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Balance is a state in which things occur in equal or proper amounts

• Balance: A situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.  Oxford Dictionary
• Balance: A state in which different things occur in equal or proper amounts or have an equal or proper amount of importance.  Merriam Webster
• A harmonious or satisfying arrangement or proportion of parts or elements, as in a design.  American Heritage Dictionary
• Harmony,  Moderation,  Variety

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Balance is about moderation; lack of excess

• It’s all about balance. Balancing exercise, food, and life. No excesses.  Helen M. Ryan
• For both excessive and insufficient exercise destroy one’s strength, and both eating and drinking too much or too little destroy health, whereas the right quantity produces, increases or preserves it. So, it is the same with temperance, courage and the other virtues… This much then, is clear: in all our conduct, it is the mean that is to be commended.  Aristotle
• Moderation,  Excess

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Balance is about harmony

• Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.  Thomas Merton
• Perfect harmony of body and mind are my key to personal balance and happiness.  Gabriela Sabatini
• There is a balance, a harmony to be nurtured, between the head and the heart. When the intuition rings clear and true, loving impulses are favored.  Brian L. Weiss
• To create a vision of the harmony of the unequal, balance the infinite variety, the chaotic, the contradictions – in a unity.   Hans Richter
• Balance is a feeling derived from being whole and complete; it’s a sense of harmony. It is essential to maintaining quality in life and work. Natalie A. Gahrmann
• To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.  Victor Hugo
• Balance doesn’t exist, but proportion and harmony do.  Danielle LaPorte
• Harmony

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Balance is a universal principle of nature and life

• Balance is a True North Principal. Nature is living proof.  Stephen Covey
• Mathematics expresses values that reflect the cosmos, including orderliness, balance, harmony, logic, and abstract beauty.  Deepak Chopra
• Next to love, balance is the most important thing.  John Wooden
• Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.  Thomas Merton
• Life is a balanced system of learning and evolution. Whether pleasure or pain; every situation in your life serves a purpose. It is up to us to recognize what that purpose could be.  Steve Maraboli
• Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.  Ralph Waldo Emerson
• We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance. Paul Boese
• Nature

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Life is a balance between joy and pain, happiness and sadness

• The word ‘happiness’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.  Carl Jung
• Perhaps there could be no joy on this planet without an equal weight of pain to balance it out on some unknown scale.  Stephenie Meyer
• My point is, life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The pina and the colada.  Ellen DeGeneres
• What is joy without sorrow? What is success without failure? What is a win without a loss? What is health without illness? You have to experience each if you are to appreciate the other. There is always going to be suffering. it’s how you look at your suffering, how you deal with it, that will define you.  Mark Twain
• Evermore in the world is this marvelous balance of beauty and disgust, magnificence and rats.  Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Ups and downs are normal.  Being ill on occasion is normal.  Feeling peaceful and happy are normal.  Occasional low- energy days are normal.  According to Chinese medicine, it is accepted as natural that we fluctuate from being in balance to being out of balance.  Peace of mind comes from not attaching a great deal of significance to either state.  We simply note our moods and physical states and gently move toward balance as best we can, accepting it all as part of the flow of life.  Charlotte Davis Kasl
• I love the word ‘juxtapose,’ … I like balancing words together like cruel and gentle, sad and beautiful. Life is not all black and white — it’s shaded.  Charlie Sexton
• The Amish love the Sunshine and Shadow quilt pattern.  It shows two sides–the dark and light, spirit and form– and the challenge of bringing the two into a larger unity.  It’s not a choice between extremes:  conformity or freedom, discipline or imagination, acceptance or doubt, humility or a raging ego.  It’s a balancing act that includes opposites.  Sue Bender
• Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.  George Orwell
• Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train, Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain, These mix’d with art, and to due bounds confin’d Make and maintain the balance of the mind.  Alexander Pope
• Throughout history, every period of enlightenment has been accompanied by darkness, pushing in opposition. Such are laws of nature and balance.  Dan Brown
• He felt that there is a loose balance of good and evil, and that the art of living consists in getting the greatest good out of the greatest evil.  Machado de Assis
• As life moves in cycles, every season comes to pass. One must rest in the centre, accepting change, to remain balanced through all that turns. To resist the turning nature of life results in suffering.  Isira
• Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word “happiness” would lose it’s meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.  Carl Jung
• Moments of splendor and moments of gloom – they help maintain life’s balance. One thought is key: they all pass.  Joan Marques
• Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.  Osho
• Joy,  Pain,  Happiness,  Sadness

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Balance creates quality of life

• Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.  Robert Fulgham
• We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest. Philip Gilbert Hamerton
• It’s all about quality of life; finding a happy balance between work, friends and family.   Philip Green
• Living in balance and purity is the highest good for you and the earth.  Deepak Chopra
• Balance is a feeling derived from being whole and complete; it’s a sense of harmony. It is essential to maintaining quality in life and work. Natalie A. Gahrmann
• Next to love, balance is the most important thing.  John Wooden
• Balance. The Ultimate Goal.  Ricky Lankford
• Balance is beautiful.  Miyoko Ohno
• Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life. It starts with recognizing your talents and finding ways to serve others by using them.  Thomas Kinkade
• Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.  Robert Fulghum

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Balance is the essence of effectiveness

• True effectiveness requires balance. Stephen Covey
• 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.  Stephen Covey
• Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.  Brian Tracy
• Living a balanced life brings about many benefits. It’s not only vital to our happiness, health and well- being; it can significantly increase our productivity and overall success.  Rhodri Jones
• Often the lack of clear direction and goals can waste away our time and energy and contribute to imbalance in our lives. A life that gets out of balance is much like a car tire that is out of balance. It will make the operation of the car rough and unsafe. Tires in perfect balance can give a smooth and comfortable ride. So it is with life. The ride through mortality can be smoother for us when we strive to stay in balance.  M. Russell Ballard
• Effectiveness

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Balance is the essence of wisdom

• Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other.  Stephen Covey
• The truth is balance. However, the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.  Susan Sonrag
• Wisdom

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Balance is the essence of success

• I believe that being successful means having a balance of success stories across the many areas of your life. You can’t truly be considered successful in your business life if your home life is in shambles.  Zig Ziglar
• Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is.  Evan Williams
• Balance, peace, and joy are the fruit of a successful life.  Thomas Kinkade
• My private measure of success is the daily question:  “If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it?”  To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.  Jane Rule
• The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.  Zig Ziglar
• Success is living a full and balanced life in partnership with others to create a joyful feeling of love, contribution, appreciation and abundance, despite how our endeavors may turn out.  Susan Jeffers
• Success

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Balance is the essence of peace

