Editor’s Note: The following article is adapted from Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse’s latest book, Learning to Balance Your Life.

In the business of everyday life, we often do not feel very balanced. It seems as though we get pulled in all directions just to keep up day-to-day tasks. If you keep doing the same things the same way, expecting to find balance, you probably won’t.

Finding balance is all about addition and elimination. It’s about learning to accept loss and giving up some things we are attached to. It’s about forcing us to re-evaluate our values and make some new decisions. No one says it is easy and it really isn’t for the faint-hearted. It requires some pretty deep soul searching and some hard tasks, but it is possible and worth all the effort.

The first shift we have to make is in our thinking, and none us likes to change the way we think about things. Decisions come later and are followed by action but, first, we need to determine why we are so out of balance. There usually are a variety of reasons, ranging from something as simple as not enough hours in the day to do everything we want to do, to not recognizing how much ability and skill we have to make more efficient choices and decisions.

First, we all have 24 hours in a day —whether we are president of a corporation, a teacher, or a store clerk. How we choose to spend those 24 hours has a great deal to do with how balanced we are, which powers we have developed, what we value and how satisfied we are with our life.

Second, we all were born with a set of powers that give us the tools to balance our lives. Most of us learned to use these powers to develop skills. We learned to walk, talk, eat, run, read, and get along with people. Later we used these skills to acquire an education and enter a profession that brings us to where we are today. Unfortunately, once we started our adult life, we often quit learning and just went on autopilot, doing what has to be done on a daily basis. Without thinking about it, our lives often become unbalanced and we see the consequences of this all around us. I call it the too-much syndrome.

Some examples of this:
• There are thousands of diet books and, yet, we are a nation of overweight people.
• We have hundreds of labor saving devices, and people seem to have very little extra time.
• Despite the many workshops and books about relationships, people complain of feeling lonely and bored.
• There are people with perfect bodies who are sometimes addicted to exercise, yet still face problems of diminished sexuality and intimacy.

Obviously, something is out of balance. My personal and my professional life has taught me that wholeness comes from nothing less than a changed attitude and a transformation that allows us to tap into our personal powers.

Looking at the energy resources we have, there are six basic powers we possess that are as important to us as our income. Each person has a limited amount of money to spend and only so much energy he or she can spend each day. Our energy and power resources need constant attention to see if we are spending wisely.

You must have, at some point, looked at someone and said, “Now that’s a powerful person.” (What you are really saying is that is a power-full person.) You might have seen someone else and said, “She’s got a lot of spirit.” (What you are really saying is that person has a lot of evident power and spirit.) Personal power is what makes someone stand out in a crowd. When there has been a healthy and balanced development of personal power, energy and spirit are released.

When I wrote the book Learning to Balance Your Life, my goal was to help awaken — or reawaken — the energy and spirit that would help people to live life to the fullest. The book is about offering a new understanding of our possibilities and potential, and details the spiritual and emotional transformation required to realize them. It’s about making the commitment to change, one decisive day at a time.

Each of us is born with six person powers. These powers have potential, just as electricity does. You could say they contain a human-electricity. The interaction of these powers is called wholeness.

Each power can exist in balance and in harmony with the others, but not at their expense. When we become whole and all our powers are functioning, we can work toward achieving health, happiness, security and satisfaction in relationships.

Our six powers (energy sources)
l. Physical power shows itself in the choice to care for and respect one’s body. Issues of diet and exercise are part of this power, as are ridding the body of nicotine and other harmful substances. Protecting the body from over-extension with work or exercise is also part of this power. Physical power is a valuable source of personal energy and includes one’s sexuality. Developing a sensual and sexual power is essential. Exercise is important, but we must make good decisions about not risking injury and not over-exercising.

2. Mental power may be directed toward learning, growing, changing, understanding and integrating knowledge into experience. It has three major subdivisions:

a) Memory — coming to terms with the past and getting to a point where the past is a supporting and useful part of our lives. This part of our power helps us to turn losses into lessons and understand the puzzle pieces of our life.
b) Vision — helps us plan our current life. We accomplish our day-to-day tasks and fulfill commitments. By visualizing change and considering all the options, we can learn to tap into our inner strengths and help make changes in our life.
c) Fantasy — helps us have dreams and begin the footwork to make those dreams come true. We learn how to set our intention and get where we want to go in life. Fantasy encourages a stretching of the possibilities. First, a vision; then, a plan and; finally, a happening.

