“The Balanced Way” helps us understand the true meaning of success and to find contentment without success. The author takes us on a journey of self-discovery, a search for a peaceful state of mind based on his own experience. The idea to write the book came while he was driving to work one day in 1995. At that time, Telmesani was under tremendous pressure professionally and financially and it was affecting him and his family.
While he was driving, he started thinking about what would happen that day, and he realized that he was mainly concerned about having a good day at work and a happy life at home. In other words, his happiness depended on how successful he was financially, professionally and socially. This meant that his state of happiness was constantly threatened by numerous factors that might affect his professional and family life.
“It suddenly occurred to me that my happiness and peace of mind should not be tied to such unstable conditions, especially because things do not usually go the way we want. They actually fluctuate from day to day. From there on, I started looking for ways to stabilize and ground my life. The ultimate question that stayed with me was how I could have contentment and a peaceful state of mind while not giving up my search for excellence and desires for a better future. This quest led me to my search for the balanced way.”
Telmesani takes us along on his journey of self-discovery. We are first familiarized with the concepts of success and happiness; both are subjective since they vary from one person to another. However, all the people driven by success are constantly striving to achieve better results and as a result, they are never satisfied with their present achievements. This negative feeling interferes with the pursuit of happiness unless one agrees with Charles H. Spurgeon that: “Happiness consists in being happy with what we have got and with what we haven’t got.” This and other carefully chosen quotations from Western and Eastern writers as well as from Islamic literature, are one of the highlights of “The Balanced Way.”
In a world suffering from an ongoing global economic crises, it is essential to strike a balance between what we want and what we have, between our desire to succeed and our quest for happiness. In the first part of the book, the author highlights the apparent disparity between these notions and the importance of finding a balanced way. It makes way for a more consistent second part based on six elements which are essential for establishing a balanced way toward success and contentment. The first two elements focus on the importance of a healthy state of mind to feel at ease with both our past and the future.
“Fear of the future,” writes Telmesani, “seems to have a way of disrupting our future, and actually stands in the way of good things coming our way”.
The author illustrates this point with a real life-story of a close friend, Hosam, who was separated from his boat while scuba diving in the Red Sea.
“In spite of his gloomy prospects of surviving, he had no doubt in his mind that he would survive because of his complete and utter belief that God would help him for the sake of his family. He ended up staying afloat for 40 hours(between 4 p.m. on Thursday and 8 a.m. Saturday), until he was picked up by the coast guard outside the port of Jeddah. At times, Hosam felt that the white-tipped reef shark following him most of the time was actually not going after him, but rather keeping him company until he reached shore safely. The power of belief and positive expectation can indeed give us infinite strength. Hosam’s experience showed that power to him, to me, and to many others.”
Adopting a positive attitude when faced with problems affects strongly our chances to succeed. As Thomas Edison rightly said; “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” The key to success is never to stop searching for a solution, even when it looks as if none exists. By keeping on looking for a solution, we increase the possibility of finding an answer to a seemingly insoluble problem. And Frank Clark also reminds us about the importance of humor: “I think the next best thing to solving a problem is finding some humor in it.”
Another important element of the balanced way is the importance of maintaining high ethical standards on personal and professional levels. The recent 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis was caused by individuals driven by greed coupled with a lack of moral codes and companies neglecting to pursue higher professional standards. Top executives are responsible for creating a healthy corporate culture with a high standard of corporate ethics. They are committed to honesty and transparency in dealing with their customers, colleagues even if it is achieved at the cost of efforts and profits.
The final element which helps us establish a balanced way toward success and content concerns the importance of taking initiatives. A lack of initiatives amounts to a loss of opportunities whereas the ability to take initiatives increases the possibility of self-improvement.
In the first and second part of the book, the author provides sections titled “Road Signs on the Path” which not only include questions we need to ask ourselves but also recap the main points discussed. The third and last part of this moral essay reminds us that searching for the balanced way is more of a process than an objective. This process aims to create different states of balance on a mental, social, professional, moral and spiritual level. This final section gives way to exercises provided with a series of matrixes. These matrixes come in the form of questions which help us monitor our efforts and measure our progress.
“The Balanced Way” is a Road Map aimed at helping us deal with the numerous challenges of life. Short and easy to read, this is the perfect handbook for living a balanced life.
