Balance Does Not Mean Equal Parts

Welcome back to Transformational Tuesdays!

This week we’ll tackle the concept of balance and what it really means. Sometimes we think it means everything has to be in equal parts, but that’s not always the case. 

I took a little hiatus from the business for a couple of weeks, because that’s what I felt I needed to do. And I noticed that I had some judgment around it, like I was supposed to be doing all these other things, and not really going into my “hermit” place. 

But one day in yoga, my instructor said that balance does not mean equal parts. How does that make sense? 

I think a lot of times we think that everything in our life has to be this and this, of equal parts. 

We hear it all the time: life-work balance, right?

But that’s not how it works. 

Sometimes we need a whole bunch of one thing, and a little of the other, and other times it’s vice versa, depending on where we are. 

Who made the rules that everything needs to be equal, anyway?  

We know what’s best for us, intrinsically, but we let the rules of society kind of gear us towards what we should be doing. We live from this place of trying to please everybody else — and if we miss the mark we feel a lot of shame and guilt. 

I, myself, sometimes feel the need to retreat from being “on” and take a break, and that happened recently. Immediately, I felt a lot of judgment around that — Well, I’m not supposed to be taking a break, there’s all these other things that I’m supposed to be doing. 

What if that wasn’t really true? 

What if, at that point, I needed to have a little bit more downtime, and I didn’t need to be going out there and doing and striving? 

Wouldn’t that be so much easier than all the pressure we put on ourselves to try to make everything balanced? 

If we’re trying to add balance to our life, what we’re really saying is that we want to have everything feel a certain way so we can feel safe and secure and in control. 

What would happen if we were just out of control?

What if we got out of the need to control, and found balance and peace and fun all together, all mixed in the same big pot and it doesn’t matter? 

If you’ve ever had the feeling like you needed more of one thing than another — especially if it’s down time — you’re not alone. I see others in the same position all the time, and, clearly, I have those feelings too! 

So really try to honor where you are at any given point, and listen to yourself to see what you need more or less of. 

When a butterfly transforms, it has to go through many stages before it comes out a butterfly. And those stages aren’t of equal time, but they’re of equal importance to the transformation of the butterfly.