All things in moderation

That might be a more familiar way to say the same thing.  As any doctor or chemist will tell you, a drug or substance that can save your life can also kill you if you get the dosage wrong.  So how does this apply to life?  Well, allow me to elaborate…

As much as I love to fly fish, I would not want to do it every day.  If I lived in Durango and was literally walking distance to the river, I know that I wouldn’t fish every day.  My Dad would, but I am positive for me that the novelty of it would wear off and then I would have killed one of my favorite past times.  I would NEVER become a fishing guide for a similar reason; I wouldn’t want to make something I love into a job and end up feeling like I HAD TO go to the river again today.  That would suck.  Because of this, I fish whenever I can and every time out I enjoy the Hell out of it.  I would like to fish more often than I do currently, but I know there is a balance that keeps that fire burning.

If you do nothing but work, your life is out of balance.  You can get away with this for a short time, but it will have detrimental affects over time.  How many Doctors and Lawyers do you know that have hobbies or spend a lot of time with their families?  There are professionals that just do not lend themselves to a balanced life, and this needs to be considered before you enter them in the first place.  There is a documented and studied trend of women who excel in law school and are fast-tracking towards becoming a partner in the law firm they work for, only to quit and left the profession to stay at home and have kids.  According to this study, 46% of women leave the law profession for family life.  If they marry another lawyer, or someone else that makes similar money to fund the lifestyle they have, what is the driving incentive to work 90 hours a week and try to manage raising kids as well?  Its way too hard to do both, and of course the kids would end u getting raised by someone else.  With the means in place to have a choice, the choice is to leave the firm and become a stay at home parent.  It makes sense, but was this really considered ahead of time?  Was that dose measured out in advance?

On the flip side of this, you cannot stay at home and play video games all day and think you are not going to get evicted.  You have a life to pay for, housing costs, car payments, food and other things that require you to have a job and make money.  You have to measure the dose of video games you play each week versus the amount of time you are productively earning money.  For example, a guy I used to live with had a day job that was 36 hours a week, but it was one that didn’t require anything outside of those hours.  He got into a certain video game that he played all the time, and I mean all the time.  He figured out that there was a counter on the video game that logged how many hours he played the game.  It averaged out to about 20 hours a week!  He had a part-time job playing a video game…  Now, I am all for having downtime and taking your mind off of things, but that is too much in my opinion.  Neither one of us had any money back then, so a real part time job would have been a much better idea.

Too much exercise can be as detrimental as too little.  Too much time indoors is not good, but too much time outdoors can have downsides as well.  There are plenty of examples of things that need to be done in moderation to get the best results.  You can’t study 12 hours straight and retain everything you laid eyes on.  But if you studied a couple of hours and took a break to do something else, and then studied again, I am confident in saying that this most likely yields much better results.

You have to measure out the dosage of everything you do, and evaluate the results.  If you got a C on your last exam, you may need more study time.  If you got a scorching sunburn, maybe just one hour instead of three laying by the pool would be a better idea.  If you waking up with a resting heart rate of 90, you are very over-trained and your body hasn’t recovered from the previous workouts.  This is detrimental to the overall goal, as your body will start to break down and an injury is likely in your future.  The best way to improve is to stay healthy to train, and overtraining is an easy trap to fall into.  Measure the dosage.  If you are missing most of your kids activities like plays and baseball games, you need to measure the dosage of work you ingest and determine if that is worth it.  You never get those days back, so if you place more value on these activities than the money your earn, might be time to adjust the dosage.

We all have more choices than we realize, but in many cases we do not exercise those choices.  It is a matter of prioritizing things that way you want and adjusting accordingly.  You know how do to it in certain parts of your life, you just need to extend that into every part of life.  If you are consumed by work and making enough money to retire soon, maybe that is worth it.  If you are 25 and killing yourself every week with no end in sight, time to change your dosage to a more balanced approach.  It is your life and you are the architect of it, don’t ever forget that.  You are the one who gets to write the rules; taking a step backwards for now to live a better life in the long run is perfectly fine if you are willing to do so.  Don’t be afraid and unwilling to take action…grab your nuts and jump!  Be smart about it of course, but make the leap nonetheless.  Otherwise your life will pass you by in a blink and you’ll have nothing but a bunch of regrets to look back on.

Adjust your dosage on a regular basis, it is the best way to ensure your own health.

I wish you luck in your endeavors.