Take four percent for you. In every 24 hour day we need to make sure we take time for ourselves. Taking four percent for you isn’t much, is barely enough, but it’s a good start. Four percent is only 1 hour. The complete nine sections of Tai Chi Chuan of the Sun Style, together with the warm up exercises, takes less than one hour daily practice you can do to feel yourself, to be with yourself and to enjoy your true natural self. Wu Yu-hsiang in his Expositions of Insights into the Practice of the Thirteen Postures advises “Inwardly make the spirit firm, and outwardly exhibit calmness and peace.”
Our culture tries to pull us away from ourselves with ever busier schedules and demands or with flashy enticements to ‘exciting’ distractions. But to maintain even the barest of sanity you need to take time every day to do something for yourself, to be with your actual real self. Four percent for you should really be a bare minimum of what you give to yourself.
Put Yourself First to Find Your Self
Financial planners often stress the importance of taking the first 10% of your paycheck for yourself. I haven’t heard this advice so much lately. I’m not sure if that’s because I don’t pay much attention to financial planners or if it’s because our splintering economy makes that advice rather moot. But I do know that you need to put your own needs first to regain your genuine self. It’s how you learn to be comfortable with who you really are, who you are outside whatever you have accumulated or without any of the roles you play as worker, parent, volunteer, athlete, gamer, whatever it is that fills your days and your psyche.
Have a Life Work Balance
Ideally we would all follow the advice of my friend Victor who has recently shifted from having a work life balance to having a life work balance. He puts his life first and lets his work support that. In that scenario we place a higher priority on life than we do on work. That doesn’t necessarily speak to a change in the amount of time we spend on any given activity. It does speak to a change in perspective. It means putting our own needs ahead of the demands of the outer world, the world beyond your control. Verse 2 of The Tao Te Ching reads, “Therefore the wise go about doing nothing, teaching no-talking. Everything rises and falls without cease. Creating, yet not possessing, Working, yet not taking credit. Work is done, then forgotten. Therefore it is eternal.”
Very few of us live in our ideal world. We live in the world that demands more and more of ourselves with each passing day often just to keep treading water. And if that doesn’t come from a stressful job, it’s often the stress of parenthood. Even if we’re financially secure and or retired we tend to schedule ourselves into distraction if only out of habit. If you take four percent for you, you create a habit of self nurturing.
Nothing done. Nothing Left Udone
We’re used to being on the go. We’re used to staying busy. Essentially we’re used to acting and accomplishing. By so doing, we’re rarely spending any quiet time feeling who we really are. Verse 49 of the Tao Te Ching says, “Less and less is done until non-action is achieved. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone.”
So, I recommend that you start putting yourself first by taking Four Percent for you. Once you get into the habit of taking time for yourself, you’ll be more effective and more at ease with whatever you decide still matters in the world outside yourself. Tai Chi Chuan gives you a time and place to explore yourself, to regain your essential being. It can be the vehicle that helps everything flow together in greater harmony when you calmly express your strong spirit.