Forget Balance Think Proportionate
Your energy is finite and cannot be scaled, so divide it proportionately among the people and things that matter most rather than trying to balance everything.
Dandapani starts with why he wants to focus at all, a finite life he does not want to waste a minute of, and moves to energy management. He uses one watering can and a growing number of garden beds to show what happens as you add more to your life, and explains why he uses the word proportionate instead of balanced.
What this talk covers
- His first reason to focus is that he lives on this planet for a finite number of years and does not want to waste one minute of them.
- Purpose should drive the reason for focusing, because wanting to be more efficient or productive is not a big enough reason in life.
- Your life is a manifestation of where you invested your energy, and time only measures it.
- One watering can and one garden bed grows vegetables, but every bed you add divides the same water further, and with twenty garden beds and still one watering can, nothing in your life is growing.
- He uses proportionate rather than balanced, because his work may take 70 percent of his energy and the remaining 30 has to be divided between his wife, his daughter and his spiritual life.
I can't scale my energy, so I need to manage my energy.Dandapani
Questions
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Dandapani prefers the word proportionate. He does not split his energy 50-50, and says work may take 70 percent while the rest is divided among family and spiritual life, so the question is proportion rather than balance.
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Because you have added garden beds without adding water. Each new project, person or commitment divides the same finite energy, and with enough of them everything gets too little to grow.
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He says you cannot scale energy exponentially or claim you have more of it every year. You can get better at managing it, which means simplifying to the most important people and things.
Transcript
622 words · 3:39
For me, why do I want to focus? Number one reason is I only live on this planet for X number of years. I don't know what that X is, but it's finite. It's not short.
It's limited amount of time. How do I want to live this life? I want my life to be really rewarding, to be full, to be content, to be happy, to be joyous, to like, I don't want to waste one minute in this life.
I literally don't want to waste one minute. I want to enjoy it with the people I love, the things I love. Now, once I'm clear about that, I learn to focus. So when I'm focused, I can get the most out of life.
That drives me to practice focus. Purpose should drive the reason for focusing. So when you have a clarity of purpose, then you say, I just want to focus because there's a greater reason,
not because I want to be more efficient or productive. You know, that's not big enough for a reason in life. I like that. And you just mentioned that the energy is finite and my lifetime is finite, right?
So there is like, it's not indefinite. And which brings us to the other area of your teaching is energy management. And one thing that stuck with me again was that my life is a manifestation of where I invested my energy so far.
So which is true. So the Swen you see and the Dhanapani I see is where you and I invested our energy and it's not only time, right? No.
Time is more like a measuring tape that kind of measures, you know, but your life is a manifestation of where you invest energy. All the negative things about me, the positive things about me is a result of my creation and where I put my energy, where I put my awareness, my attention.
And that's where my energy has been growing and that's created in my life. You know, the simple example I always use, you know, Sven is that, for example, imagine if I have a garden bed and I'm growing, you know, it's one and a half meters by two meters garden bed and I'm growing vegetables and I have a watering can and I water the garden
bed. All those vegetables will grow. The following year I add one more garden bed, but still I only have one watering can because I can't increase my energy exponentially.
Maybe I can become better at managing my energy every year. And every year I can't make the proclamation that I have more and more energy every year. That's not true. So now I have two garden beds, one watering can.
All the vegetables get less energy. The following year I add more people in my life, more things in my life, more projects in my life. Now I have 20 garden beds, each garden bed representing a different area of my life.
Still one watering can. What is growing in my life? Nothing. So I need to simplify my life to the most important people, the most important thing
take my finite energy and proportionately invest it into those people and things. And I use the word proportionate, not balanced because if I have a hundred percent of energy, I'm not giving 50% for personal life, 50% for work life. It's yeah, my work gets 70% of my energy.
That's the truth. Now I have 30%. I have to give my wife, my daughter, my, my spiritual life, everything else. And I have to proportionally divide that.
I can't scale my energy, so I need to manage my energy.