When I go home and turn my light off at night, I know I did my best.

I learned, however, that the loss of balance is ultimately more painful than the giving up required to maintain balance. It is a lesson I have continually had to relearn. As must everyone, for as we negotiate the curves and corners of our lives, we must continually give up parts of ourselves. The only alternative to this giving up is not to travel at all on the journey of life.

This is because the consequences of having emotion and attention are entirely related to the fundamental business of managing life within the organism. It is not possible to manage life and maintain homeostatic balance without data on the current state of the organism’s body.”9

In his book-length review of the executive functions, Dr. Russell Barkley (2012) explored the reasons that these skills evolved in humans in the first place. He makes the compelling case that it was the selection pressures associated with humans living in larger groups of genetically unrelated individuals, which made it selectively advantageous to have good self-regulation skills. That is, these abilities became more important to survival as humans became more interdependent with and reliant on dealings with people who were not family. Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and executive dysfunction continue to have effects on the myriad relationships and social interactions in daily life. These connections include romantic and committed relationships/marriage, relationships with parents, siblings, children, and other relatives, friendships, and interactions with employers, coworkers, and customers. The executive functions in relationships also figure in the capacity for empathy and tracking social debt, that is, the balance of favors you owe others and favors owed to you. The ability to effectively organize behavior across time in goal-directed activities gains you “social collateral.” That is, the more you deliver on promises and projects, the more that you will be sought out by others and maintain bonds with them. Some of the common manifestations of ADHD and executive dysfunction that may create problems in relationships include: • Distractibility during conversations • Forgetfulness about matters relevant to another person • Verbal impulsivity—talking over someone else • Verbal impulsivity—saying the “wrong thing” • Breaking promises (acts of commission, e.g., making an expensive purchase despite agreeing to stay within a household budget) • Poor follow-through on promises (acts of omission, e.g., forget to pick up dry cleaning) • Disregarding the effects of one’s behavior on others (e.g., building up excessive debt on a shared credit card account) • Poor frustration tolerance, anger (e.g., overreacting to children’s behavior) • Lying to cover up mistakes • Impulsive behaviors that reduce trust (e.g., romantic infidelity)

Similarly, suburbia unified taste. In The Organization Man, a wide-ranging analysis of suburban household behavior, William H. Whyte pointed to “inconspicuous consumption” as a central precept of acceptable behavior in the middle-class cul-de-sac. While material comforts and luxuries were to be energetically pursued as a part of the good life, it was a part of an observed social contract to not stand out too much relative to one’s neighbors. It was a delicate balancing act between showing that one had a little more taste or money versus maintaining the “strong impulse toward egalitarianism.” And when a family’s capacity for consumption significantly outpaced their neighbors’, they upgraded suburbs. What might have been seen as an obscene or vulgar show of upward mobility in one neighborhood might be normal in the next development over.

Best Tips for a Stress-Free Pregnancy – Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital Bringing a new life into the world is an extraordinary journey, one filled with anticipation and joy. Yet, the path to motherhood can also be fraught with stress and anxiety. The good news is that there are ways to navigate this period with greater ease. From seeking support through childbirth and parenting classes in Chandigarh to embracing the serenity of Pre-Natal Yoga Classes for Pregnant Mothers in Chandigarh, let’s explore some of the best tips for a stress-free pregnancy. Understand Your Body Pregnancy is a unique and transformative experience, but it also brings a host of physical changes. Understanding these changes can alleviate anxiety. Remember, your body is doing something miraculous. It’s nurturing and growing a new life. Embrace the journey with wonder and gratitude. Stay Active with Pre-Natal Yoga Pre-Natal Yoga Classes in Chandigarh provide an exceptional avenue to connect with your body and your baby. Yoga helps maintain flexibility, ease discomfort, and reduce stress. The gentle stretches and mindful breathing techniques impart a sense of calm and inner peace. Educate Yourself Knowledge is power, and when it comes to pregnancy, it’s empowering. Enroll in childbirth and parenting classes in Chandigarh to gain insight into what to expect during labor, delivery, and early parenthood. Knowing what lies ahead can significantly reduce apprehension. Nurture Emotional Well-being Pregnancy is not just about physical health; emotional well-being is equally vital. Seek emotional support from your partner, friends, or a counselor if needed. Express your feelings and allow yourself to experience a range of emotions without judgment. Eat Mindfully Nutrition is crucial for both you and your baby. Consume a balanced diet rich in essential nutrients. Remember, you’re not eating for two adults; you’re providing the building blocks for a new life. Consult with a healthcare professional for dietary guidance. Stay Hydrated Hydration is key to a healthy pregnancy. It helps prevent common issues like constipation and urinary tract infections. Aim for at least eight glasses of water a day, and adjust your intake as needed to accommodate your changing body.

