Seven Keys to MOGO: Key 7: Strive for Balance

Usually, the holidays are anything but balanced. We often don’t eat balanced meals; we may tip the balance toward excess activity and away from relaxation, and we usually unbalance our checkbooks.

This holiday season, strive for balance. One of the challenges of MOGO living comes when we want to change our lives to reflect our values more deeply, but our culture makes it difficult to do this. We don’t like being different. We don’t like the inconvenience. We may not appreciate the call toward awareness, analysis, and responsibility. Our desires and values may come into conflict.

You may have felt some conflict reading these blog posts: the conflict between wanting to put lots of gifts under the tree for your expectant children, and wanting a simpler, more values-based holiday; between wanting more like-minded community-building, but also to be with your family of origin, even if they don’t share your goals; between wanting more stuff yourself and knowing that your desires may have unintended consequences on the environment.

Striving for a MOGO balance during the holiday season can come when we elevate some important values that often get overlooked when we write our list of best qualities. While some of our top ten values may include generosity, integrity, compassion, honesty, kindness, and courage, there are other wonderful values that may be just what we need to cultivate and embrace during the holiday challenges. These include:

• flexibility
• humor
• creativity
• humility
• patience
• acceptance
• openness

With these values in mind, we can be kind to ourselves, accept our limitations, aim to use the 6 keys described in the previous posts while acknowledging that this 7th is a critical component of a joyful MOGO life, too.

Happy holidays everyone,

~ Zoe