• Equanimity is a perfect, unshakable balance of mind.  Nyanaponika Thera
• Equanimity comes from the Latin word aequus meaning balanced, and animus meaning spirit or internal state.  Shinzen Young
• Equanimity is a state of even-minded openness that allows for a balanced, clear response to all situations, rather than a response borne of reactivity or emotion.  Frank Jude Boccio
• The point of balance is the heart. It’s the foundation on which to build. Activating heart frequencies by loving and caring will balance your system, bringing in peace in the moment. It’s the best antidote for restoring balance and alleviating stress.  Doc Childre and Sara Paddison
• One of the most powerful ways to use wisdom to facilitate equanimity is to be mindful of when equanimity is absent. Honest awareness of what makes us imbalanced helps us to learn how to find balance.  Gil Fronsdal
• Inner peace

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Balance is the essence of love

• In intuitive balance, love is balanced and detached. In the state of intuitive balance, peace and tranquility are produced. Without intuitive balance, life is useless.  Sri Guru Granth Sahib
• Love is the undisturbed balance that binds this universe together.  Mahavatar Babaji
• Love

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Balance provides true nourishment

• Sometimes we are fed not by food but by the energy in our lives. These moments and feelings demonstrate that everything is food. We take in thousands of experiences of life that can fulfill us physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. We hunger for play, fun, touch, romance, intimacy, love, achievement, success, art, music, self- expression, leadership, excitement, adventure and spirituality. All of these elements are essential forms of nourishment. The extent to which we are able to incorporate them determines how enjoyable and worthwhile our lives feel.  Joshua Rosenthal

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Balance creates synergy and unleashes energy

• Understand that your pillars are interdependent: When you attend to each of them, all increase in strength. When you take care of your health by working out regularly and eating well, you create multiple benefits. Sexual relationships become enhanced by your greater confidence and stamina. Business booms from your increased energy. You’re more alert and receptive in spiritual pursuits. You’re more alive. Similarly, spiritual growth translates to deepening intimacy in friendships and romantic relationships, fueling your desire to keep up with your physical exercise.  James Arthur Ray
• Fulfilling the four needs – spiritual, mental, physical, social – in an integrated way is like combining elements in chemistry. When we reach a “critical mass” of integration, we experience spontaneous combustion – an explosion of inner synergy that ignites the fire within and gives vision, passion, and a spirit of adventure to life.  Stephen Covey
• From your state of balanced energy, you experience clarity, vitality, eagerness, physical wellness, abundance in all things you consider to be good, and an exuberant state of joy. This is the natural state of who-you- really- are.  Esther and Jerry Hicks
• If we think we are tired or ill, it is only because we have done something to unbalance the bodily conductivity of the universal electric current which motivates it.  Walter Russell
• Synergy,  Energy management

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Balance leads to well-being and happiness

• The greatest art is to attain a balance, a balance between all opposites, a balance between all polarities. Imbalance is the disease and balance is health. Imbalance is neurosis, and balance is well- being.  Osho
• If we could learn how to balance rest against effort, calmness against strain, quiet against turmoil, we would assure ourselves of joy in living and psychological health for life.  Josephine Rathbone
• Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm and harmony.  Thomas Merton
• To heal illness, begin by restoring balance.  Caroline Myss
• Authentic happiness is not linked to an activity; it is a state of being, a profound emotional balance struck by a subtle understanding of how the mind functions.  Matthieu Ricard
• When we create peace, and harmony, and balance in our minds, we will find it in our lives.  Louise Hay
• A life that finds joy and peace to balance stress and strife will increase its opportunity for health.   J.J. Goldwag
• Health is the natural condition. When sickness occurs, it is a sign that Nature has gone off course because of a physical or mental imbalance. The road to health for everyone is through moderation, harmony, and a ‘sound mind in a sound body’.  Jostein Gaarder
• Well-being,  Happiness

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Lack of balance does damage and leads to regret

• Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And youre keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.  James Patterson
• Life without balance can cost you your relationships. Life without balance can cost you your health. Life without balance can cost you your spirituality. Life without balance can cost you your wealth and your happiness. So find things to motivate you from all areas of life. Your success depends on it.  Jim Rohn
• Make sure that you allow enough time for relaxation, relationships, and maintaining your health. If you neglect one or more important aspects of your life, all the other areas will suffer too.  Amanda Harvey
• Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is.  Evan Williams
• Work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls – family, health, friends, integrity – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.  Gary W. Keller
• Regret

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Find balance across all the primary areas of your life: physical, mental, spiritual and emotional

• Work, love and play are the great balance wheels of man’s being. Orison Swett Marden
• If a man is to live, he must be all alive, body, soul, mind, heart, spirit.  Thomas Merton
• Everyone is a house with four rooms: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. Unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person. Rumer Godden
• The five pillars of wealth are financial, relational, mental, physical, and spiritual. Without these five pillars, you might be rich, but you’ll never be wealthy. Interestingly enough, I’ve found that the more you reach this state of true wealth, the more money rushes to you—and all that money can provide. The universe is at your command and lines up in joyous support of your awakening.  James Arthur Ray
• Your work. Your relationships. Your inner life. In his book of the same name, David Whyte calls these “the three marriages.” These fundamental components of our existence must work to support one another, not to vie for unfaltering attention.  Danielle LaPorte
• … consciousness is an ever-unfolding, deepening, and expanding process with no end point. We are infinite and complex beings, and our human journey involves not just a spiritual awakening, but the development of all levels of our being – spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical – and the integration of all these aspects into a healthy and balanced daily life.  Shakti Gawain

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Find balance by not allowing work to take over your life

• Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.  Dolly Parton
• Don’t confuse having a career with having a life.  Hillary Clinton
• Don’t let making a living prevent you from making a life.   John Wooden
• Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.  Margaret Fuller
• Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.  Robert Louis Stevenson
• A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward.  George Jean Nathan
• Balance in your life between work and your personal life is very important.  Without balance, you eventually burn out, negatively affecting your performance at work.  Byron Pulsifer
• The cost of success will be too high if you choose not to lead a balanced life.  Linda Stryker
• You were intended not only to work, but to rest, laugh, play, and have proper leisure and enjoyment. To develop an all- around personality, you must have interest outside of your regular vocation that will serve to balance your business responsibilities.  Grenville Kleiser
• Life is my business; business is not my life.  Don Dunning
• You will never feel truly satisfied by work until you are satisfied by life.  Heather Schuck
• Work for what you want, the pursuit of life.  Lailah Gifty Akita
• Work

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Find a balance between work and fun …

