Balance.
What is balance anyway? Many of us are trying to achieve it, but what does a balanced life actually look like? Does it even exist or is it like chasing a sparkly pink unicorn.
As a noun, balance is simply put as an even distribution of two elements. As a verb, it’s to keep something steady or to offset or compare the value of one thing with another. Ugh, there is that word "compare". The thief of all joy, right? Balance is to provide distribution, but what makes it significantly hard to achieve is the fact not everything carries the same weight. Given this fact of life you might deduce one may never actually find balance by means of the true definition.
Since all aspects of life carry a different weight, maybe getting it all done is less about balance and more about how to let go of how we believe life should be and start creating a life we love.
I truly believe balance looks different for everybody. To find it you must first sit down and discover what it is that makes YOU sparkle and shine, and start to awaken the spirit within. Once you do that, over time things will start falling in to place.
Below are a few exercises I suggest to get you off the hamster wheel and into that warm bath each night with candles, a tall glass of ice water (or wine… whatever you’re into), and a good book without feeling an ounce of guilt while soaking in that tub.
- Shed expectations. Your own expectations. Expectations people have put on you. ALL OF THEM.
- Stop comparing your life to others. In real life and the reel life on Insta.
- Laugh at the fact you may be spinning your wheels to achieve goals but have no idea why you set them in the first place. Once you laugh, cry, cry while laughing, you name it, then write new goals that serve you and your family today.
- Get to know yourself again and start writing out the life YOU want and not the life you may have been subconsciously led to live.
- Shift your mindset and start to discover different ways to achieve what you want.
Balance to me is finding time to play with my kids, practice yoga, travel with my husband, cook yummy foods, tend to a tiny garden as a way to de-stress, and continue building a brand of pretty little problem solvers while connecting with all of you! I want to enjoy these things and do them with a smile on my face. I don’t always get to do everything on my list all of the time, but when I’m doing one, I stick to focusing on that ONE thing. There is no quicker way to ruin the present than by thinking about the past or worrying about the future. The past is done. Learn from it, move on. The future is just that. It will be there later and there is no sense in worrying about it now.
All of this is easier said than done and there are times I fall back into old habits. However, I digested a lot of literature and listened to many podcasts to get me where I am today. It’s not perfect but nothing is and I’m okay with that. Below are a few books I highly recommend. If you are a wife, mom, and small business owner trying to balance life and work and want to make a change then these books are for you, lady!
- Out of the Spin Cycle AND Of Mess and Moxie – Jen Hatmaker
- Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less – Greg McKeown
- Grace, Not Perfection – Emily Ley
- How to Get Shit Done – Erin Falconer
- Untamed – Glennon Doyle
