Why you can't find balance

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The negative connotation of having life balancing

“You don’t have to make yourself miserable to be successful...success isn’t about working hard, it’s about working smart.” - Andrew Wilkinson

Lately we hear a lot of people talking about finding life balance. And there are a lot of us who find it hard to find balance. If you have ever thought it feels impossible to balance work and home life it's because it is not meant to be a balancing act. Having balance implies everything is perfect and perfection is an illusion. The idea of having work and life balance is a myth. In fact, aspiring to have a work life balance is a strange desire to have in life.

If we look at that notion more closely, balance would imply that everything is good; family life is good, work life is going well, finances are good, we are in good health, we feel spiritually, emotionally and mentally at peace -- all at the same time. If this were possible we would be inclined to think 'freeze' so we could preserve the moment. This utopian state is nearly impossible.

Trying to keep balance often has a negative connotation because it implies that if we don't have balance we are failing at life. If one aspect of life is going well but we are struggling in other aspects we think we are out of balance and therefore, believe the negative notion that we are out of balance and in turn a failure. We are led to believe that the goal is to find a balance between the stress of work and the fun of life as if work and home life are opposites of each other.

Finding harmony instead of balance

Work and life are not opposites. We need to break the mindset that forces us to associate work life with being bad and home life with being good as if one is dragging the other down. Because the reality is that work, family, finances, health and spirituality are all parts that make up our lives. They all have stressful moments and inspiring moments. When we think of work as being fundamentally bad we look for equilibrium between our work and home life. And this is unrealistic because we are trying to balance what can't be balanced.

What we need to do is maximize what we love about each part of our lives and focus on the positive in each part of our lives, including work. In other words, find the joy that creates harmony in all the parts of our lives. Yes, things may not all be good at the same time but that does not imply life is out of balance. We can have harmony when things go bad just by focusing on the good of the situation. All the different aspects of our lives are intertwined with each other creating experiences that are related.

Things that affect our ability to harmonize and what we can do

“Take the changes in stride and understand that you may have setbacks. Instead of focusing on that, make sure to keep moving forward.” - Esther King

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy. We put our lives out of kilter just by the expectation we put on a situation. We tell ourselves we should be getting more done or we think we need to keep pushing hard(er). These expectations can make us feel unbalanced or make it hard to harmonize all the parts of our lives. We need to change the dialogue we use when we talk to ourselves. It's healthy to push ourselves to new goals and level up. It's not healthy to push ourselves to the point that we are stressed and can't keep up. We can achieve this by setting realistic goals, planning to stay organized and by being flexible when things don't go as planned.

Sometimes it's not ourselves but someone else that is causing us to feel off. It might be thoughts about someone else and what we have promised to do for them. Often work or home responsibilities involve the expectations of others and the stress of getting it all done becomes overwhelming and hard to balance. We can achieve harmony when we prioritize the things that need to get done, identify the things that can wait and communicate to the person or persons involved when they can expect it to be done. Sometimes our priorities need to be done at a particular time while others can wait and be done at a later time. For example, making dinner for the family may be at the top of a priority list while finishing a report for a client may be able to be postponed until later.

Or it may be a thing that is occupying your mind and making you feel overwhelmed and off balance. For example, your car is making a funny noise and you need to get it fixed. A thought like this can be overwhelming especially if we don't know what is causing the noise or how much it will cost to get it fixed. This can snowball into financial and time concerns and put us our of balance and make it hard to find harmony. When thoughts get overwhelming making a to-do list and systematically working through the list can help reduce the feeling of overwhelm. Being organized can go beyond a to-do list. Organization of a space can affect our thoughts too. If your living or work space is disorganized we may feel disorganized in thought too. If we get our space in order, our thoughts will naturally follow and the feeling of harmony will be a happy side effect.

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