• There’s time for fun, and there’s time for work.  The relationship between the two seems to be a pattern within all natural systems; you can feel it in your gut whether you’re on or off track.  When your life is all fun and no work, you feel unclean somehow.  When it’s all work and no fun, you’re out of balance and hardly of use to anyone.  In fact, it’s because the problems of the world are so serious that we need to do whatever it takes to lighten up sometimes.  One of the ways you know you’re in the flow is if you’re seriously of service and seriously enjoying yourself at the same time. It feels right because it is right.  Marianne Williamson
• Naturally, business and pleasure can be readily combined, but a certain balance should exist, and the latter should not predominate over the former.  Fredrik Bajer
• To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.  Jane Rule
• It’s important to have as much fun as possible while we’re here. It balances out the times when the minefield of life explodes.  Jimmy Buffett
• You were intended not only to work, but to rest, laugh, play, and have proper leisure and enjoyment. To develop an all-  around personality you must have interest outside of your regular vocation that will serve to balance your business responsibilities.  Grenville Kleiser
• Work,  Fun

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… and make sure the two are not mutually exclusive

• Don’t have work-life balance – at least in the sense of trying to escape from work so you can have a life. Work should be fun – so make work enjoyable and satisfying for everyone – among other reasons because it pays off.  Don Tapscott
• If you’re interested in ‘balancing’ work and pleasure, stop trying to balance them. Instead make your work more pleasurable.  Donald Trump

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Find a balance between energy expenditure and energy renewal

• Life is a balance between rest and movement.  Rajneesh
• Put work and non-work on one axis and what restores you and what depletes you on the other axis. The key is to identify what restores you and depletes you both at work and non-work, then do more of what restores you.  Dr. Edy Greenblatt
• Full engagement requires drawing on four separate but related sources of energy: physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Because energy diminishes both with overuse and with underuse, we must balance energy expenditure with intermittent energy renewal.  Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• To maintain a powerful pulse in our lives, we must learn how to rhythmically spend and renew energy. Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• We, too, must learn to live our own lives as a series of sprints—fully engaging for periods of time, and then fully disengaging and seeking renewal before jumping back into the fray to face whatever challenges confront us.  Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• Energy is simply the capacity to do work. Our most fundamental need as human beings is to spend and recover energy.  Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• Energy management

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Find a balance between routine and variety

• I want to caution you against the idea that balance has to be a routine that looks the same week in and week out.  Kevin Thoman
• Variety is the condition of harmony.  Thomas Carlyle
• Not on one strand are all life’s jewels strung.  William Morris
• Variety is a good thing — it keeps life interesting. So, mix things up a bit.  Leo Babauta
• Routines and rituals,  Variety

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Find a balance between the past, present and future

• The key to balance is to be able to flexibly switch between past, present and future perspectives and to work toward a degree of positive reflection on the past, a moderately enjoyable present and a hopeful future.  Phil Zimbardo
• Often, I coach clients to help them develop a balanced time perspective. It’s extremely important that they learn to cultivate an appreciation for what they have experienced in the past, a sense of gratitude and engagement in the present, and sense of hope and well- established goals for the future.  Angie LeVan
• The past, The future,  Live in the moment

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Find a balance between what you need for yourself and what others need of you

• Problems arise in that one has to find a balance between what people need from you and what you need for yourself.   Jessye Norma
• Are you balanced?  Do you share your time, your energy, your life, as much with yourself as you do with those around you? . . . . Know your limits. You are one of the most important people you need to look after and love.  Balance your time, your energy, your life with those around you.  You’ll be able to give more freely and joyfully as a result, and you’ll be more open to the gifts of the universe.  It’s not wrong to give to others.  But it’s okay to say yes to ourselves, too.  Melody Beattie
• To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.   Jane Rule

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Find a balance between mind and spirit

• Through meditation we can learn simple exercises to help us understand and control our thinking. We can learn to gain access to powers of spirit that connect us to realms of higher thinking and knowledge. Most importantly, we can learn the balance of mind and spirit that is so necessary to make life enjoyable and fruitful.  Randolph Winters

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Find balance between humour and the serious

• A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.  William Arthur Ward
• The trick is to find the balance between the bright colors of humor and the serious issues of identity, self-loathing, and the possibility for intimacy and love when it seems no longer possible or, sadder yet, no longer necessary.  Wendy Wasserstein
• In today’s society, we sometimes forget to balance our hearts and our heads; this is the reason we stop laughing.  Yakov Smirnoff
• Humor requires perspective. Perspective requires focus. Focus requires balance.  Tom Bergeron
• He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.  Ken Kesey
• Humour

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Find balance between between society and solitude

• A warrior balances solitude and dependence.  Paulo Coelho
• We need society, and we need solitude also, as we need summer and winter, day and night, exercise and rest.  Philip Gilbert Hamerton
• There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.  May Sarton
• I like being on my own better than I like anything else, but I can’t give up love. Maybe it’s the tension between longing and aloneness that I need. My own funicular railway, holding in balance the two things most likely to destroy me.  Jeanette Winterson
• Solitude

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Find a balance between holding on and letting go

• Don’t hold on too long, but don’t let go to soon. Find a balance.  Morrie Swartz
• All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.  Henry Havelock Ellis
• Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.  Rumi
• Letting go helps us to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands-off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress.  Melody Beattie
• Letting go,  Perseverance

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Find a balance between the head and the heart

• Come from the heart, the true heart, not the head. When in doubt, choose the heart. This does not mean to deny your own experiences and that which you have empirically learned through the years. It means to trust your self to integrate intuition and experience. There is a balance, a harmony to be nurtured, between the head and the heart. When the intuition rings clear and true, loving impulses are favored.  Brian L. Weiss
• To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it’s like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.  Elizabeth Gilbert
• If your heart tells you something but your mind tells you something else, which do you believe? Both are just as apt to lie. In fact, they play at deceit all the time. Mostly they balance each other, giving us that crucial reality check. But what happens on the rare occasions when they conspire together?  Neal Shusterman

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Find a balance between self discipline and fun

• While ideas such as discipline and focus are undeniably important, so is the idea of having fun.  With a small amount of effort, we can extract all the fun and joy out of most parts of our lives–our relationships, our work, even our leisure time.  We can put so many restrictions and should’s on everything we do that our very lives become dull, overly ponderous, and routine.  Before long, we find ourselves living up to a set of rules–and we’re not certain where the rules came from or whose they are.  Let yourself go.  Have a little fun with life.  Or, have a lot of fun with life.  If you’ve spent years being extremely disciplined, reliable, and somber, maybe part of achieving balance is having a decade of fun.  Melody Beattie
• Self-discipline,  Fun

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Find a balance between order and chaos

