We all seek happiness and one of the most effective ways is to maintain a sense of balance. In short, when something comes in to my life, something has to go out.
On a material level this is easy. When I get a new shirt, I donate an old shirt I no longer wear. When I buy a new piece of furniture, I donate the old piece of furniture to Goodwill. So most people can do this if they choose. It is much harder to let things go that people feel a personal connection with.
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For example, I have a friend who keeps every card and meaningful thing that she receives. While I can understand that behavior, at some point it becomes too much. She moves often, so she has stacks of paperwork that she moves from place to place. To me, those gestures while nice, can go into my memory and live there. I don’t need a piece of paper to remember the good feelings that they created for me. Everyone has their own values however and not everyone shares this point of view.
However, this isn’t to argue about throwing/donating things. This is to point out that things that we hold onto don’t give us room in every sense to have new things come into our life. For example, I once was in a mass layoff. I lost the car that I had been paying on. While I liked the car, I knew that a better one was in my future. It didn’t matter that I lost that car, because it only meant that I was primed to get a better one. I got a job and got a better car and I was ok with losing it. It wasn’t that I needed a better car, it is just that given time everything improves.
That is the funny thing in life. People want the best of everything, but what is the best frequently changes when new technology occurs. I find it enjoyable to even buy older used cars that drive differently, or have features I have never experienced before. To me, that is fun to be engaged with the car and play with its toys.
However this is not about material things but rather about the emotional, spiritual and intellectual side. As easy as material things come in and out of our lives, we should be open to the possibility that our beliefs and feelings about life will change as we grow and mature. Hopefully we are wiser as we grow older and realize that the things we thought were important in the past are no longer important.
I have to state that every time I have considered the possibility that I might be wrong about something, my life has been richer and happier as a result. It is incredible but almost everything we believe is because we have accepted other people’s and the medias beliefs about reality. For example, I watched a documentary that said that 68% of women have body dysmorphia disorder. This is the belief that they are ugly and their body is not acceptable because of what they see in the media.
Clearly that belief is wrong, and so are a ton of others. As adults, we can examine our thoughts and test to see if they are true. It takes time, but the rewards of being in balance with life are greater than you can imagine.
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