One reason why life feels out of balance

Maybe life feels like it’s out of balance sometimes because you’re expending way too much energy trying to be someone you’re not.

Brad Paisley  gets it just right in this video.  With the soaring popularity of social networking sites like MySpace and Facebook, people now have the ability to virtually re-create themselves in whatever fashion they want.  Unless of course someone posts a group photo that shows you in a less than flattering light.

A recent survey by jossip.com suggests that one in five people make up stuff on their Facebook interest pages just to sound more sophisticated. 

And we all know it won’t be long before we start receiving those dreaded Christmas letters in which people share their “amazing” life from the past year.  They just happen to leave out all the stuff than sounds too normal or routine.

Making real not virtual changes

Perhaps if we weren’t so worried about what the other guy thinks, and were more okay with the way we are, we’d have a lot more time to make some of the changes we think we want.

Ok I agree Brad Paisley is a cutie, but I wouldn’t write off Jason Alexander either.  Most women say they want  a man with a sense of humour. 

Or wait…is that just something they write on their Facebook profiles?

People are a never-ending source of curiosity. 

A British charity recently surveyed 100,000 people about their final funeral requests. The results were fascinating.

Number two on the list was to be buried with a cell phone.  Now I’m not sure who they are planning to phone but I’m thinking you need one heck of a service provider to call from the after-life.

Number three was to be sure that they are actually dead.  I’m guessing those people have watched one too many CSI episodes.

Buried with your pet’s ashes, with your teeth in, or with all your savings, people reveal a little bit about what’s important when they make their final requests.

I’m thinking I want to be buried with a great bottle of wine.  Not knowing exactly where I’m going to end up, I’m guessing I’ll either want to celebrate or I’ll want a good stiff drink.  Either way I’ve got it covered. 

What about you?

Just curious.

If you live in North America, you have either just finished celebrating Thanksgiving or you are getting ready to.  What an interesting idea that we devote a whole day to giving thanks.  Don’t get me wrong - I like turkey and family gatherings and falling leaves.  In fact Thanksgiving is one of my favourite holidays.

It just seems that in many ways we have reduced gratitude to another Hallmark experience.  Like Mothers Day or Fathers Day.  We check off that we have marked the occasion and then tuck it away for another year.

If being thankful is such a simple concept then why does gratitude seem to be so complicated?  

Ask ten people and you will likely get ten difference answers to the how’s and why’s of counting your blessings. Recently the Vancouver Sun devoted a full page to examining the ins and outs of giving thanks. 

Maybe why we have so little time for gratitude is because we are so focused on what we don’t have that we overlook what we do have. 

Check it out…. 

On any given day do you hear more people whining and complaining about something or more people saying I’m counting my blessings.

It seems to me that gratitude is just a perspective you hold.  If you travel through this world with the idea that you are blessed - no matter what your circumstances - life looks different. It doesn’t seem quite so hard.  And when the tougher times do come, seeing them as an opportunity rather than a punishment, helps to make them less tough.

That’s the trick - being able to see the gifts in the things that at first don’t seem like a gift.  When it’s easy, it’s easy.  Being grateful when it’s hard - that’s where the riches are.

Apparently people waste a lot of time in traffic.

In fact at the Going Green conference held recently in California, it was estimated that Americans lose 3.7 billion hours a year in traffic jams.

3.7 BILLION HOURS!

So there has to be a way to make your time stuck in a traffic jam work for you.

First pay attention to your own and others’ safety.

Then give these 5 ways a try:

• Sit back and observe what’s happening in the cars around you. Notice how they’re handling the chaos. Now here’s the trick. What’s there for you to learn about yourself as you watch them.

• Popular wisdom would say, hey you’ve got a little time on your hands. Catch up on phone calls or blackberry emails. No - the better use of your time is to power off all your electronic devices and take advantage of this little temporary escape from the demands of the world.

• If you’ve flown recently, you’ll know that it is now recommended to do periodic exercises to reduce jetlag and deep vein thrombosis. No reason you can’t do some simple stretches in your car while you are waiting for traffic to get moving. Many airplanes offer sample exercises on their websites.

• Here’s a radical idea. Have a conversation with your travel companion. Not what reality TV show did you watch last night, but a meaningful conversation. Maybe something you’ve been wanting to talk about but haven’t found the time. Here’s my favourite meaningful conversation starter: What currently seems impossible, that if it were possible, would change everything?

• Do nothing. Many people tell me that they don’t have a moment to themselves. Well here’s your chance to take some time. Apparently 3.7 billion hours.

Everybody seems to be in search of that elusive life balance.While everyone keeps looking, few of them seem to be finding it. That’s because one of biggest mistakes that people make is to create a faulty picture in their mind of a life in balance. They think life balance means quiet, calm and peaceful.

Not a chance.

Everybody can have a quiet, calm and peaceful life when things are relatively quiet, calm and peaceful. True life balance happens when you are able to weather the times of what I call natural chaos.

You know those times. Things are going along pretty well and BOOM - something happens that disrupts the flow of life.

A traffic jam is a perfect example of natural chaos.

They happen all the time and are pretty much out of your control. And many times you are actually experiencing the ghost of a traffic jam - there doesn’t seem to be any real reason why the cars are crawling along.

What do people typically do when natural chaos descends? They fight against it and that causes a huge sense of imbalance. They direct a lot of energy into the chaos rather than having some strategies for going with the new flow.

Natural chaos swirls around us all the time.

It’s supposed to - that’s the natural part. John Lennon said it best, “Life is what happens while you are making other plans.” It’s knowing how to fall in love with chaos that puts you in the driver’s seat to life balance.

Life imitating art went over the top in Edmonton last week. 

A long time supporter of the local theatre scene, I’d been anticipating the first production of the new season, a delightful farce by Michael Frayn called Noises Off.  I’d seen this play many years ago and it was a wonderful romp.

Noises Off is about a fictional play called Nothing On.  Let’s just say that nothing goes quite right.  The play begins with the final dress rehearsal where actors still don’t know their lines and the director is losing both patience and mind.  The second act shifts to a backstage view one month later where dissention in the cast causes no end of shenanigans.  In the final act, everything has fallen apart with hilarious consequences.

Little did I know that this time, life had way more in store for the entire production. 

A few days before the play was set to open, one of the lead actors, Julien Arnold had a heart attack.  Fortunately he is recovering well by all reports but veteran actor Ashley Wright had to fly in from Toronto and jump into the part.  Then one day before opening night, actor John Kirkpatrick was called away for a family emergency. 

What to do?

James MacDonald, a director who was in rehearsal in an adjacent theatre stepped into the role of “the director” - with one day’s preparation. Yikes!

Of course all these developments had been covered in the local media and so on opening night when Bob Baker, artistic director of the Citadel Theatre and director of this play, took the stage to make a few comments, the audience was attentive.  Dead pan and entertaining, he certainly set the tone for a play about play where unexpected and unpredictable things run rampant - in the script and in real life.

So what happened?

A FABULOUS performance.  The cast rose to the occasion and provided the audience with a hugely entertaining evening.  Whatever missteps the actors may have made were indistinguishable from those in the script.   Even real-life actors who didn’t know their lines carrying scripts, seemed to fit perfectly into a play about actors who don’t know their lines or marks.

I know in the theatre the show must go on but it would have been a simple and even predictable solution for the play to have been postponed for a while so that everyone could “get it right”.  In this case, Bob Baker got it exactly right by forging ahead.

Life happens - so you can either bring your best to it - or not.  Cast and crew in this production were shining examples of what life can be if you only go with it.

Bravo.