• Chaos and Order are not enemies, only opposites. Chaos and Order combined equal balance.  Richard Garriott
• Any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness.  Walter Benjamin
• Order and disorder’, said the speaker, ‘they each have their beauty.’   Orson Scott Card
• Chaos,  Order

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Find a balance between reason and emotion

• A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for instinctual drives must be satisfied.  Cyril Connolly
• Emotion,  Reason

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Find balance between form and the formless; between material and spiritual

• Mastery of life is not as much about control as it is about finding a balance between your human form and your inner being. Balance is mastery.  J.J. Goldwag
• We must learn to balance the material wonders of technology with the spiritual demands of our human race.  John Naisbitt
• Material objects give rise to physical happiness, while spiritual development gives rise to mental happiness. Since we experience both physical and mental happiness, we need both material and spiritual development. This is why, for our own good and that of society we need to balance material progress with inner development.  The Dalai Lama
• The material and the spiritual are but two parts of one universe and one truth. By overstressing one part or the other, man fails to achieve the balance necessary for harmonious development… Practice the art of living in this world without losing your inner peace of mind. Follow the path of balance to reach the inner wondrous garden of Self-Realization. Paramahansa Yogananda
• You are a human being. What does that mean? Mastery of life is not a question of control, but of finding a balance between human and Being. Mother, father, husband, wife, young, old, the roles you play, the functions you fulfill, whatever you do — all that belongs to the human dimension. It has its place and needs to be honored, but in itself it is not enough for a fulfilled, truly meaningful relationship or life. Human alone is never enough, no matter how hard you try or what you achieve. Then there is Being. It is found in the still, alert presence of Consciousness itself, the Consciousness that you are. Human is form. Being is formless. Human and Being are not separate but interwoven. Eckhart Tolle
• Without time for recovery, our lives become a blur of doing, unbalanced by much opportunity for being.  Jim Loehr
• There should be a balance between material and spiritual progress, a balance achieved through the principles based on love and compassion.  Tenzin Gyatso

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More areas to find balance between

• The proper balance between individual liberty and central authority is a very ancient problem.  Arthur Keith
• I try to keep a balance between conceptual or intellectual comprehension and emotional understanding.  Noto
• I believe in trying to get a balance between individual freedom on the one hand and social responsibility on the other.  Chris Patten
• One must strike the right balance between speed and quality.  Clare Short
• The true humanist maintains a just balance between sympathy and selection.  Irving Babbitt
• The human mind, if it is to keep its sanity, must maintain the nicest balance between unity and plurality.  Irving Babbitt
• The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.  Max Beerbohm
• You need a balance in life between dealing with whats going on inside and not being so absorbed in yourself that it takes over.  Nigella Lawson
• If you strive only to avoid the darkness or to cling to the light, you cannot live in balance. Try striving to be conscious of all that you are.  Gary Zukav
• A good leader… maintains a balance between emotional drive and sound thinking.  Haile Selassie
• Talk to yourself in two languages – what do I fear and what do I love – in order to balance the body and the soul.  Peter Shepherd
• The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.  Carlos Castaneda
• Balance every thought with its opposition. Because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion.  Aleister Crowley
• Fortunate, indeed, is the man who takes exactly the right measure of himself and holds a just balance between what he can acquire and what he can use.   Peter Latham
• Passion and courtesy are two polar opposite traits that serve to balance each other into a full-blooded whole. Without socialization, passion is a crude barbarian, and without passion, the elegant and polite are dead.  Allow both passion and courtesy into your life in equal measure, and be complete.  Vera Nazarian
• You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.’ He paused, considering what he had just said. ‘Yes’, he repeated. ‘In the end, it’s all a question of balance. Rohinton Mistry
• We must remember balance and moderation. Patience can be spiritually enriching and virtuous… but when taken in excess, it turns to procrastination, the poison of inaction.  Steve Maraboli
• Stillness and action are relative, not absolute, principles. It is important to find a balance of yin and yang, not just in qigong, but in everyday life. In movement, seek stillness and rest. In rest, be mindful and attentive.  Ken Cohen
• The key to creating flow is to establish a balance between skills and challenges.  A flow experience falls in just the right space between boredom and anxiety.  Sonja Lyubomirsky

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Finding work-life balance is a significant challenge of modern life

• The work-life balance is a harsh reality for so many women, who are forced every day to make impossible choices. Do they take their kids to the doctor…and risk getting fired? Do they work weekends so they can afford to send their kids to better childcare…even though it means even less time with their families? Do they take another shift at work, so they can pay for piano lessons for their kids…even though it means they have to stop volunteering for the PTA? It just shouldn’t be this difficult to raise healthy families.  Michelle Obama
• The challenge of work-life balance is without question one of the most significant struggles faced by modern man.  Stephen Covey
• Wrestling with work-life balance is a luxury when working to support a family is a necessity rather than a choice. I think that focus is only partially a result of these tough economic times. I think it also reflects a bit of “having it all fatigue”: women are worn out from feeling the pressure to excel at work, and be the perfect mom at home.  Willow Bay
• The answer is, of course, to simplify, to prioritize, and in some cases, to use a well-known phrase, “Just say no!” But actually, doing it may prove to be one of the real challenges in our complicated, overheated lives.  M. Russell Ballard
• It’s all about quality of life and finding a happy balance between work and friends and family.  Philip Green
• We must be courageous but also reasonable. The world admires us for walking a tightrope without falling off. It asks us to keep our balance.  Lech Walesa
• Work

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Some argue that work-life balance is idealistic

• Startups are not the best choice for work-life balance, and that’s sort of just the sad reality.  Sam Altman
• If you’re searching for “work/life balance” you’ll always be disappointed because “balance” connotes a zero-sum equation.  Stewart D. Friedman
• So, there’s no such thing as work-life balance. There’s work, and there’s life, and there’s no balance.  Sheryl Sandberg
• There’s no life-work balance. I think you have to have the discipline to have the life you want to have. And if you are stealing from one part of your life in order to make the other part work, you are going to pay for it.  Seth Godin
• There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.  Jack Welch
• You have to be prepared to give creative work 150%. I hear a lot of young people talking about life/work balance, which I think is great when you’re in your 30s. If you’re in your 20s and already talking about that, I don’t think you will achieve your goals. If you really want to build a powerful career, and make an impact, then you have to be prepared to put in blood, sweat, and tears.  Ellen Lupton

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Others argue it can be done

• There’s no work-life balance without making decisions and without courage.  Michael Hyatt
• When I think about work-life balance, I don’t imagine it as a perfect day where I got to spend the exact right amount of time having an impact at work and snuggling with my kids at home. I never achieve that. But over the course of a month, or a quarter, or a year, I try to make time for the people and experiences I value.  Jane Park

