Do you struggle to find balance in your life? Today’s episode of Creating The Path is all about finding balance. What’s balance? How can we find it in our lives? I don’t see balance as this static thing that we ACHIEVE, I think of it more as something that we DO according to what we feel and need. Join me in this conversation.
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Topics discussed in this episode:
[01:10] The topic of balance around work and home life
[02:14] A simple example of finding balance
[04:21] How can you find balance?
[07:54] The feeling of wanting to do more
[09:57] Pay attention to your emotions and what they’re telling you
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Noteworthy Quotes:
“I don’t think we should burn ourselves out trying to achieve something other people think it’s ideal.”
“Instead of seeing balance as this static thing that we achieve, I think of it more as something that we do.”
“We don’t just achieve balance and then stop moving.”
“It’s up to each of us to figure out what polarities we need to balance in our lives.”
“We aren’t used to resting, so it can sometimes make us feel restless, fidgety, and overall uncomfortable. And that’s exactly why we need rest so badly.”
Summary of the Podcast:
Creating the Path is a podcast that challenges multi-passionate entrepreneurs to achieve their goals by working less and eliminating overwhelm, so they can create their own unique pathway to a life they love. My mission is to transform hustle culture and assist others to shift away from living life on auto-pilot to living intentionally and following your own path to a life you love instead.
Host Bio:
Heather Grace Hanson is a certified positive psychology-based coach and creator of the Intentional Energy Framework, a system that empowers you to create a life and business you love without burning out. Heather is obsessed with all things personal development, running and walking in the park, interior design, salsa dancing and most importantly, spending time with her pup, Barclay.
Episode Transcript:
Today I want to talk about balance. What is balance and how can we really find it in our lives? I feel like a lot of people are hating on the word balance these days, saying it doesn't exist and that we shouldn't be trying to find balance in life, but I don't agree and here's why.
The reason I most often hear about why we shouldn't be trying to find balance is because life doesn't add up to 50/50 that easily and we're just making ourselves miserable and burning ourselves out by constantly trying to achieve that perfect 50/50 balance, so instead we should just accept that life will never be balanced. And usually this conversation is happening around the topic of balance between work and home life. And I do agree with that point a little, in the sense that I don't think we should burn ourselves out trying to achieve something that other people are telling us is ideal, but I also think it's a really narrow and rigid way of looking at balance, and I don't see it that way.
Instead of seeing balance as this static thing that we achieve I think of it more as something that we do, or in a more simplistic way to think of it, it's like thinking about balance as a verb vs. a noun. That's how I usually think of it. Finding balance between two different things doesn't mean you have to spend equal time on both of those things, at least not in this context. It means you want to find the range between those two things that works for you.
So here's an example that can maybe illustrate what I mean. Years ago, my brother taught himself to walk on the high wire, the way that people do in the circus. He first strung up a wire low to the ground when he first started learning, then eventually he strung it up higher. And obviously the goal there is to balance on the wire so he doesn't fall off, right? So how does he balance? If you've ever seen this act at the circus you probably know, they sometimes will have a large pole that they hold in front of them horizontally or they may just put their hands out to the sides, and they shift their body weight from side to side. Using the pole or their arms to help them and that constant shifting from side to side prevents them from falling off one side or the other. Now, it takes practice obviously, that's why my brother first strung up his wire low to the ground, because he knew he would fall off sometimes.
And even for those of us who don't walk on highwires, which I'm assuming is most of us, you still have probably done something similar, like similar balancing acts, maybe when you were a kid walking on a balance beam or just trying to balance on some other kind of object. We do the same thing, we put our arms out to the sides and we shift from side to side to maintain balance. We don't just achieve balance and then stop moving.
Again, it's a thing we actively do, not a static thing that we achieve. It's a verb, not a noun. And when I say it's a verb, not a noun I mean that in sort of a metaphoric sense, not grammatically, because of course grammatically we can use balance as both a noun or a verb, but in this conversation of finding balance in our lives, I personally think of it as a verb sort of metaphorically, just you know, because there is that movement from side to side as we're maintaining the balance. So that's what balance is, at least in my opinion.
