Thursday, May 22, 2003

Healthy balance

If you’ve been putting forth effort for a while, take a rest. When you’ve been resting for a while, get up and get going again. Life is a cycle of effort and rest. Everywhere you look in nature, you can clearly see how a healthy balance between effort and rest is essential to all living things.

By working ever harder and ever longer, you eventually reach a point of diminishing return. Sooner or later, you get to the place where, in order to continue moving forward, you must first stop for a while.

The same kind of situation occurs when you go too far in the other direction. When you spend a long period never making any effort, it ceases to become relaxing or pleasurable and simply becomes unbearably monotonous.

Give all you have to the effort, and then give it a rest for a while. Both effort and rest will serve to energize you, as long as you keep them in balance. Pay heed to the cycle that pervades all of life, and life will work great for you.

— Ralph Marston

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