Many Americans assume that part of maintaining quality of life in the country means that we should do whatever we can to maintain the status quo situation of the dollar as the world reserve currency. However, I view it differently. The status quo of the dollar’s hegemony has directly contributed to the domestic hollowing-out that we’ve experienced for decades — especially after the Cold War ended. The system that has been in place since the 1970s is antiquated monetary technology and is inherently unsustainable due to the accrued imbalances that it creates. Losing dollar hegemony at this point would harm special interests in the United States, would reduce the country’s imperial reach, and would require a shift of priorities, but ultimately it would lead toward a more natural and balanced global economy and provide the opportunity for U.S. domestic revitalization. The risk comes when we fail to recognize that and thus fail to make proactive changes from a position of strength. And so far, that’s the path we’ve chosen.

Most people do not put much effort into maintaining their bodies properly, but the body is the easiest and most elemental aspect of life to manage and master. Mastery of the physical elements leads to mastery of the mental and energetic elements.

What is Cerebral Palsy? A wheelchair, a woman, windswept legs, stiffness. And through one side of my body, lack of mobility, and tightness in my knees. That’s all causes by a condition called Cerebral Palsy according to the CDC Cerebral Palsy (CP)- is a group of disorders that affect a person's ability to move and maintain balance and posture. CP is the most common motor disability in childhood. Cerebral means having to do with the brain. Palsy means weakness or problems with using the muscles. But that’s not my definition of Cerebral Palsy my definition of cerebral palsy ce·re·bral pal·sy A condition that makes life more interesting, more of an adventure and more of a journey. You see I could have started this off by stating the old boring medical terms of Cerebral Palsy, but in my personal opinion it would be continuing the stigma’s that I’ve been trying to debunk since I was 18 years old and wouldn’t that be a boring book to read. To be frank, I’m tired of seeing books that don’t focus on the positive side of Cerebral Palsy. Well, OK at least some do, but there’s not very much, so I’ve decided to write this full of stories to explain how I overcome each obstacle with Cerebral Palsy. My name is Tylia L Flores. I’m Handi-capable!

If I can leave any good in this world besides my family, I leave these words. Don’t work too hard. Try to maintain balance. Don’t make work your whole life.

Chakra balance is the process of restoring a harmonious energy flow through the chakra system. Often the effect of well-balanced chakras translates into a feeling of well-being, relaxation, centeredness, increased vitality and self-incarnation. When we talk about balancing the chakra, we might actually refer to different techniques and meanings. A commonly accepted definition of chakra balancing is the process by which the chakra energy is brought into a well-functioning, harmonious state. The notion of calming a chakra tackles only part of the picture: Each chakra part of a system that works as a whole. When we look at how the chakras work, we see that they have a fluid relation and an active relationship with one another. Therefore, it is not only important to consider each chakra when doing chakra balancing, but also the neighboring centers and the energy throughout the body. Why balancing your chakras? The aim of balancing the chakra is to maintain a balanced flow which will preserve our overall energy level. We are subjected to a number of activities, sources of stress and demands in our daily lives that result in fluctuations in our energy level. Some may feel draining, others may experience fulfillment or nourishment. Moreover, past events and experiences often leave a long-lasting influence on how we feel and are in the world and thus influence how we manage our day-to-day energy. Stresses imposed on us by life demands will result in interruptions and changes in our energy flow and imbalances in the chakras. A chakra imbalance can affect: • How much energy flows through the chakra or chakra network • A chakra is defective when the energy is "blocked" or "closed" •       A chakra is overactive when the energy flow is increased excessively and is not controlled •       The direction of the energy field associated with one or more chakras is displaced. Balancing consists of maintaining appropriate and stable flow where there is not enough, controlling energy where there is too much, and aligning where imbalance or displacement is present. How to balance your chakras? Chakra balancing strategies fall into three categories: those based on a physical process or action, a meditative or introspective exercise, and energy transfer from or on your own.