But then how do we find that optimal range of balance? How do we know when we found it, and how do we maintain it once we found it? Because obviously, balancing between work and home is different than balancing on a beam. We can't just stick our arms out to the sides and find work life balance.
So when I talk about optimal range. It's really about figuring out how far can you shift to each side without falling down, and in this context falling down might mean burning out from too much work, or on the other side maybe feeling a bit restless because there's more that you'd like to do. Although let's put a pin in that last point because I want to come back to that and talk about that feeling of wanting to do more.
So I'll talk about that in a minute, but my point right now is that when I say falling down, what I really mean is getting thrown off balance in the sense that things aren't going the way you'd like them to. Maybe it feels like things are spiraling out of control, or just that something is missing, whether you know what that missing piece is or not.
So to figure out where your optimal range of balance is, you need to know the two things you're measuring against each other, and the concept of polarities can help with that, at least it's helpful to me. It's this idea of everything having an opposite, so some examples are light and dark, night and day, soft and hard, wet and dry, clean and dirty, sleep and awake, things like that. And the example we've been talking about today you know is, work and rest.
And actually, this brings me to a good point about polarities, which is that you want to make sure you're putting the correct things on each side of the polarity where you're trying to find balance. Because if you think of it like work and life or work and home, you could use those words as the two sides that you're trying to balance, but to me they're a little too vague because when you're at home you can still be doing a lot of work. So even if you cut down on work to avoid burnout, but then you just compensate by doing more housework, well then that's not really going to help you avoid burnout.
To avoid burnout, it's more helpful to figure out the proper balance between work and rest. So you just want to think about what two things are you really trying to balance between. And once you start thinking about these polarities you'll notice them everywhere and how they're affecting you. And some of the ones I listed earlier might seem obvious, but we just never really think about them, at least not in our daily lives.
For example, light and dark is one that I've noticed I need to pay attention to, because I live in an apartment that gets very little natural light, so I need to make sure I get outside every day for a certain amount of time, and I need to be aware of what's the minimum amount of daylight I need so that I don't start to just go crazy, you know, feeling like I'm living in a cave. For people who get a lot of natural light in their homes, maybe that's not an issue they need to worry about.
So it's up to each of us to figure out what polarities do we need to balance in our life. So now, let's get back to that feeling of wanting to do more. I wanted to come back to that because when thinking of polarities, I do generally think that going too far to one side or spending too much time, whatever that is for each of us, is not necessarily good.
However, for those of us who have a tendency to overwork and burn ourselves out, which is definitely me, people like us have to override our discomfort for boredom a little bit. We aren't used to resting, so it can sometimes make us feel restless, you know, fidgety and just overall uncomfortable. And that's exactly why we need rest so badly. We spend so much time on the working side of this polarity and not enough in the resting. So when we actually do start to rest, it doesn't feel right. It feels somehow wrong, and we need to overcome that. So that is just my caveat with that one. For those of us who tend to overwork and can easily burn ourselves out, we generally should rest more than it feels comfortable to do.
Okay, so let's do a quick recap. Balance is a verb, not a noun. It's something you do. It's not a static thing that you just achieve. And to maintain or find balance in your life, you need to figure out what the polarities are that matter to you and that you're trying to balance between. And you can find your optimal range where you can shift between the two sides and still feel okay by starting to be aware of when things in your life start to feel off, or start to feel like maybe things are getting a little out of control, or when you feel like something is missing.
This isn't an exhaustive list of course but just start to pay attention to your emotions, especially ones like anxiety, overwhelm or even dread, things like that. Those are often a sign that you're in not a good place or sort of heading towards a danger zone. And if you do find yourself sliding too far to one side, just remember, life happens and it's okay. When you notice it in that moment, all you need to do is figure out how to shift back over the other way. Just remember that life is always this ebb and flow, shifting and changing, and I think being able to recognize that and manage it is one of the most useful skills that we can develop. And I think that's a wrap for today. I look forward to our next chat, next Tuesday.