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Ideally, balance is about balancing the things you love, not just finding the right work-life balance

• When people talk about a work-life balance, they mean that we should find a balance between work and our personal lives, which is definitely true. But it’s important to realize that if work is really something you love, you don’t need to cut it short in order to spend more time at home in front of the television.  So the key is to remember that what we’re looking for is a balance between the things we love — not just work and the rest of life, but work and family and hobbies and chores and everything else.  Leo Babauta
• Full engagement begins with feeling eager to get to work in the morning, equally happy to return home in the evening and capable of setting clear boundaries between the two.   Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz
• Framing the issue of work-life balance – as if the two were dramatically opposed – practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life?  Sheryl Sandberg
• Do what you love

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To achieve balance, you need to manage your time

• You must master your time rather than becoming a slave to the constant flow of events and demands on your time. And you must organize your life to achieve balance, harmony, and inner peace.  Brian Tracy
• Time management

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To achieve balance, you need to address each of your roles in life

• The principle of balance is the ability to identify our various roles and to spend appropriate amounts of time in, and focus on, all of the important roles and dimensions of our lives. Success in one area of our life cannot compensate for neglect or failure in other areas of our life.  Stephen Covey
• Much of the frustration many people feel comes from the fact that they are succeeding at one role but failing at others. To lead a well-balanced life, each of your personal roles must work together for the accomplishment of your mission.  Stephen Covey
• Balance is created when you address each role on a regular basis.  Stephen Covey
• I’d learned balance is internal; that there really wasn’t one set formula for how to live your life nor how to handle the wife-   mother- businesswoman juggling act. Maybe it was just being tuned in to every role and knowing when one or the other needed to be the focus.  Kaira Rouda
• Our lives are a mixture of different roles. Most of us are doing the best we can to find whatever the right balance is . . . For me, that balance is family, work, and service.  Hillary Rodham Clinton

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First identify your most important roles

• You live your life in terms of roles—not in the sense of role-playing, but in the sense of authentic relationships and responsibilities you’ve committed to. You may have important roles in your family, in the community, at work, or in other areas of your life. Roles represent responsibilities, relationships, and areas of contribution.  Stephen Covey
• Your profession or work life may contain several roles. For example, you may have one role in administration and another in marketing. It’s up to you to define your roles in a way that works for you.  Stephen Covey
• If you identify more than seven life roles, combine some functions to get down to seven or less. Next to the role, write a description of what optimal performance in that role would look like for you.  Stephen Covey
• In your life, overall, you probably have seven to ten areas into which you could logically group your interests and activities. Typical categories here include your relationships, your household, parenting, finances, self- expression, career, service, and health.  David Allen

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Then, each week, ask what you need to do in each role

• For each role, stop and ask: What is the most important thing I can do this week to make progress in this specific role?  Stephen Covey
• At your weekly planning session, you should write down one or two goals for each of your roles.  Stephen Covey
• How do your roles tie in with Putting First Things First? With your purpose and values? As you plan your week using your chosen planning tool, be sure you schedule activities in each key role.  Stephen Covey

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The great secret to balance is to focus on what is important in your life and dump the rest …

• Prioritize ruthlessly. The secret to booking your time effectively boils down to knowing what’s important and what can wait. Jeff Wuorio
• Learn how to say no. I’ve learned that saying no to one thing opens the door to saying yes to something else.  Krista Kurth
• Organize your life around the tasks and activities that really matter and let go of those that don’t.  Laura Stack
• The key isn’t to do things for the sake of doing them. It’s to spend our time on the activities that truly matter to us.  Margarita Tartakovsky
• One important step in creating a good work life balance is to get very clear about what is important to you. Figuring out what things you want in your life, and how much of your time you want to spend on each of these areas, helps you to decide how to go about balancing your life.  Amanda Harvey
• Drop activities that sap your time or energy.  Take stock of activities that aren’t enhancing your career or personal life and minimizing the time you spend on them.  Marilyn Puder- York
• We need to maintain a proper balance in our life by allocating the time we have. There are occasions where saying no is the best time management practice there is.  Catherine Pulsifer
• Concentrate your time and energy on your personal and professional priorities. Be willing to say “no” to everything else. Identify your values and align your life around what’s truly most important to you.  Natalie A. Gahrmann
• Really think hard about how you can eliminate the non-essential things in your life. Work on this over time, and create the space in your life that you need for the things you love. Leo Babauta
• Focus,  Put first things first, Eliminate what is not important

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… for you can’t do everything in life

• You can do anything you want, you just can’t do everything.  David Allen
• I’ve learned that you can’t have everything and do everything at the same time.  Oprah Winfrey
• You can’t have everything you want, but you can have the things that really matter to you.  Marissa Mayer

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If you can’t dump something, try to delegate it or outsource it

• Consider whether you can outsource any of your time-consuming household chores or errands. Could you order your groceries online and have them delivered? Hire a kid down the street to mow your lawn? Have your dry cleaning picked up and dropped off at your home or office? Even if you’re on a tight budget, you may discover that the time you’ll save will make it worth it.  Laura Stack
• Delegation,  Outsourcing

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Schedule your important activities into your weekly schedule

• Make a schedule that you can stick to, and allocate a realistic amount of time for the important areas of your life. Allow some unscheduled time too, to be spontaneous, or just because life is always full of surprises.  Amanda Harvey
• Build downtime into your schedule.  When you plan your week, make it a point to schedule time with your family and friends and activities that help you recharge.  Jen Uscher
• Schedule chunks of time throughout your week for all the things that are important. I suggest scheduling everything but work first (unless you’re on a set work schedule and always start and end at the same time) … this will ensure that you get everything in and that work doesn’t overwhelm the schedule.  Leo Babauta

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Set time limits on things you want to cut down on

• This is good for work or anything else that you tend to do too much. If you work 10-12 hour days, for example, set a limit of 8 hours per day, and stick to it.  What I’ve found is that if you set a limit (of 8 hours or 4 days or whatever), you’ll find a way to do the essential tasks within that limit. That might mean eliminating the non- essential tasks, cutting back on time-  wasters such as casual Internet surfing, or automating or delegating or outsourcing things you don’t absolutely need to do yourself.  Leo Babauta

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Create daily routines

• Instil healthy habits into your daily life. Find ways to relax, relieve tension, and minimise stress. Allow time for self-care by practicing daily journaling, meditation, exercise or some other form of quiet time just for you where you can go to reflect, plan, relax and envision your day ahead. Eat healthy meals, drink plenty of water, get adequate rest, and take care of your personal hygiene. Give yourself a break every once in a while throughout the day to restore your natural state of harmony and calm and to rekindle your creativity. Structure your day to take advantage of your peak performance times.  Natalie A. Gahrmann
• Routines and rituals