Black and white, short and tall- these are not ‘discriminations’; they are a kind of ‘balance’ maintained by Allah. We see the same balance between males and females. The females are a little bit physically weaker than the males and it is not ‘discrimination’. Indeed, it is a necessary and beautiful balance for the sake of existence, reality, beauty, and life!

When you move beyond your 40th birthday, there are a number of lifestyle factors that should underpin your fitness lifestyle. Consider the following 7 factors and think about how you stack up in regard to them. Do you: Get regular (at least 6 monthly) medical checkups? Not smoke? Get regular exercise? Eat sensibly and in moderation? Strive to maintain a balanced weight? Know how to relax? Drink alcohol in moderation?

No matter what we say or do in life there will always be people who feel differently or have something negative to say, people whose unique life experiences don’t mesh with ours, but that is the beauty of it, there is balance to everything. If other people’s perspectives matter, your perspective matter too. If you have been alive for any amount of time, your take on this world is valid and worthwhile. Do not be ashamed of it, share it in any way you see fit, and stand by your creations, even if they make you cringe or feel like an impostor, believe in them and believe in your potential. If anyone is worthy, you are also worthy That is not to say that you should not take constructive criticism for what it is worth and always be improving your craft, but it is to say that you should always maintain the foundation of your work in honest self-expression, always keep the roots firmly in your truth and don’t let anything scare you away from that because if the fear of being rejected by others prevents you from exploring and sharing your true self, you are actually rejecting yourself and there is no worse rejection than that.

Stoicism suggests that one should try to maintain the following balance: an awareness that the things we are worried about could and very likely might happen – that life will contain moments of tragedy and sharp turns – and that we should be prepared for these moments, both mentally and practically, in any way we can. However, equally important is recognizing that many of these sorts of catastrophic moments, can’t be known nor controlled nor predicted and thus, after a point, worrying has none. Once one has done everything that is rationally and realistically preventative, they should work to revert their attention back to the present, leaving all additional concern about the future, for the future. Awareness and rational preparation have value to the future at low cost to the present. But worrying about what one cannot know nor control of the future has no value to either and comes at the cost of the present. Following the Stoic way of thinking to potentially help counter this unnecessary anxiety and bring our attention and enjoyment back to the present, we can remind ourselves that in the future, things might not be ok, but if they might not be, then they are now. Or at least better than the future version we are worried about. If we are worried that things will only get worse, then things are as good as they’ll ever be right now. And how foolish it would be to ruin what might be ok now out of concern of things potentially not being so later if one cannot know or do anything further to prevent it? And better yet, if one is wrong about what they’re fearful, then things will only get better. And there is even less reason to worry. Moreover, we tend to assume the worst. We tend to worry not only about things going wrong but the worst cases of things going wrong, paired with a sense that in the face of such cases, we would be broken and ruined, beyond repair. However, how often is this actually true? Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote, “We are more often frightened than hurt, and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.” Epictetus similarly wrote, “Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.” In all likeliness, there is someone somewhere right now living some version of a seemingly worst-case scenario for many of us, living with no phone, computer, TV, and a great many other things, unaware of this video and perhaps a huge portion of the happenings of the world. And he or she is likely just as happy or unhappy as many of us right now. We are adaptable creatures, wired to adjust our worries to our circumstances, as well as our abilities to remain ok in the face of them. And it is perhaps of great use to consider and meditate on this idea frequently and with confidence. That even if some version of nearly worst-case, we would likely still be some form of ok. The ingredients of your being that have gotten you where you are, that have given you what you’ve experienced, will still remain. To paraphrase Roman statesman, and philosopher Cicero, while one still breathes, one still has hope. At least in some form.

