www.RickOsborn.com

Over the past couple of years, I’ve counseled numerous people regarding weight loss, proper nutrition, fitness and general well-being. It’s interesting, because as I delve deeper into the lives of people, I find a general undercurrent of worry, fear and frustration manifesting itself in many physical, emotional and even spiritual ways. At the core of many is a lack of balance in life. And, in the midst of trying to help others, I found that the very same issue was plaguing me as well.

In helping Ori Hofmekler write The Anti-Estrogenic Diet book, I learned a vast amount of invaluable information regarding nutrition, fitness and health. I often tell people that it was much like trying to drink water from a fire hydrant. You get the picture. And, in the midst of that endeavor (one which I consider myself very fortunate to have had) I rather quickly reoriented my own diet and nutritional guidelines, by which I efficiently managed to improve my health and physique rather quickly. For this, I am eternally grateful, for - knowledge truly is power. Through my collaboration with Warrior Diet and Defense Nutrition, I gleaned several esoteric truths about wellness, health and fitness that I will carry throughout the remainder of my life. Moreover, I’ve been able to extend that knowledge to others and help them regain the life and health that they’ve always wanted.

And, while I’m quite thankful for the nutritional, dietary and fitness wisdom I now have, I feel that it’s important to mention an important lesson that I learned in the process - how crucial it is to have balance in one’s life.

In the midst of my busyness trying to be a fit and healthy person - doing all the right things with nutrition and exercise, I severely neglected the mental, emotional and spiritual side of the equation. I soon found myself overstressed, anxious and quite literally, out of balance. I constantly felt physically ill and soon found myself worrying and stressed about everything - namely work, relationships with others and my health. It seemed that my life was spinning out of control. The interesting thing is that the more I tried to control it - the worse it got and the worse I felt. I adjusted my diet a thousand different ways; I increased and changed the dietary supplements I was taking; I did research, perusing the internet looking for solutions for everything, including work and my health; I went to the doctor repeatedly to find out what was wrong with me; and I’m even ashamed to say, I began drinking a glass or two of wine in the evenings just to relax (which I rarely did before). Even worse is that I developed a very severe case of gastritis that was misdiagnosed, resulting in a lot of pain and unnecessary intestinal surgery.

I tell you all of this to demonstrate how lack of balance in life can completely throw things out of whack and cause a lot of sickness, pain, worry and frustration. In case you didn’t get it,

A life without proper balance isn’t living!

Life IS a juggling act. And quite frankly, most of us are NOT very good jugglers. I know I wasn’t. In the midst of my attempts, I was dropping things left and right. No matter how hard I tried to fix things, they continued to get worse and I just got sicker and more frustrated. I was missing the big picture. For those of you who are visual, look at this diagram that I created below, which I believe to represent proper balance in life:

Ideally, this is where we should be - having proper balance in life between these three main areas (Body, Mind, Soul). Imagine the above as a wheel that rolls perfectly, because all areas are in balance. If you were able to inflate or deflate one of the above areas, indicating a lack of balance, the wheel would cease to roll smoothly.

Many of us, due to neglect to our “life circle of balance”, if you will, have a deflated ball or circle, basically like what you see below - deflated, unfulfilled (lacks air or inspiration) and won’t roll or bounce. Take a look:

What you see above was representative of my life last year. To put it simply, when you have a life out of balance, chances are some or many of the following issues may describe what you will experience:

• Poor health, malaise or sickness (headaches, nausea, acid stomach, ulcers, or worse)
• Anxiety or Stress
• Obesity, weight gain or even weight loss
• Insomnia or perhaps you sleep too much
• Relationship problems (have trouble relating to others)
• Depression
• Self-doubt

These are but a few symptoms of a life out of balance. And, if your personal life balance is representative of the deflated, uninspired diagram above, just imagine how it must affect everything in your life.

If you’re life is like mine was, like the above wheel or ball that won’t roll or bounce, here are three fundamental things to remember that may help inspire you. They are not so much about action as they are about your perspective. You may not be able to change your situation right away, but these may actually add some air (inspiration) to your life (tire, ball, wheel) so that it at least keeps rolling forward:

1. Stop focusing on your problems and worrying yourself sick about them. Worrying will not change one thing about your situation, in fact, it will only make it worse. Here’s what Christ Himself said about it in Matthew 6:27 - “And who of you by worrying and being anxious can add one unit of measure (cubit) to his stature or to the span of his life?”
2. Change what you can. Ok, so you can’t control everything, but there are things about your life that you can control. Many times in life we obsess and worry about things over which we have no control. Stop doing that and refocus on what you CAN control and change.
3. Focus on the good, the positive, the right things about your life. The Apostle Paul stated in Philippians 4:8-9, ” Whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virtue and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things [fix your minds on them]. Practice what you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and model your way of living on it, and the God of peace (of untroubled, undisturbed well-being) will be with you.”

If you practice the above three suggestions, your ball will be rolling in no time. Meanwhile, keep working on solving the problems in your life.

Before you know it, balance will return and joy will abound.