What I Got Wrong About Balanced Living
My fascination with the concept of balance developed in tandem with my increasingly desperate attempts to manage overwhelm. I’ve always had a tendency to push way too hard with any goal — in school, work, redecorating, travelling, meal-planning, or brewing perfect kombucha…
All-or-nothing is my modus operandi. I call it The Pendulum Lifestyle.
As you might imagine, life on the pendulum is characterized by swinging predictably from long periods of ultimate focus and obsessive work, to equally long periods of total exhaustion and can’t-even-get-out-of-bed style burnout.
And for a while, I actually thought that was balance, just on a grander scale.
THE ELUSIVE NOTION OF A BALANCED LIFESTYLE
Once I fully realized the physical, mental, and emotional toll that repeated cycles of overwhelm can take — for me, it showed up as prolonged adrenal fatigue, resulting in extremely low tolerance to most forms of stress — any benefits I might have gained from powering through on overdrive began to seem entirely not worth the sacrifice.
I knew I had to change, and the idea of balance gave me hope.
So, I made it my new mission to figure out how to achieve this delightful promise of “a balanced life” once and for all.
Mission. Achieve. Once and for all… This should’ve been my first clue that I was approaching balance all wrong.
But nope, off I went, enamoured with my new project and invigorated by this potentially life-changing goal to focus on. I was intent on designing a perfectly balanced daily routine, heavily researched (of course) and optimized for maximum productivity.
I obsessed over planning my ideal schedule, studying every principle and piece of advice on balanced living, partly in order to understand as much as I could, and partly as a mode of reassuring myself that it was actually possible.
Who doesn’t love a good “I did it so you can too” story?
And I relished in all the thinking and learning and planning, driven by the blissful fantasy of getting it just right.
Tips and life hacks and action items. Tasks and subtasks and checklists and templates. The idea was, once I had finalized the perfect system encompassing all the necessary elements for my ideal lifestyle, I would stick to this routine no matter what.
Because #selfcare.
When I finally progressed to the implementation stage — yes, I’m almost embarrassed to admit it was that systematic — the reality was worlds away from the fantasy. But you probably saw that coming.
My day would start optimistically, all planned out in 30-minute increments in my custom-designed notebook, filled with the promise of productivity and satisfaction, and then…
Something unexpected requires my immediate attention. Or I underestimate the time it takes to complete a task and fall terribly behind on my to-do list. Or a gorgeous day calls me outside and I feel trapped by my “perfectly” established schedule.
Productivity plummets, and before long I’m scrambling to catch up with my self-imposed deadlines and (ridiculous) expectations.
After enough of these “failures” I was frustrated enough to take a hard look at my habits and I was struck by a realization that almost made me laugh.
Almost.
Instead of breaking free, I had gotten overwhelmed by trying to avoid overwhelm.
(Hey, I never claimed to be brilliant over here).
Ultimately, I was seduced by that pretty little dream of effortless productivity, as a false solution to the crippling overwhelm I was so desperate to avoid.
My relentless striving for a zen-master state of balance was yet another manifestation of my default all-or-nothing approach, masquerading as my way out.
And the driving force behind that seeking? Fear.
Fear of never having it all figured out. Fear of being in a constant state of flux.
But at the time, I didn’t recognize that fear for what it was. So I gave up on balance, convinced it just wasn’t within my realm of capability.
WHEN YOU’RE TRULY READY TO CHANGE, THE CATALYST WILL FIND YOU
One morning, during a long period of recovering from my latest overwhelm-induced crash, I came across an astrology article about starting fresh…
You know how you can hear the same advice over and over again, but it never quite sinks in until it’s worded in such a way that it finally hits you?
Yeah. So, this:
We think of balance as quiet steadiness. But in fact, balance is in constant motion. It requires activated muscles to hold steady in a tree pose. You must constantly adjust the steering wheel to keep a car on the road.
Like a sledgehammer. Well shit.
Here I was striving for a perfectly-poised state of arrival, not a state that required continuous tweaking, adjustment, refinement…continuous work.
I needed it to stop. I needed to feel steady, for once.
But those words cracked me open, and a wave of insight flooded in.
Rather than establishing unwavering steadiness, I had to widen the scope of how I understood balance, and learn to set flexible parameters for what counts as success.
To oscillate around a centre-point, rather than swing wildly between extremes.
A calmer and wiser part of me knew it to be true — I almost viscerally felt that insight gracefully lock into place. In simple terms, I knew I had to stop being so damn hard on myself.
But for me, it was slightly more profound. The realization that I would never get it perfect, never be done “achieving” balance, was in and of itself the relief I’d been so desperate for.
Whereas before I thought my only option was giving up, I chose to see this shift in perspective as growing up. Better yet, growing out of a delusion that never actually served me.
BALANCE IS A PRACTICE, NOT A STATE
The prospect of constant flux is only scary when you think you have to stay perfectly balanced at all times just to feel like you’re doing it right.
With that logic, flux is the enemy because every instance that requires readjustment indicates you’re off the mark. The counter stops between plays, progress halts so you can correct for something that’s gone wrong.
But when you shift away from chasing balance as a state, towards approaching balance as a practice, what was once failure miraculously becomes success.
Just like that.
The fear of being off the mark dissolves as you begin to see those little moments of correction as signs that you’re doing it right. You become more adaptable, more capable, and more, well, balanced.
Balance itself is action; it is flux. It is the act of coming back to centre.
Every moment of recalibration is the practice.
And the only reason I keep getting better at tree pose is because at first, I kept falling over. I learned how to notice when I begin to waver; how to innately feel my balance slipping and make small adjustments to stay steady enough.
To oscillate around my centre-point.
There are still some days I almost fall over, and that’s okay. What amazes me most is that I’ve actually learned to appreciate moments of imbalance, just so I can relish in the recalibration. That’s what real self-care feels like for me now.
It’s not perfect, but I’m practicing.
Originally published at www.jeanninewilde.com (The Spiral Path Project) on September 1, 2018.
