Balance: overrated or essential?

Depends on what you’re balancing…

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

I’m with those who say f*&@k life balance, be obsessed.

This puts a fire under your butt and brings you to life. You wake up with a plan, a purpose, and you want to light the world up in the way that was meant for you to do so in your own unique way. And most certainly, the world needs lighting up.

When you align with this obsession, you are present and working on all cylinders. This presence bleeds into other aspects of your life, because you are fully in your most dynamic self. No hold-back, no apology. Just pure energy in motion. Pure inspiration. Pure momentum.

There’s a place, however, where you absolutely need to think about balance. And that place is within. Because without inner balance, your obsessions become misguided, needy, and manipulative.

What does it mean to have inner balance?

• Your mind feels at peace. It’s not constantly fighting, criticizing, reviewing, and trying to understand and solve problems. It enjoys the moment. It can enjoy a sunset with mystical curiosity and inspiration rather than always trying to see it through the lens of science. Meaning, you can relax.

• Your body feels regulated. You feel at ease. You can rest when it’s time to rest and get up and move when it’s time to get up and move. It’s not a struggle to be in your body; it’s not agitated, inflamed, and hurting. Your temperature is right. Your breath is even. You’re not craving things. You feel light.

When your mind and body feel out of balance, you can’t obsess because a large part of you is just trying to survive.

And by obsess, I don’t mean the mad scientist, destructive kind of obsession. I mean, where you can focus your discipline on the very thing that tugs at you, it wakes you up in the morning, and it fuels your sense of purpose without apology. The kind of focus that feeds you and ultimately everyone else around you. Because otherwise, a little bit of you dies a little every day.

When people say that you need life balance, it’s often misunderstood to mean that all things in your life should be given “equal time.” It’s a form of suppression. Suppression dulls your shine. Makes you not fully there. Makes you tired because it takes more energy than you think to shrink and stay shrunk. You dissociate a little bit. You start to forget what lights you up. And as you already know, quantity means nothing without quality. When life doesn’t make sense to you, you’ve eroded your quality.

20 minutes to an hour of the best version of you that you can share with others is so much more impactful than 4 hours of you half there, half fed, smaller than you were ever meant to be. This shrink bleeds into the time you finally get to do what feeds you, because now you’re feeling bad about how you showed up. Everyone loses.

Finding balance means doing what you need to do to regulate:

1. Let things go. Otherwise, you’re thrown off balance by rumination. It’s heavy on your body.

2. Let others BE, not according to your needs and expectations but according to theirs. This is your power move to demonstrate love, trust, and intimacy rather than dominion and neediness. It strengthens bonds and inter-dependency.

3. At the same time, stand for yourself and expect respect and support for what you must do.

4. Stay rested & hydrated. Your body and mind depends on these fundamentals.

5. Eat and choose activities according to your mind-body. Slow balances fast and vice versa. For instance, if you’re prone to anxiety or indigestion, choose slow, gently cooked foods over raw, add healthy fats to your diet, and do gentle yoga. If you’re prone to lethargy and sinus issues, choose lighter foods, intermittent fast, and do vigorous exercise.

6. Check your emotions and own your own experiences, making no one else accountable to them. Learn to communicate understanding rather than to communicate criticism for not understanding. You may want to read that again.

Balance is doing what makes you feel complete. It’s slowing down to speed up progress. It isn’t about “equal time.” Nor is it about people-pleasing or manipulating others to please you.

Speaking of which, I stumbled on a powerful note written by a fellow Substack writer which I must share an excerpt of (see it in full here):

I didn’t want to disappoint them. So I disappointed myself instead.

And the worst part? They never even noticed.

That’s the cost of over-functioning—no one sees the effort but you.

-

Shannon D. Smith, CPTD

We all know what she’s talking about, we’ve all been there. And it makes us feel completely out of balance, completely dysregulated.

Let’s decide together not to go there again.

Balance should make you present, alert, inclusive, healthy, radiant, and kind.

In this balance, even those that try to pull you away from your obsessed (focused) self to serve their needs won’t be able to help but see how well your solid inner strength and balance serves even them.

When you’re not feeling balanced, you’re feeling dysregulated - you’ll know because you’re agitated - and you’re (at best slowly) closing down bridges, connection, and intimacy in relationships.

Self-regulate for inner balance. So you can playfully obsess with your personal must-dos. This is your first order of service. So you can then show up for everyone else. Authentically.

Your most self-ish act is your greatest act of selflessness.

Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

With love, grit, and gratitude

Savitree