Here is my philosophy of life:
If I had to condense my entire approach to life into one word, it would be this:
A balanced life is a life worth living. When you are in balance, you feel the most assured. When parts of your life are out of balance, you will feel uneasy, stressed. Many religions (particularly Eastern philosophy) follow this principle, but my own version is not religious in nature. Rather, it is a general guideline that I personally try to follow in order to combat stress and enjoy life.
What parts of your life should be balanced? Everything.
Who decides what balances are the best for you? You do. Everyone has a different sense of what is balanced and what is not. It is best simply to accept this, and not try and change other people, chastise others for not following your views, or try and adopt someone else's views as your own. (The same applies to this document! If you do not agree with it, please feel free to ignore any or all of it!)
Part of the philosophy of balance is accepting that not everything can be balanced at the same time. External forces prevent that from happening. The American ideal of "having it all" is not always realistic. I believe that one should aspire to have it all, but realize that one may not have everything at the same time. Nor, really, should anyone want everything at the same time. Some joys of life are best experienced separately. For example, a complete life should probably include passion, love, financial success and happiness in a career, among other things. However most people tend to worry when one or more of these items is not present at any given time. How much better to remember the times when you achieved even one of the above, and realize that over a lifetime almost everybody achieves all of these things, albeit separately!
Proper balance should ensure that you are comfortable and happy, which will affect people around you. Every job makes demands on a person, which usually leads to stress. A good example is my own (current) profession, that of teaching. Teaching can be a very demanding job, yet also a very rewarding one. How do I approach teaching personally? I believe that I can be a more effective teacher by balancing the demands of the classroom, those of my own preparation and knowledge, and my own need for rest and recuperation. If I am tired because I have spent too long preparing a test or a lesson, I will be less effective in the classroom the next day. If I prepare too little, I will not be doing my job properly. As I am just beginning my teaching career, I don't pretend to have mastered this or any technique, only that I aspire towards it. Also, it is quite easy to see if you are doing this sort of balancing properly. Just ask yourself a few questions:
a) Am I too stressed?
b) Are my kids (students/coworkers/subordinates) too stressed?
c) If yes, can I make subtle changes to help a) and b)?
The answer to question c) is always yes. No job situation is perfect, and you can't always walk away from a poor job. However, there are ways you can balance out negativity and stress.
1. Kindness will balance out unfair treatment.
2. Humor will balance out the unavoidable tragedies of life.
3. Work will balance out boredom.
4. Play will balance out overwork.
5. Something new and unexpected will balance out day-to-day drudgery.
Are you unhappy? It probably is because some aspect of your life is far out of balance. You can make some choices to change this, and the choices need not be huge or life-changing.
Are there aspects of my life that are still out of balance? A few, but I am working on those. Without challenges there is no real reason to keep on living. The good news is that although many challenges seem insurmountable, often they can change without notice!
This is the important part, and one that I try to stick to, no matter what happens. Sometimes we all get the "short end of the stick" in life. Sometimes it seems as if nothing we do will help matters. This is wrong. There is one thing you can always do, which will always help.
ATTITUDE.
When things are bad, this is when your attitude should be most positive. Sounds insane? Perhaps, but in order to change an extremely large imbalance, you have to start with the one thing that can affect everything you can do. This is your attitude. I do not mean to say that one should be blindly cheerful or optimistic when there is no reason to be so. What I do believe is that no matter how bad your situation is, you should believe that it will get better.
Is this belief logical? No. But belief is never logical. The reason you should believe, utterly and absolutely, that things will improve, is that without this attitude you will be unable to do the things you ACTUALLY NEED TO DO in order to improve things. Most people are fairly intelligent and can figure out what they need to do in order to improve their life, but are unwilling to take the necessary actions because they honestly believe that it will not help. I am not the first person to suggest this, and some "self-helpers" like Anthony Robbins take this message to a bit of an extreme, but you would be surprised how well it works. Certainly the idea that extremely negative people do not achieve their goals is quite obvious and easy to understand. But the inverse is also true.
Besides believing that things will get better, one should also adopt a new view of the past. Most people (myself included!) spend too much time bemoaning things that have already happened to them. This is foolish. A much healthier attitude is to believe that whatever has happened, it was ultimately for the best.
Again, this belief is not especially rational or logical. But it can help you enormously. If you fail at a job interview, a test, or a relationship, it is much better to assume that it was for a good reason, and your life will be better because of it. This again gets back to the attitude that things will get better. Didn't get that job you wanted? A much better one is on the horizon. Failed a test? You will do so much better the next time than you would have even if you had passed. Just been dumped? Good thing you were, because that person was all wrong for you anyway, and this gives you an opportunity to meet someone better. (This last one is particularly hard for me, but I'm sticking to it like superglue!) How you deal with a problem depends greatly on your attitude.
Here are my views on attitude:
1. Every morning you should wake up cheerfully, even if you have no reason to do so. (I don't always do this, but I should try to!)
2. At the very least, by the time you get to work, you should be in a good mood. Why start the day badly? Your coworkers will look forward to seeing you and even start smiling when they do so, because they know you will always be in a good mood!
3. Always be kind to people. If people consistently are mean to you, hurt you or put you down, the solution is to keep being nice to them. This does not mean you have to be a doormat, and it certainly does not mean you have to bow down to the cruel people in this world. Stand up for yourself, but keep smiling while you do it! (for some people, sadly, this technique takes a very, very long time to work. However I have not yet met anyone immune to it!)
4. Keep a sense of humor about things. If you can laugh at something, it can't hurt you.
5. Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.
That's about it. Life is infinitely more complex than this, but with the right attitude and the right balance you will be able to cope with anything.