{"id":3260,"date":"2010-06-01T15:00:29","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T19:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/?p=3260"},"modified":"2010-06-01T15:00:29","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T19:00:29","slug":"bringing-back-balance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/bringing-back-balance\/","title":{"rendered":"Bringing Back Balance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over a quarter century ago, writer Dianne Hales<\/a> fell in love with the Italian language and has invested much time in learning to speak it. I spent the holiday weekend sharing her adventures thanks to her delightful book,\u00a0La Bella Lingua<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

What Hales discovered along the way\u2014which explains why this is about much more than simply becoming bilingual\u2014is that the Italian language has had a deep impact on creating the culture.<\/p>\n

Readers of the book are treated to discussions about music, art, history, literature, movies, cuisine and, even, profanity (which the Italians have elevated to an art form of its own).<\/p>\n

One of my favorite stories appears in the chapter\u00a0L<\/em>a Storia dell\u2019Arte<\/em> where Halle introduces us to an artist that was part of the early Renaissance scene.\u00a0Tomasso Guido only lived to be 27 and just a few of his paintings exist, but they were so different to the style of other artists around him that they helped other painters to see things in a new way.<\/p>\n

He was also, apparently, a workaholic. As Hales reports, \u201cHe was so on fire with le cose dell\u2019arte<\/em> (literally \u2018the things of art\u2019 or artistic matters) that he paid no attention to the clothes he wore, the food he ate, the money he received or owed\u2014and went down in history as Masaccio, or Messy Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Masaccio is not alone. One of the most difficult things for all of us is to create a life of balance. We all know when life gets out of balance, although we may not notice it until it becomes extreme.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, in every nook and cranny of our lives, balance is necessary if we are to feel peaceful and powerful. Too much of anything can throw everything out of whack.<\/p>\n

This notion runs counter to the popular advice to make “singleness of purpose” and “blinding commitment” our operating philosophy. That is not the path to a balanced life.<\/p>\n

A woman in a seminar once told me she\u2019d started a gardening business\u00a0 that had become so successful that she\u2019s busy all summer long. \u201cNow I don\u2019t enjoy my own garden anymore,\u201d she complained.<\/p>\n

She had decided the solution was to give up her gardening business and find something new. I thought a more reasonable option was to start a non-gardening profit center and keep only the clients she really enjoyed. I\u2019m not sure I managed to convince her.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In seeking balance, we often eliminate when it makes more sense to moderate. It’s not diversity that causes us to lose our balance: monotony and repetition are the culprits.<\/p>\n

Creating diversity can be a great balancer since it allows us to tap into different passions. It\u2019s also necessary to constantly reassess and discard what no longer works, what we\u2019ve outgrown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Next time, I\u2019ll show you how I managed to find balance amidst the passion. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over a quarter century ago, writer Dianne Hales fell in love with the Italian language and has invested much time in learning to speak it. I spent the holiday weekend sharing her adventures thanks to her delightful book,\u00a0La Bella Lingua. What Hales discovered along the way\u2014which explains why this is about much more than simply…<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[398],"tags":[611,609,27,610],"class_list":["post-3260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-making-it-better","tag-balance","tag-dianne-hales","tag-growing-a-business","tag-labella-lingua","jsn-master"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3260"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3273,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3260\/revisions\/3273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joyfullyjobless.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}