About a week ago I was ending off the day with some journaling. It felt like something was missing, so I wanted to write it off. I started thinking about this thing called balance. That thing that I’ve been trying to achieve for all my life – obviously not being successful at it.
I was in the pondering mood, and then it struck me! Balance is a myth. There is no such thing as balance, and there never will be. By keeping the idea of balance in my mind, I wasn’t getting closer to it, I was continuously derailing my own progress to a peaceful and calm life.
Let me tell you about it!
It takes two
In order to have balance we need to have two poles to find the balance between. In our case, those two extremes would be burnout from overstretching our limits on the far right side, and laziness on the far left.
Balance is somewhere in the middle. A place where we know our limits, but don’t fall into procrastination, carelessness and straight out laziness.
Why we struggle staying in the zone of balance
Our problem doesn’t lie in the laziness end of the spectrum, but on the far opposite end. Ambition, goals and a strong inclination to become and serve will lead us straight into over-doing and burnout from not getting the recovery we need. The quick pace is the problem here. Our over-achieving tendencies are what we need to focus on to achieve “balance”.
Have you ever been lazy?
Take a second to actually think about it: Have you ever been lazy?
That kind of lazy where you’d just stay in the couch for an entire week and be satisfied with that? That kind of lazy where you don’t get the urge to get up and do something because you’re bored of nothing happening.
I bet you haven’t.
I mean; you have been drying out in the couch a lot of times, or sleeping in once in a rare while just because you had no motivation to do anything at all. But after some time has passed, when the need for stillness and rest has passed, you get up and begin your day by ticking off more boxes than most people manage to complete in a full week. That’s not laziness – that’s recovery.
It turns out then, that the laziness pole on the spectrum doesn’t exist.
Balance has immediately ceased to exist. There’s no point in trying. You’re never going to get to a state that doesn’t even exist.
Believing in balance will lead you to exhaustion
As long as you’re still striving for balance, you automatically reinforce the belief that you’re inherently lazy. That laziness is something that needs to be pushed away.
The pattern therefore repeats itself: You start with an ambitious goal (because you know you’re capable) → you get tired from working hard at it → you have no idea how to differentiate between the feeling of being tired and laziness – so just to be safe you default to naming it laziness and push on → you lose momentum in your productivity, but you can’t stop now, it’s an easy task after all (default mode activated) → you finish completely drained of all life energy (if you manage to reach your goal).
Holding on to the belief of laziness is what’s triggering your nevergonnastop-mentality.
Holding on to the belief of balance is triggering your burnouts!
The alternative to achieving balance
Let’s look at what we now know:
- The issue lies in over-doing.
- You can’t be lazy.
- Over-doing is remedied by resting when you get the signs.
- You can’t be lazy.
Instead of searching for that delusive middle-line, the answer is right there right in front of you: Just rest.
Whenever you feel tired – have a rest.
Whenever you lose your flow – take a break.
Whenever the perfectionism and obsession creeps in – go to bed.
It doesn’t matter what you do, just as long as you take a break.
Taking a break might be a new concept for you. At least it was for me. So here’s what I’ve found:
- Resting is when you’re able to drop the topic at hand from your mind. This might take a while to practice, so do a brain dump if you need to in order to relax your thinking muscles.
- Resting can be either mental or physical, or it can be both. You’ll learn to tell the difference in what you need pretty soon.
- The resting cycle is complete when you feel the urge to start again. Trust that it’ll come to you, and you’ll recover faster.
The bottom line
When you understand that the concept of balance is false, the fear of rest dissipates. When the fear of rest is gone, you automatically stay clear of over-exertion.
Therefore, by realizing that balance is a myth – balance is exactly what you’ll find.