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Work smart

• Imagine working 20% smarter instead of 20% longer…Work-life balance and start-up success at any stage aren’t mutually exclusive. There are enough hours in the day to be effective and present.  David Cummings

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Find work you enjoy …

• Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.  Steve Jobs
• Work-life balance was a mistake from the start. Because we don’t really want balance. We want satisfaction.  Matthew Kelly
• Do what you love.  Enthusiasm

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… for work should not feel like it is the opposite of life

• The phrase “work-life balance” tells us that people think that work is the opposite of life. We should be talking about life-life balance.  Patrick Dixon
• If you’re worried about life-work balance, something is probably wrong with your life or your work. Instead of agonising over balance, get excited and create change.  Chris Guillebeau

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Find ways to integrate life and work

• The new buzz word in Silicon Valley is “integration”. Work-life “balance” is very 2.0. All these women share ways in which they integrate their family life and work. Facebook’s head of Global Solutions, Carolyn Everson, for example, takes her children along on her business trips once a quarter. They meet her clients, visit new places and get a better understanding of what mom does when she isn’t at home with them.  Willow Bay

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Share family responsibilities

• We need to understand that we need to get the work-life balance better for both men and women – by men taking on more of those roles of homemaking and child rearing – it’s an important area that we still haven’t got right. I do worry; it’s not just in the United States, it’s also in parts of Latin America.  Mary Robinson

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Create a mission statement

• An empowering mission statement deals with all the significant roles in your life.  It represents a lifetime balance of personal, family, work, community – whatever roles you feel are yours to fill.  Stephen Covey
• An effective mission statement: Is an expression of your own unique capacities. Inspires you rather than impresses anyone else…  Balances all the significant roles of your life.  Stephen Covey
• Create a personal mission statement

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Live simply

• The intention of voluntary simplicity is not to dogmatically live with less. It’s a more demanding intention of living with balance. This is a middle way that moves between the extremes of poverty and indulgence.  Duane Elgin
• At the same time of knowing and experiencing the infinitely abundant universe, we can stay in balance in our lives by continuing to live simply and elegantly. In other words, we do not need to try to complicate life with more stuff than we need just because we know we have access to an infinite supply of resources.  Brad Swift
• Simple living

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Realise you are enough

• Believing in our hearts that who we are is enough, is the key to a more satisfying and balanced life.  Ellen Sue Stern
• Self-worth,  Self-esteem

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Switch off completely when you take a break

• I think taking vacations and turning off the phone and only doing emails or social media for a specific short amount of time helps with work/life balance. If I’m checking it all day I start to feel cuckoo-bird. So I just do it once or twice a day instead of a thousand. And then remembering that it doesn’t matter. It just doesn’t matter.  Maria Bamford
• Once a quarter, Amy and I go off the grid and totally disconnect. It’s totally doable and it will change your life.  Brad Feld

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Determine what is most important to you and make time for it

• Most people struggle with life balance simply because they haven’t paid the price to decide what is really important to them.  Stephen Covey
• You will never ‘find’ time for anything. If you want time, you must make it.  Charles Buxton
• Put first things first

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To get true perspective on what is important, imagine yourself on your death bed

• In all my years of counselling those near death, I’ve yet to hear anyone say they wish they had spent more time at the office.  Harold S. Kushner
• When you’re gone would you rather have your gravestone say, ‘He never missed a meeting.’ Or one that said, ‘He was a great father.’  Steve Blank
• No one ever dies wishing they’d spent more time at the office.
• Perspective

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Make quality time for your relationships

• In relationships, we have all heard of ‘quality time,’ and quality really is more important than quantity – so long as the quantity is sufficient to meet the needs of the people involved.  Amanda Harvey
• Instead of just saying, “I want to spend more time with my family and friends”, try actually making dates with them. That might mean romantic dates with your spouse or significant other, or non- romantic dates with your friends or kids or other family members. You don’t have to call it a date, but just schedule time with them on a regular basis to do something together.  Leo Babauta
• I have so much admiration for women who are mothers, who balance family and work.  Beyonce Knowles
• Invest in your work life balance. Time with friends and family is as important as times at work. Getting that out of balance is a path toward unhappiness.  Stephen Gillett
• Principles for healthy relationships

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Make time for rest and renewal

• Slowing down is also essential in creating a balanced life. Constant activity is exhausting, and if we are serious about avoiding burnout, we need to deliberately slow down the pace of our lives. I love the phrase, ‘don’t just do something; stand there.’ This is a total reversal of the phrase many of us have been raised with – ‘don’t just stand there; do something!’ How liberating it is to give ourselves permission to let go of the belief that we are wasting time if we are not actively doing something.  Amanda Harvey
• Living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself. It’s all up to you. You can renew yourself through relaxation. Or you can totally burn yourself out by overdoing everything. You can pamper yourself mentally and spiritually. Or you can go through life oblivious of your well- being. You can experience vibrant energy. Or you can procrastinate and miss out on the benefits of good health. You can revitalize yourself in order to face a new day in peace and harmony. Or you can wake up in the morning full of apathy because your get-up-    and-go has got-up- and- gone. Just remember that every day provides a new opportunity for renewal—a new opportunity to recharge yourself instead of hitting the wall. All it takes is the desire, knowledge, and skill.  Stephen Covey
• Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away.  Barbara De Angelis
• Life is best enjoyed when time periods are evenly divided between labour, sleep, and recreation…all people should spend one-third of their time in recreation which is rebuilding, voluntary activity, never idleness.  Brigham Young
• Maintain balance in your life. Don’t let your job search consume you. Make time for fun, rest, and relaxation—whatever revitalizes you. Your job search will be more effective if you are mentally, emotionally, and physically at your best. Robert Segal
• Rest and renewal

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Make time for exercise

• It’s hard to make time for exercise when you have a jam-packed schedule, but experts say that it may ultimately help you get more done by boosting your energy level and ability to concentrate.  Jen Uscher
• Exercise

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Make time for yourself

• We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.  Michelle Obama
• Always spend some dedicated time with yourself each day. Practice meditation or yoga to feel connected and relaxed.  Nigel Coates
• While you are juggling all the responsibilities you have, don’t forget to make time for yourself to do what it is you love.  Ashley Jacobs
• Being a good parent, partner and professional means being good to yourself first. Find ways to relax, relieve tension and minimize stress. Taking some time off for yourself will not only benefit you, but it will benefit your work and family tremendously, as well.  Natalie A. Gahrmann
• Often, we make time for our family or other loved ones, but we neglect ourselves. Schedule time for yourself, doing something you love doing by yourself. For me, that’s reading and running, but others might like crafts or meditation or yoga or going on hikes or surfing or whatever.  Leo Babauta

