Each month as part of our Intentional Growth Club, we read a book and hold a discussion night to talk about our takeaways from the book.
This month, as part of our theme of “Finding Your Balance,” we read Being in Balance by Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.
Being in Balance describes Dr. Dyer’s 9 principles for living a balanced life. This short little book is packed with powerful insights as to why your life might be feeling unbalanced and how to realign each aspect.
A few examples of the principles include: Balancing Your Dreams with Your Habits, Balancing Your Desire for Prosperity with Your Habits of Scarcity, and Balancing Your Desire for Love with Feelings of Not Having Enough Love.
Let’s go ahead and jump straight into our takeaways from this book.
1) The Law of Attraction
A big focus in this book is the Law of Attraction. If you’re not familiar with the idea, here’s a brief definition from Jack Canfield: “The law of attraction is a universal principle that states you will attract into your life whatever you focus on. Whatever you give your energy and attention to is what will come back to you.”
In nearly every chapter, Dyer describes how the Law of Attraction can be a cause of imbalance in your life. If you are focused on the wrong things or allow negative thoughts to take over the majority of your thoughts, the Law of Attraction states that you will continue to attract those unwanted things into your life.
Here’s an example from Chapter 2 to help illustrate his point - “Even with a well-balanced schedule that allows for more free time, and even with plenty of stress-reducing activities on your pared-down personal calendar, if you fail to align your thoughts with the success you’re capable of attracting, the weight of the dominant thoughts will tip the scale away from a balanced life.”
In other words, even if you are doing all of the “right” things, if your mind is still crowded with thoughts like “I’m so busy, I have a ton to do this week, I’m anxious about being able to get that project done on time,” etc., then you will still feel out of balance. You will only attract more anxiety and stress into your life.
So what can you do to avoid attracting this negative energy into your life? Realign what your focus is and you will attract what you desire.
If you’re struggling with money, think about what you will do with wealth instead of worrying about paying the bills. If you’re unhappy with your weight and health, focus on what your body can do and picture yourself as fit and strong. If you feel like you’re in a dead-end job, imagine how good it will feel to own your own business or be promoted to the position you desire.
When you focus on positive alignments, you will naturally begin to take the steps necessary to make your dreams a reality. Opportunities will present themselves to you and you’ll meet people who can help you achieve your goals.
2) Have a Vision of Your Ideal Self
Once you understand how the Law of Attraction can impact your life, the next step is to figure out what exactly you want your life to look like. When you realize that you’re out of balance because your point of attraction is not what you desire, before you can realign your thoughts, you need to figure out what the new point of attraction should be.
Think of the areas of your life where you feel out of balance. Maybe it’s your career, your family life, or even your spiritual life. Take some time to reflect on where your thoughts currently are in that area and then think about what you would like to focus on instead.
If you’re frustrated with your career, replace your thoughts of “I’m under appreciated, I don’t have the skills I need to advance, I’ll never be a manager,” with thoughts like “I am a key part of this team, I can do anything I set out to achieve.” Picturing yourself as the talented and successful individual you aspire to be will help manifest it into reality.
Are you struggling with discerning this vision of your ideal self? One of my favorite ways to help picture my goals is to create a vision board. If you've never heard of a vision board before, it's a collage of images and words that are a visual representation of your goals and dreams.
Having a visual reminder of your ideal self can be an effective reminder to continue striving for those goals. A vision board can be as simple or as artistic as you want. It can even be digital! Just keep it in a place where you can see it and review it daily. Learn more about creating a vision board here.
3) Examine Your Beliefs on Love & Joy
As we know from the Law of Attraction, we attract what we think about. So if we want to attract the positives, especially love, we need to change our energy to attract joy and love by focusing on joy and being loving.
"As your beliefs go, so goes your behavior."
If we are in a state of believing the negative, we attract the negative. This applies to money, joy, love, relationships and anything else. As we've talked about in our previous posts related to mindset, we need to begin with our beliefs to help uncover what it is that our beliefs are projecting outward. Are you perpetuating a belief that no longer serves you?
When we are walking around burdened by hate, we will never be able to experience true joy. Hate surrounds us in so many ways. We can control what hate we consume by our level of engagement in social media, the books we read, the shows/movies we watch.
You are your best judge on what is too much. How you feel will give you clues if you have taken in too much. How you respond can be a response of non-judgement. You can work to create an inner peace and balance to access when faced with hate. You can choose to believe that people are essentially good.
Love begins inside. If you seek love externally, your energy is that of someone who is missing something and trying to fill a void. Beginning with loving thoughts of yourself (the ultimate form of self-care), you can be love.
Being love is also having love for others, which shows up as empathy and understanding. As we discussed last month, mindfulness is essential in how we show up for ourselves and others - being fully present and in the moment. Ultimately, you can only give away what you have inside and you will only attract more of what that is.
Dyer says, "The single most important tool to being in balance is knowing that you and you alone are responsible for the imbalance between what you dream your life is meant to be, and the daily habits that drain life from that dream." This is a little bit scary, but also comforting. You are in charge of your life, so you have the power to change what you don't like. It may not be easy, but being in balance is up to you.
Join us on August 30th at 6:30 PM CST for our book club discussion on Being in Balance. You can register here: https://bit.ly/IGCBookClub
If you can't make it, let us know what you thought about the book in the comments!
Our book for September will be Read to Lead by Jeff Brown and Jesse Wisnewski.