Life is like riding a bicycle. To maintain your balance you must keep moving." - Albert Einstein "There is a difference between ambition and determination, one is your dreams, while the other is your doings." - Me

Bridges Life did not appear to breathe here, It was covered in endless rounds of thread of fear, So it tread quietly along the fringes, Scared that it might be the cause of collapsing bridges, Bridges that connected life with hope, And it watched these bridges from a distance placing itself on a discreet slope, But it dared not cross them, none of them, It looked at them in desperation, especially some, For it often crossed them to renew its reserves of liveliness, But now it feels pervaded by a deep feeling of sadness, Life here seems to be a part of some sort of purgatory, Waiting to cross over and leave behind this existence derogatory, It may not be a perspicuous show of feelings, But here these are life’s daily dealings, And I wonder what about life’s own posterity, Because in this land of death life somehow loses all its virility, Tamed by some obnoxious devil, Who has had a diabolic conception and then raised by some heinous evil, Maybe that is why the bridges look so frail and hopeless themselves, Bearing stacks of hopelessness displayed on hope’s own shelves, For when life does not cross the bridges of hope, It is death that forsakes life and then time withdraws its rope, That maintains the perfect cohesion, Between beginnings and ends , between fission and fusion, And when this balance is lost anywhere, Life is cast into a place where there exists life everywhere, But nothing else nowhere, Just life, no hopes, no beauty, no bliss, no summer, a life that becomes its own prisoner in this infinity somewhere, However, now the bridges have fallen, but few still stand, And life that is tired of living without hope, feels the dying hope’s hand, And like the rope of time it pulls it unto itself, and makes life cross the bridge, Thus, life once again walks on the happy ridge, Hoping to live another day, feel life in a better and different way, For living the same moment of time begets no joy, if it is lived the same way everyday, And time weaves its threads of mystery and surprises around it, Then death too gets woven somewhere in this loop of time, and life finally says, “so be it!” And it jumps into the sea of time and collects its moments of myriad experiences, While time registers all these instances, And when the loop of death unwinds, In it a new loop of life it always finds, Now, even if the bridges may fall and time may end, Life has learned to create moments of happiness that never end!

Originally man lived in isolation; with the support of nature every individual tried to maintain his equilibrium between sinful temptations. This filled the whole of his life, there was no room for interest in others nor worry about the future; as a result labour did not exist, nor did sorrow, hate, fear, or lust. But man was not content, he began to search for power over others and for certainty about the future. In this way the balance was broken, labour became more and more and more diabolical. In the end everyone wielded power and suffered suppression at the same time. The old instinct of separation and isolation has survived only in the form of pale envy and jealousy.

There’s an internally recognized beauty of motion and balance on any man-healthy planet,” Kynes said. “You see in this beauty a dynamic stabilizing effect essential to all life. Its aim is simple: to maintain and produce coordinated patterns of greater and greater diversity. Life improves the closed system’s capacity to sustain life. Life—all life—is in the service of life. Necessary nutrients are made available to life by life in greater and greater richness as the diversity of life increases. The entire landscape comes alive, filled with relationships and relationships within relationships.

There’s no need to fret about what’s out of sight (or what you don’t know). Focus on moving forward, doing your best with the knowledge you have. Trust that as you go, “whatever you need or deserve will appear”. Here’s the key, Sweetheart: we don’t need a roadmap to our best life. All we need is the commitment to move forward with what we have & the belief that we deserve it. The incredible, all-encompassing energy within us will take care of the rest. Darling listen – finding & maintaining your inner balance, knowing & allowing what drives you forward.. will pave your unique path to success. See where lines have blurred & choose what aligns with you to live your best day, every day. I wish & hope that all the good things come & stay present in your life. May your positive experiences compound & gradually build into something truly great. Blessings!

