Photo by h.koppdelaney

If you are familiar with any ball sport – tennis, cricket, or golf, you would perhaps know what it takes to hit the ball on the sweet spot. Well, you’ve got to be focused and relaxed. Sounds odd, isn’t it? Ordinarily, we can either be focused or relaxed; how do you be both? But then bringing together these almost paradoxical opposites, in an optimal balance, is what the sweet spot of life is about.

The Sweet Spot

For example, this sweet spot is about finding a balance between success and meaning. On the one hand, if we are single-mindedly chasing success, without connecting to a deeper purpose, we start to lack meaning in our life; on the other, if we are pursuing our passion, but don’t experience sufficient success with it, we can feel frustrated.

It’s the same with our relationships. Being aggressive and always pushing our point of view makes us less lovable, but being submissive and not expressing ourselves fully results in our needs not being met. Instead, attaining a healthy midpoint, of being assertive and authentic, allows us to build deeper relationships. It’s a place where we are firm but polite, hold our ground but are respectful of others’ perspective, are sensitive to others’ feelings and yet authentic in expressing ourselves more fully.

Likewise, with parenting – loving our children, without setting healthy boundaries, spoils them; but then, enforcing limits, without offering unconditional love, suffocates them. Most of us tend to be either authoritarian (too strict) or permissive (too lenient) in our approach. A fine balance exists between these opposites, where we love the children unconditionally, without constantly judging them, and set up age-appropriate limits for them, through an open dialogue.

As I explain in my new book, Discovering Your Sweet Spot, the sweet spot is the place in life where we feel balanced in every way – between, work and family, physical and emotional well-being, mental and spiritual growth, personal progress and supporting others, giving and receiving, and loving and being loved. It is that precious zone where the physical and the spiritual meet.

Passionate Detachment

Consider passion and detachment – one of the most potent pair of paradoxes in our life’s journey. As we passionately engage in various activities – at work or in our relationships or personal interests – we usually get significantly attached with the results and that’s what leads to increased stress in our life. Alternately, if we take a detached or a disinterested approach, it’s not particularly supportive of our moving forward either.

Creating an equilibrium where we are passionately engaged in what we love, but are reasonably detached from the day-to-day outcomes of our actions, is what passionate detachment is about; and that’s one of the keys to discovering our life’s sweet spot.

Its Powerful Relevance

The principle of passionate detachment has profound implications in our life. It allows us to connect with our profession or vocation with a new sense of purity, where we see our work as the manifestation of our life’s purpose, without getting constantly caught up in the expectations of specific personal gains or losses.

Practicing passionate detachment also prepares us to unconditionally love our spouse or partner, without any preconceived expectations from them. We nurture our children, not so that they can become idealized version of ourselves, but so they can be secure in being who they are. We become more open to giving, not in the hope of always receiving something in return, but because giving is an overflow of our innate goodness.

We find strength equally in building self-belief and trusting the ways of the universe. We passionately take charge of living our dharma, our life’s purpose, while letting go of being invested in the external measures of our progress, and strongly trusting that whatever transpires is for our highest good.

As we temper our attachment towards the varied outcomes of our actions, it helps us better moderate what the Buddhist teachings identify as the eight versions of our tendency to continually hope and fear – pleasure and pain, praise and blame, gain and loss, fame and disgrace. Cultivating such equanimity to all types of experiences, pleasant or otherwise, allows us to discover deeper happiness, peace and contentment in our life.

(The above is an edited version of an article I had recently written for the ‘Heal Your Life’ website)