3. Emotional power — turns on “the highs”; struggles through “the lows”; helps us face the joys and sorrows, the loves and the hates, and the vulnerabilities of life. It is a source of great richness. To be able to feel what one feels, name it and talk about it, makes life more understandable and less frightening. The capacity to tune into feelings opens one up to insight, intuition and reality. We have hundreds of feelings that occur within us all the time, and the more we are able to let them happen, identify them and process them, the more energy and insight we will have.

4. Social power — affects all of our relationships with other people — from an intimate personal partner, all the way to working with co-workers — and has a significant impact on us. We all need intimacy, and my book goes into what it takes to have an intimate relationship. We also need friends — inner-circle friends, golden friends, silver friends and day-to-day friends. They are all important for different reasons, and it is important to know which friends fall into which category, and to protect the “circle of love” that we all need. Asking when to give our all to a relationship and knowing when to leave a relationship is something we all need to learn. Social power can be used to develop and maintain close, honest relationships in which one loves and is loved.

5. Spiritual power — challenges a person to find his or her own values and the meaning of life — one is able to find out how he or she fits into this world. This power opens us to all possibilities. Choosing to pursue one’s spirituality connects us with others. We are co-creators of our destiny. We must live in a constant willingness to change and grow. We can learn to be open to serendipity and synchronicity.

The universe is offering us possibilities all the time to seek and find truth. Sheldon Kopp, says, “In every age, people have set out on pilgrimages, spiritual journeys and personal quests. Sometimes driven by pain, drawn by longing, lifted by hope, they go looking for relief, enlightenment, peace, power and joy.” We all have a spiritual hunger.

The powers we have are ours to be developed. We need to step out of the “auto-pilot” action in our lives and pay attention. It is what Wayne Dyer calls “intention.” We need to watch, listen and stay alert for that little push or hunch that says, “Do this or do that.” If it really feels good, it just might be divine guidance.

When we watch for clues and we begin to feel the pieces of our lives coming together, like magic, its possible that the mystical world of synchronicity is working and we are connected to the source — the energy that is revealed through our inner powers. It’s called “going with the flow.”

Another aspect of our personal power is passion. Passion is creation and the ability to feel our power. When you are connected to the source, you are connected to your power and passion is released. Passion comes from the excitement of having something in the making. Contentment comes from looking at something already achieved — it’s a great satisfaction. It is a very positive and healing energy, but it is not fuel. Passion is the fuel that takes you somewhere. It is an inner knowing that you have personal power to do something you feel you must do.

Passion actually means “full of feeling”, and joy is the greatest fuel there is. Getting in touch with the six personal powers is JOY. It might mean you want to write, travel, dance, study, explore, start a new hobby, be more spontaneous, have more fun, love more. All of that is passion, and passion is creation. How exciting it is that our power comes from within. It is not patched from an outside source, nor do we have to get it from a guru.

The answers are not “out there” from some learned source or mystical realm. The development of our personal power allows us to live in the world rather than run away from the world looking for a mystical experience. Life becomes less perplexing and more powerful (power-full).

Sheldon Kopp says that the most important lesson we can learn is that we each must learn our own lessons and no one can teach us our personal lessons. Once we accept this disappointment, we will stop depending on a therapist, a coach, or a guru who just happens to be another struggling human being as well.

Learning to Balance Your Life asks important questions, challenges the ordinary, and offers Learning to Balance Your Life asks important questions, challenges the ordinary, and offers some thoughts to take you on the wonderful journey of making the choices and changes you would like to make to reach the life you want to live. The book is written with three options in mind — it can become your own personal journal; it can be a source of inner exploration with your therapist; or it can help you and your coach/client find new directions together.
Enjoy the reading and continuing to co-create with the universe. “That’s the only dance there is.”

Sharon W. Cruse is a nationally & internationally known lecturer, author and trainer. Sharon previously served as President and founder of Onsite Workshops and was the founding chairperson of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (NACoA).

This article is published in Counselor,The Magazine for Addiction Professionals, October 2005, v.6, n.5, pp.66-68.

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