A while ago, I was speaking of awareness, harmony (balance) and being friends with yourself.
Today I’m developing a bit on the harmony subject.
One of the questions I asked myself last night was “What do you exactly mean by harmony?”
Here’s what I answered:
In a world troubled with stress, pain, decisions and monotony, harmony is what can make you face them all easier. Harmony isn’t really a way to feel good, nor is it a way to feel bad. It’s more like a balance between the two. Good and bad are relative, as most things in life are.
Harmony would be easy to achieve if we had the key. As I said before, none of us are born trained Neos. Not even Neo himself. He had to train too. Moreover, before he started to believe in his strengths and work on them, he wasn’t the chosen one.
Now if we had the key, harmony would be very easy to achieve. It’s like making someone solve a mathematics exercise with them seeing numbers for the first time. They’ll have no idea on how to do it. Nevertheless, once they learn a bit of mathematics, everything may just come to sight in the easiest way possible.
So it goes for most things in life, including harmony.
For me, harmony means not caring. Not getting so involved into something that it completely controls you. You’ll never be able to control everything, as control itself is somewhat fiction. However, you can control some things and make them work on your behalf.
Going back to the not caring part… Do you remember how when someone extremely dear to you dies, par example, you feel like dying too? That you feel like nothing matters, as if you’re numb? That’s part of harmony, but without the bad feelings. Being at peace with whatever happens. That’s harmony. Not being scared of anything. Standing by your decisions, your life, yourself.
Harmony means not taking anything to its extremes. A feeling, a situation, a fact of life. Just observing it and choosing to get involved with it or not. Sure, that’s not so easy to do. There will be times, even when in harmony, when you’ll get involved in things which hurt you extremely or please you extremely just because you’re human and chemistry is part of you. Nevertheless, by whole, harmony makes life easier and less of a subject to sudden changes and explosions of whatever sort.
To achieve harmony you must work on it. It’s best if you’re able to take some time off and act like a monk for a while. Find a peaceful place and get to know yourself. It’s again crucial to know yourself. You have to know what ticks for you, what problems you have, what’s easy for you to do and what’s not. What pleases you deeply and what are your biggest fears.
Then you have to meditate on understanding that everything starts and ends with you. Nobody can force you do anything. As I previously said, even in the worst-case scenarios possible. If someone puts a gun to your head, if you’re living in a communist country or even if your job doesn’t please you… Nobody can force you do anything you don’t want to. You consider yourself forced only because you do not want to die and suffer or, by case, because you don’t want to starve, or simply want to have some benefits in life, even if the disadvantages are huge.
As I said, those are worst-case scenarios. They’re extremely rare (well apart from the job thing). So imagine what you could do with regular things. With situations much less terrible. Like everyday situations. Like relationships and such.
Everything starts with you… I can’t stress this enough.
Going back to harmony (which, again, naturally, presumes you’re not your own enemy, but more like your friend – not necessarily your best one though as it‘s a question of balance), once achieved it has to be cultivated and sustained. You’re the one who chooses how to do that. Like when you have the time and where you’d like to cultivate it.
Harmony, as my coach would say, is an extremely solid base on which you can build practically anything. And, par example, if you were to build a house, you wouldn’t want to build it on hardly sustained surfaces or at high-risk locations, now would you?
You also have to understand how perception works and that there are things you simply cannot change. You have to understand what it’s like to not get too involved into anything, unless YOU WANT to get involved.
So that was my not so little insight on harmony. Hope it made sense and hope I remember it. 
I was recently in a passionate discussion with a troubled client. He was refusing to accept that his world was entirely of his making, and was stubbornly clinging to his “They’re doing this to me” point of view. He’s a musician, amongst other things. We began to talk of harmony and dissonance. As we did, I encouraged him to think of himself as the conductor of the orchestra that is the stuff of his life. He became excited, and soon realized that while the conductor is not the individual instruments, he IS the one who controls and guides the music. He selects the compositions, and decides how they are to be played.
A love of literal and life harmony, plus the empowerment that being the conductor of the symphony of his life has given him has created a truly confident guy where a victim once cowered.
I’ve passed your blogpost about harmony to him. It will be an apt reminder. I know he’ll enjoy it as much as I did. Thank you so much for sharing your perspective, Liz.
Molly Burke, Queen of Confidence
http://mollyburkeonpurpose.wordpress.com
http://lifepurposeworks.com
I’ve bottled confidence, and it’s for sale.
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