Five Words to Live Your Life By

The Mind Unleashed on Facebook had an article yesterday that outlined the five words to live your life by. In the opinion of the author of that article, the five words should be:

No
Yes
Believe
Love
Persevere

So I was thinking about what my five words would be. I'm not saying these are words that lead me to a healthy emotional existence necessarily, but they are the five words I would most associate with my life:

1) Harmony
I have a small wall decoration in my room with the Chinese symbol for the word harmony, and I have used Harmony as a screen name occasionally. I am always striving to be in harmony in life. I am happiest when the people around me are in harmony, and I am in harmony with them. I feel upset at the slightest amount of discord. I struggle so much with any kind of conflict. When my surroundings are clean and organized, my mind is quiet, and the people around me have smiles on their faces, that is harmony. For me, harmony is synonymous with peace, tranquility, balance, happiness. 

2) Balance
This refers to several aspects of balance:
a) physical balance - I have fairly poor balance, due to muscular dystrophy, osteoporosis, and the effects of an inner ear disorder. Falling is a constant concern, but luckily is not an issue yet. I have exercises I should be doing, but I rarely do them.
b) emotional balance - Partly due to my personality, possibly partly due to age, my emotions can change on a dime. I can be pretty happy one minute, and in tears the next. Sometimes the fluctuations are even more pronounced.
c) activities balance - Every day it seems I am confronted with the challenge of choosing between what I want to do vs what I need to do, or what other people want me to do. Between my own struggles with motivation and the desire to help/do for others, I often find at the end of the day that I am disappointed with my decisions or feel unfulfilled with how I have spent my time.

3) Accomplishment
See a pattern here? Each word leads to the next word. I am very accomplishment-oriented. Because of fatigue, other health issues, and mundane daily tasks that must get done, I often climb into bed at night feeling sad and frustrated about what I wasn't able to do that day. Sometimes the things on the list are tasks like dishes or paying a bill or something I needed to do at work. Usually they are hobbies I enjoy like blogging, journaling, or reading. But I am working on this area of my life. I am making time for the activities that I enjoy. I want to go to bed at night feeling like I made good use of my time and energy that day. More than anything, I want to be living a purposeful life.

4) Concentration
I have a good day when I am able to concentrate on what I am doing. I fall into old habits of worry and rumination when I'm having trouble concentrating. So a very good day happens when I can focus on reading, journaling, blogging, or other hobbies that I enjoy. Focusing on a television show or listening to music are other helpful activities. I also feel good when I am able to exercise. An example of a bad day is me coming home from work, sitting on my bed or on the couch, and spending the afternoon worrying about future events, recalling past troubles and traumas, and generally becoming mired in negativity. When I can't concentrate on a hobby, performing physical activities like doing dishes and straightening up my room and the bathroom will help me feel productive and keep me from worrying, but it will also leave me with less time and energy for the activities that I enjoy. So the ability to concentrate helps me feel more balanced and I feel more accomplished too.

5) Resiliency
I know I've written much about my struggles with and desire for resiliency. Self-esteem, self-empowerment, belief in oneself and her abilities all contribute to resiliency. In contrast, fear, rumination, lack of concentration, disharmony, etc, all work against resiliency.
The Mind Unleashed also listed the five powerful rituals of mentally strong people:
They use passion and love to fuel their drive to get the hard things done.
They focus their energy solely on what they can control.
They make every action a positive one.
They are relentlessly consistent.
They act as if what they do makes a difference.
I think all of these contribute greatly to resilience, especially the third one: They focus their energy solely on what they can control. So important!!

librarianintx