It was not like her to lose her senses. The ability to drift was beaten from her long ago. But Sorasa drifted now, pacing the beach. She did not hear the shift of sand, or the heavy scuff of boots over the loose stones. There was only the wind. Until a strand of gold blew across her vision, joined by a warm unyielding palm against her shoulder. Her body jolted as she turned, nose to nose with Domacridhan of Iona. His green eyes glittered, his mouth open as he shouted something again, his voice swallowed up by the droning in her own head. “Sorasa.” It came to her slowly, as if through deep water. Her own name, over and over again. She could only stare back into the verdant green, lost in the fields of his eyes. In her chest, her heart stumbled. She expected her body to follow. Instead, her fist closed and her knuckles met cheekbone. Dom was good enough to turn his head, letting the blow glance off. Begrudgingly, Sorasa knew he had spared her a broken hand on top of everything else. “How dare you,” she forced out, trembling. Whatever concern he wore burned away in an instant. “How dare I what? Save your life?” he snarled, letting her go Sorasa swayed without his support. She clenched her own jaw, fighting to maintain her balance lest she fall to pieces entirely. “Is that another Amhara lesson?” he raged on, throwing up both arms. “When given the choice between death or indignity, choose death?!” Hissing, Sorasa looked back to the spot where she woke up. Heat crept up her face as she realized her body left a trail through the sand when he dragged her up from the tide line. A blind man would have noticed it. But not Sorasa in her fury and grief. “Oh,” was all she could manage. Her mouth flapped open, her mind spinning. Only the truth came, and that was far too embarrassing. “I did not see. I—” Her head throbbed again and she pressed a hand to her temple, wincing away from his stern glare. “I will feel better if you sit,” Dom said stiffly. Despite the pain, Sorasa loosed a growl. She wanted to stand just to spite him, but thought better of it. With a huff, she sank, cross-legged on the cool sand. Dom was quick to follow, almost blurring. It made her head spin again. “So you saved me from the shipwreck just to abandon me here?” Sorasa muttered as Dom opened his mouth to protest. “I don’t blame you. Time is of the essence now. A wounded mortal will only slow you down.” She expected him to bluster and lie. Instead, his brow furrowed, lines creasing between his still vivid eyes. The light off the ocean suited him. “Are you? Wounded?” he asked gently, his gaze raking over her. His focus snagged on her temple, and the gash there. “Anywhere else, I mean?” For the first time since she woke, Sorasa tried to still herself. Her breath slowed as she assessed herself, feeling her own body from toes to scalp. As her awareness traveled, she noted every blooming bruise and cut, every dull ache and shooting pain. Bruises ribs. A sprained wrist. Her tongue flicked in her mouth. Scowling, she spit out a broken tooth. “No, I’m not wounded,” she said aloud. Dom’s desperate smile broke wide. He went slack against the sand for an instant, falling back on his elbows to tip his face to the sky. His eyes fluttered shut only for a moment. Sorasa knew his gods were too far. He had said so himself. The gods of Glorian could not hear their children in this realm. Even so, Sorasa saw it on his face. Dom prayed anyway. In his gratitude or anger, she did not know. “Good,” he finally said, sitting back up.

Astronauts live on spaceships hurtling through space with a human crew and a precious and limited supply of resources. Everything must be maintained in balance, recycled; nothing can be wasted. The measure of well-being is not how fast the crew is able to consume its limited stores but rather how effective the crew members are in maintaining their physical and mental health, their shared resource stocks, and the life-support system on which they all depend. What is thrown away is forever inaccessible. What is accumulated without recycling fouls the living space. Crew members function as a team in the interests of the whole. No one would think of engaging in nonessential consumption unless the basic needs of all were met and there was ample provision for the future.