The Elusive Unicorn of Balance
Balance is a crummy word. Do better, babe.
Balance. We hear it’s possible. Other’s say it’s a fools errand. We suspect others are managing it all better than we are. We wish for a solution but our specific situation is too uncontrollable — we’re a victim of circumstance.
Here’s the thing about balance… its a terrible word.
“Balance” is a word that can cause us to chase a fantasy. A glimpse of a unicorn that always seems just out of reach. We aren’t quite feeling it…. It’s not quite what we want. It’s not quite good enough.
Is balance actually what you want? Or do you need a better word?
- Do you want satisfaction?
Knowing you’ve accomplished what you’ve set out to do in multiple aspects of your life? - Or alignment?
Knowing your life is on purpose? - Do you want peace?
Ease and less stressful rumination in the middle of the night? - More space and more choice?
Life is what you make it. How do you want to spend these precious years?
What do you need? What recharges you?
What is the outcome you’re truly looking for.
Dump balance. What would be satisfying for you?
This is unique to each individual and changes over time. It’s not balance, its knowing your needs and making space for your needs in each season.
So you may need to experiment. Establish your specifics, then fine-tune and be creative about what’s possible.
For years, I longed for some kind of “balance” and no matter what I did, it didn’t satisfy.
Finally, I got specific about how I wanted to take care of what was most important in my life. I was able to get away from black and white solutions canned solutions and play by experimenting with many different things. (Note: This feels the hardest for parents of young children or folks in jobs that feel they have many responsibilities and many demands. It’s still worth tweaking, though.)
For example, here a few experiments I tried to achieve more of what I wanted:
More free time to de-stress and take care:
- Taking every other Friday off over the summer for long weekends. Felt like an absolute luxury.
- Take a sick day, drop my small children at daycare and go home to bed. Using extra time to NOT do more was just what my soul needed.
- PJ Sundays during which we commit to do nothing. Fabulous. Lower those expectations and turn on the television.
- Waking up ultra-early to do nothing. No meditation or workout or journalling, just quiet alone time. It was excellent.
- Developed a “stress strategy” to actively manage the stress in my life that wasn’t going to end.
More quality time with family:
- Dinner at home at table 3x a week — Making home cooked meals about 3- 4 times a week seemed enough to scratch the itch of sitting down to dinner together.
- 1:1 mini trips with each kid — a few summers ago, I took each of my sons on a solo overnight trip with me. They both still talk about our time together.
Commitment to community:
- Community garden 3 -4 x a year — volunteering locally was a long time goal. I realized that weekly, or even monthly would be hard to pull off, but I do manage to support a few times a year.
More control over my time:
- Establish rhythm of my week that I can’t always deliver on, but I can return to after tumultuous weeks
- Setting up half day on Friday as work block to catch up or do any last work that would stress me out over the weekend.
I also have experiments that have failed!
- For many years, I had an extremely long commute, so I tried arriving at work before traffic got bad. After leaving at 5:00 AM a few days, I found out traffic is always bad. There is no such thing as before traffic.
- I also used to long to be the parent who chaperones field trips. Seemed like an important thing to do for my kid and school community. So, finally, I took time off work to join a school trip…and found out I absolutely hated it. Like, haaaated it. My kid refused to acknowledge me and I was wrangling kids acting like wild dingos through a museum.
- Finally, I have a failed history as a food gardener. The farm-to-table dream got decimated by slugs, inconsistent attention and miserable results. …But I’m great at growing flowers and supporting my local farmer’s market!
This is possible. You have power to make change happen. Get creative. Sometimes it takes a few tries to scratch the itch. What we think could be recharging isn’t satisfying or takes too much effort.
Approach each thing as an experiment and adjust. Be honest with yourself if your choices are building towards something that matters to you or if you’re feeling pressured by work, community expectations, or society. Life changes over time, so something that is amazing at some point, can be outgrown know that you’ll continually reinvent what works best for you.
Throw balance out the window and come up with your specifics of a satisfying life.
Hi! 👋🏼
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Your coach,
CK