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Make time to spend in nature

• Nature plays an important role to keep you in balance. Nature is a well-spring of energy. If you’re not near natural bush- land, try to visit a park or garden at least once in a week.  Nigel Coates
• From dawn to dusk, winter to spring, summer & autumn; the contrasts of nature refresh the mind and renew our sense of balance.  Phil Harding
• Nature

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Make time for mindfulness

• Concentration and mindfulness are the internal ways in which the mind restores itself from being out of balance and lost in confusion to a condition of ease, clarity, and wisdom. No external action needs to happen.  Sylvia Boorstein
• These two forms of equanimity, the one that comes from the power of observation, and the one that comes from inner balance, come together in mindfulness practice. As mindfulness becomes stronger, so does our equanimity.  Gil Fronsdal
• Mindfulness

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Examine your life regularly …

• Often our lives become derailed from the track we set it on. Or we can get so caught up in a routine that we don’t realize we can change it. Regular self-reflection is the answer: think about how your life is going, how you’re spending your time, and decide whether you need to make changes. Then schedule time to make those changes immediately — or make the changes right away if possible.  Leo Babauta
• Reflection

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An excellent way to examine your life is to use the Wheel of Life

• Draw a large circle on a piece of paper and divide it into 8-10 pie wedges.
• Label each section with an area of your life that is important to you. Examples include family, friends, health, work, recreation, money, personal growth, spirituality, romance, physical surroundings and more.
• Rate your satisfaction in each area of your life. Think of the circle’s outer edge as total satisfaction and the centre of the circle as total dissatisfaction. In each wedge of the pie, place a small dot to indicate your relative satisfaction in that area of your life.
• After rating your satisfaction in each pie wedge, connect the dots to create a new outside perimeter for your circle. If you were to roll your circle like a wheel would it roll smoothly or be bumpy?
• To have a balanced life, tend to the areas where the greatest gaps exist. The key is not to focus on each individual area of your life but to focus on your life as a whole.
• Source:  Wheel of Life

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Take care of yourself

• Take care of yourself: When you don’t sleep, eat crap, don’t exercise, and are living off adrenaline for too long, your performance suffers. Your decisions suffer. Your company suffers. Love those close to you: Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationship is.  Evan Williams

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Move forwards

• On the tightrope of life, only one thing allows us to move forward, and that one thing is balance… Laura Kangas
• Man maintains his balance, poise, and sense of security only as he is moving forward.   Maxwell Maltz
• Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.  Albert Einstein
• Action is at bottom a swinging and flailing of the arms to regain one’s balance and keep afloat.  Eric Hoffer
• Motion is created by the destruction of balance.  Leonardo da Vinci
• You know, bicycling isn’t just a matter of balance,” I said. “it’s a matter of faith. You can keep upright only by moving forward. You have to have your eyes on the goal, not the ground. I’m going to call that the Bicyclist’s Philosophy of Life.  Susan Vreeland
• Momentum

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Be aware

• The key to keeping your balance is knowing when you’ve lost it.
• Awareness

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More paths to balance

• I have also found that by making four simple assumptions in our lives we can immediately begin leading a more balanced, integrated, powerful life. They are simple–one for each part of our nature–but I promise you that if you do them consistently, you will find a new wellspring of strength and integrity to draw on when you need it most.  1) For the body–assume you’ve had a heart attack; now live accordingly.  2) For the mind–assume the half-life of your profession is two years; now prepare accordingly.   3) For the heart–assume everything you say about another, they can overhear; now speak accordingly.  4) For the spirit–assume you have a one- on-one visit with your Creator every quarter; now live accordingly.  Stephen Covey
• The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man. Euripides
• Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life.  Gregory Peck
• The most important human endeavour is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life.  Albert Einstein

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Find the middle way between to much and too little

• Happiness is a place between too little and too much.  Finnish Proverb
• The middle path is the way to wisdom.  Rumi
• The middle path is the safe path. German Proverb
• The Path of Grace is neither to the right nor to the left. It is neither liberal nor conservative. It favours neither the warmongers or the appeasers. Rather, it is a middle path. It is the path of healing, for grace is the balm that heals the wounded heart. The path of grace is the path of bringing-together. The path of win-win. The path of mutual respect. The path of understanding, tolerance, and love. It is the way of peace, and it is, therefore, a path we should embrace.  Chuck Gallozzi
• Awareness without love is too cold. Love without awareness is too hot. The middle way is slowly showing itself as we wear out all our extremes from having had the nerve to experiment.  Osho
• The Eightfold Path which the Buddha preached in his first sermon is known as the Middle Path because it is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. Optimism tends to over-estimate the conditions of life, whereas pessimism tends to under- estimate them. To plunge on the one hand into the sensual excesses and pleasures of the ordinary worldly life is mean, degrading and useless. On the other hand. extravagant asceticism is also evil and useless. Self- indulgence tends to retard one’s spiritual progress and self- mortification to weaken one’s intellect. The Path is a Middle Way between the pairs of opposites.   Venerable Ashin Thittila
• We need to find the “middle way” in our own lives.  It is the art of finding balance.  Reflecting upon our lives, we soon discover what serves us well–nurturing calmness, ease, and simplicity.  We also discover what it is that leads to entanglement, confusion, distress, and anxiety.  Wisdom is being able to discern the difference, then knowing what we need to nurture and what we need to learn to let go.  Christina Feldman
• All the world is birthday cake, so take a piece, but not too much.  George Harrison
• It must be a balance in everything we do, not too much of everything, keep it simple, not complicated.  Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
• Harmonizing opposites by going back to their source is the distinctive quality of the Zen attitude, the Middle Way: embracing contradictions, making a synthesis of them, achieving balance.  Taisen Deshimaru

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Not everyone advocates balance and moderation

• There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.  Alain de Botton
• Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.  Oscar Wilde
• Moderation? It’s mediocrity, fear, and confusion in disguise. It’s the devil’s dilemma. It’s neither doing nor not doing. It’s the wobbling compromise that makes no one happy. Moderation is for the bland, the apologetic, for the fence- sitters of the world afraid to take a stand. It’s for those afraid to laugh or cry, for those afraid to live or die. Moderation…is lukewarm tea, the devil’s own brew.  Dan Millman
• Excess on occasion is exhilarating.  It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.  William Somerset Maugham
• Moderation: a median with no means, praised by those with no misfortunes, practiced by those with no merits.  Bauvard
• Moderation

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Passion and adventure, some argue, is a worthy substitute for balance

• Aim for passion, not balance. Balance is a myth. Passion will put your life into the right proportions that work as a whole.  Danielle LaPorte
• It’s not the imbalances of life that will get you down—it’s doing meaningless things that aren’t taking you where you want to go. The more you pursue what you’re passionate about at any given time, the less friction and more fluidity you’ll have in your life. And that’s the definition of harmony.  Danielle LaPorte
• If consensus is overrated, I think balance is, too.  I have no interest in living a balanced life.  I want a life of adventure.  Chris Guillebeau
• Passion,  Adventure

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Balance in art

• What I dream of is an art of balance.  Henri Matisse
• Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.  Anaïs Nin
• The chief concern of the French Impressionists was the discovery of balance between light and dark.  Stephen Gardiner
• What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter – a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.  Henri Matisse
• In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth.  Patti Smith
• It is my dream to create an art which is filled with balance, purity and calmness, freed from a subject matter that is disconcerting or too attention-seeking. In my paintings, I wish to create a spiritual remedy, similar to a comfortable armchair which provides rest from physical expectation for the spiritually working, the businessman as well as the artist. Henri Matisse
• It is essential that the painter should develop not only his eyes, but also his soul, so that it too may be capable of weighing colours in balance.   Wassily Kandinsky
• Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.  Henri Cartier-Bresson
• If the tones are balanced, you can use almost any colour.  Janine Parsons
• Art

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Balance in democracy

• What is the essence of America? Finding and maintaining that perfect, delicate balance between freedom ‘to’ and freedom ‘from.’  Marilyn vos Savant
• Democracy is not an easy form of government, because it is never final; it is a living, changing organism, with a continuous shifting and adjusting of balance between individual freedom and general order.  Ilka Chase
• In a healthy nation, there is a kind of dramatic balance between the will of the people and the government, which prevents its degeneration into tyranny.  Albert Einstein
• This used to be a government of checks and balances. Now it’s all checks and no balances.  Gracie Allen
• An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.  Plutarch
• At every turn when there has been an imbalance of power, the truth questioned, or our beliefs and values distorted, the change required to restore our nation has always come from the bottom up from our people.  Howard Dean
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Balance in science

• At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes-an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense.  Carl Sagan
• I believe that for permanent survival, man must balance science with other qualities of life, qualities of body and spirit as well as those of mind — qualities he cannot develop when he lets mechanics and luxury insulate him too greatly from the earth to which he was born.  Charles Lindbergh
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Balance in nature and with nature

• Balance is a True North Principal. Nature is living proof.  Stephen Covey
• The famous balance of nature is the most extraordinary of all cybernetic systems. Left to itself, it is always self-regulated.  Joseph Wood Krutch
• Nature, like a loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves, balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that peace, harmony and beauty may reign supreme.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton
• Suddenly, we humans – a recently arrived species, no longer subject to the checks and balances inherent in nature – have grown in population, technology and intelligence to a position of terrible power.  Paul MacCready
• The future will belong to the nature-smart – those individuals, families, businesses, and political leaders who develop a deeper understanding of the transformative power of the natural world and who balance the virtual with the real. The more high-tech we become, the more nature we need.  Richard Louv
• If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork.  Masanobu Fukuoka
• If we once, and for so long, lived in balance with nature and each other, we should be able to do so again.  John Zerzan
• Nature doesn’t recognize Good and Evil. Nature only recognises balance and imbalance.  Walter Bishop
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Balance in diet

• Eat well-balanced meals. Include protein, carbohydrates, and a small amount of unsaturated fat in each meal. A meal plan such as a low-carb diet that avoids some foods can put you at a deficit for certain nutrients and cause cravings.  Yale Medical School
• Eating well is important for both your physical and mental health. Eating small, well- balanced meals throughout the day will help you keep your energy up and minimize mood swings.  Jeanne Segal
• Food is an important part of a balanced diet.  Fran Lebowitz
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Balance and the body

• If you find a better way to be happy than by overeating, your body will naturally return to its balanced state.  Deepak Chopra
• Perfect harmony of body and mind are my key to personal balance and happiness.  Gabriela Sabatini
• Stress is the body and mind’s response to any pressure that disrupts its normal balance. It occurs when our perceptions of events don’t meet our expectations and we don’t manage our reaction to the disappointment. As a response, stress expresses itself as resistance, tension, strain or frustration, that throws off our physiological and psychological equilibrium, keeping us out-of-sync.  Doc Childre and Howard Martin
• Talk to yourself in two languages – what do I fear and what do I love – in order to balance the body and the soul.  Peter Shepherd
• To live without love, compassion, or any other spiritual value creates a state of such severe imbalance that every cell yearns to correct it. Ultimately, that is what lies behind the onset of disease; the body is sending a message that something lacking in the present—an imbalance existing somewhere—has given rise to highly visible, unarguable, physical symptoms.  Deepak Chopra
• The rhythm of the body, the melody of the mind and the harmony of the soul create the symphony of life.   B.K.S. Iyengar
• When given a chance, even the most fatigued body wants to find its way back to balance.  Dr. Alejandro Junger
• What I believe, according to my own experience, is that a calm, peaceful mind is a very important element for sustaining the body in a balanced way.  The Dalai Lama
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Humility is a form of balance

• Humility is a healthy balance between pride and self-devaluation.  J. Maurus
• Humility, simply put, is a form of balance in which you can celebrate your own worth, while sincerely believing that every other person on the planet is just as worthy as you.  Chad Lieberman
• Walking is the great adventure, the first meditation, a practice of heartiness and soul primary to humankind. Walking is the exact balance between spirit and humility.  Gary Snyder
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• A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand. Barbara Johnson
• A balanced meal is whatever stays on the spoon en route to a baby’s mouth.  Kathy Lette
• A well-balanced person has a drink in each hand.  Billy Connolly
• As a great Eastern religion says it’s all about striking a balance between the ping and the pong.  Christina Applegate
• Balanced Diet: A cookie in each hand.
• Eventually, if you’re lucky in life, you find someone with the same chemical imbalance you have.  Robert Brault
• Food is an important part of a balanced diet.   Lebowitz Fran
• My point is, life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The pina and the colada.  Ellen DeGeneres
• Nowadays a balanced diet is when every McNugget weighs the same!   Alfred E. Neuman
• Take everything in moderation. Including moderation.
• The politician is an acrobat; he keeps his balance by doing the opposite of what he says.   Maurice Barres
• Well balanced diet:  a hamburger in each hand.

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