By JOHNNY CARCIOPPOLO / Community Columnist   

If you think about life being balanced, you might envision a seesaw in the position of being directly balanced in the middle with no ups, no downs and simply managing to stay in the middle ground.

Of course, life doesn’t work like that. There are ups and there are most certainly downs. Sometimes you might feel as though you just want to jump off the seesaw and lay on the ground for a little while just to gain your equilibrium back.

What does it mean to be in balance, if life has its difficulties? When you are in balance, you maintain your equilibrium while life’s ups and downs come to visit. Of course, you go through the various emotions as circumstances both good and not so good work their way through your life.

How do you really achieve balance? You can achieve balance in several ways:

• Feel your emotions and move quickly through them. It’s perfectly fine to become emotional when the roller coaster of life gets too fast and too furious. The next step after feeling is action. If something doesn’t feel right, chances are it isn’t right. The next logical step to create more space in your life for fulfilling goals and time for enjoyment is action.
• Choose an action step to recreate the scene. If you’ve lost a job, fire up your resume. If your home needs a repair, start asking family and friends for referrals on contractors. The faster you barrel through the downs of life, the sooner you can get back up.
• Don’t regurgitate facts and stories repeatedly. The more you talk about what happened, how unfair it was and what a nuisance it was, the more energy you expend.
• If you find yourself faced with a problem, take the energy needed to create some sort of answer rather than dwell only on the issue at hand. We all use energy to get through the day’s events. However, we get to choose how much energy is spent on each project.

Sometimes, the unexpected can throw you off. How do you hit the reset button when life throws you a curve and knocks you off balance? Call a friend and get an accountability partner. Ask someone you know to reroute you when you are stuck. Ask them not to let you dwell on what happened or what you cannot control and help you return to present moment status.

Make a choice and make some change. If you really want to achieve your goals and enjoy life to the fullest, you must choose where your energy will go. Make a choice that seems best in the moment and follow through with it.

Coming next week (Part 2) – Focusing on your goals.