FINDING BALANCE

“Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.”
~ Rumi

Ever have one of those days when you just don’t feel like getting out of bed; when the world seems ‘blah’ at best; when you have less than zero desire to do anything besides pout and sulk about how pouty and sulky you feel?

Well, that was me last week. And at first I thought it was thanks to the cold I’ve been pretending not to have, but then my beloved hit the nail on the head when he stated ‘It sounds to me like you’re suffering from a lack of motivation’.

{Honestly, his insightfulness would annoy the bejeezus out of me if I didn’t love him so darn much!!! 🙄😉🙃}

So, I began to ponder where my motivation had suddenly up and run off to, and that’s when I realized that it hadn’t just left on its own – I had basically scared it away.

You see, I had been focusing solely on work for a number of weeks, so I decided to take a little ‘mental vacation’, if you will – to essentially do the barest minimum I could get by with and devote the rest of my time to enjoying frivolous activities like scrolling Instagram and playing Merge Gardens on my phone, or binge-watching TV shows I’d already seen enough times to be able to recite the dialogue word for word. But, in doing so, I had simply gone from one extreme to the next.

In other words, there was still an unhealthy balance in my life, except it was now on the other end of the spectrum – Typically, scrolling through IG or binge-watching old sitcoms would be my ‘escape’ from the mental strain of focusing on my job, but when the escape became the norm, there was no way to escape it. Make sense?

Which naturally got me thinking about some other areas of my life that were lacking balance, albeit in less dramatic fashion.

The thing is, there will always be times when you have to deliberately throw your life out of balance – when you have a big project due at work / school and you need to devote some extra hours to getting it done, or it’s your parents golden anniversary and you have to dedicate some extra time to planning the most fabulous party the world has ever seen to celebrate this milestone. But, for the most part, it’s important for us to find that neutral middle ground – that ‘sweet spot’, if you will – where we can keep the teeter-totter level.

Finding a healthy balance between two ‘opposing forces’ – whether it be work and family, school and friends, etc. – enables us to devote time to the important things in our lives without running the risk of becoming over-exposed to and ultimately frustrated with one or the other.

Prioritizing different aspects of our lives at different times allows us to be more present and productive in each, leading to increased efficiency at work / school as well as an ability to connect more fully in our personal relationships because we’re able to give each our undivided attention at that specific point in time.

Likewise, it’s important to find a healthy balance in our emotional lives as well.

Codependency and enabling in relationships are prime examples of an unhealthy emotional balance as oftentimes that need to be needed is a sign of low self-esteem. Similarly, abject rage / sorrow in the face of failure / loss is a sign of an unhealthy emotional balance as even our darkest emotions are typically tempered by some counterbalancing emotion.

For instance, someone recently mentioned that a friend of theirs had been grieving the loss of their family pet for over a year and was worried that getting a new dog would somehow be betraying the memory of the old. 👀😵‍💫

I think we can all agree this is not a normal emotional response; and while I’m no psychiatrist, it sounds to me like this person made that family dog the center of their universe because they were lacking emotional connections with family and friends, that the dog became the proverbial crutch on which they relied for happiness and reciprocity of love in order to fill the void created by that lack of human relationships.

Finding a balance between ‘holding on and letting go’ doesn’t only apply in cases like this, though. It’s also important for us to recognize when to let go of people and things and situations that aren’t healthy for us, that add no positive meaning to our lives but instead only serve to drag us down.

For example: that friend who never has time to listen to your problems yet expects you to be there for them through every step of their chaotic life is probably not the best person to whom you could be devoting your time and energy; and that ongoing feud with the neighbor over some frivolous inconvenience is an unnecessary drain on the energy you could have been investing into doing something pertinent or simply fun.

And last but certainly not least, it goes without saying that finding a healthy balance between the time you devote to others and the time you keep for yourself is of the utmost importance.

The simple fact is there are only twenty-four hours in a day; and while we may sometimes wish we had forty-eight to get through everything on our to-do list, or conversely it just feels like we’re on Hour 999 because the staff meeting / class / grumpy family dinner / terrible date has been dragging on forever, we only have X amount of waking hours in which to do stuff. And out of that X hours, we NEED to take time for ourselves; to give the mind, body, and spirit a moment to center and regroup; to rediscover our zen energy so that we’re better able to cope with the stresses and strains of daily life.

So, today I’d like to share a few quotes on the importance of creating a healthy balance in life:

“Balance is not something you find.
it’s something you create.”

~ Jana Kingsford, UNJUGGLED: Lessons From a Decade of
Blending Business, Babies, Balance & Big Dreams

“You can do anything, but not everything.”

~ David Allen

“Most of us spend too much time on what is urgent
and not enough time on what is important.”

~ Stephen R. Covey

“Balance is not better time management,
but better boundary management.
Balance means making choices
and enjoying those choices.”

~ Betsy Jacobson

“I believe that being successful
means having a balance of success stories
across the many areas of your life.
You can’t truly be considered
successful in your business life
if your home life is in shambles.”

~ Zig Ziglar

“Getting in balance is not so much about
adopting new strategies to change your behaviors,
as it is about realigning yourself in all of your thoughts
so as to create a balance between what you desire
and how you conduct your life on a daily basis.”

~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

“Balance activity with serenity,
wealth and simplicity,
persistence with innovation,
community with solitude,
familiarity with adventure,
constancy with change,
leading with following.”

~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie

“Balance is a feeling derived
from being whole and complete;
it’s a sense of harmony.
It is essential to maintaining quality
in life and work.”

~ Joshua Osenga

“Work–life balance is not an entitlement or benefit.
Your company cannot give it to you.
You have to create it for yourself.”

~ Matthew Kelly

“The key is in not spending time,
but in investing it.”

~ Stephen R. Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

“Don’t confuse symmetry with balance.”

~ Tom Robbins

“Find a balance between head and heart.”

~ Colleen Hoover, Slammed

“Life is about balance:
Be kind, but don’t let people abuse you.
Trust, but don’t be deceived.
Be content, but never stop improving yourself.”

~ Germany Kent

“You have to balance your passions,
not your time.”

~ Lisa Sugar

“Find your balance and stand with it.
Find your song and sing it out.
Find your cadence and let it appear like a dance.
Find the questions that only you know how to ask
and the answers that you are content to not know.”

~ Mary Anne Radmacher

“Happiness is not a matter of intensity
but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.”

~ Thomas Merton

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule,
but to schedule your priorities.”

~ Stephen R. Covey

“Happiness depends on how you balance your life’s equations
between positive and negative experiences and attitudes.”

~ Rob Kall

“Self-care is, fundamentally,
about bringing balance back to a life
that has grown imbalanced from
too many commitments or responsibilities.”

~ Dr. Robyn L Gobin

“A time for everything:
A time to relax and a time to be busy,
a time to frolic and a time to labor,
a time to receive and a time to give,
a time to begin and a time to finish.”

~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie