Balance Is A Myth.

So many of us are trying to achieve a sense of balance in our lives. How do we juggle our work, home, social, and personal lives in a way that gives us a sense of peace? Well, we start by accepting that balance is a myth. We will never create a fixed permanent state of equilibrium. This is okay, but if we keep chasing it, we will end up burning ourselves out in its pursuit. In this episode, we will look at redefining what balance means for you and how to use our values to lean into all the moving parts in a way that makes sense.       

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Transcript

Hey friends, how are we doing? I hope that you're having an amazing week, and that you're having a happy holiday season Happy Hanukkah, to all of you who celebrate or although Hanukkah might be over by the time this comes out. Actually, maybe it's the last day of Hanukkah anyway, I hope your Hanukkah was amazing. And whatever other holidays, you're celebrating this time of year. We’re gonna jump right in today, we are talking about balance. So it's funny, I actually was going to talk about this last week. And then I started chatting about feedback. And that just ended up being an entire lesson in and of itself. And so I was like, I guess we're going to talk about balance this week. And here we go. So this was coming up for me a lot last week, just the idea of finding balance, creating balance. And just the fact that like, actually, balance or what I think we've been sold as balance is kind of a myth, like our lives are never going to be this like perfectly balanced scale. And that was really coming up for me last week, because I was exhausted, it has taken me a very long time to recover from COVID, I had a really bad weekend where I just felt so burnt out. And I have some like medical trauma from 2019, where I was sick for like an entire year, and we couldn't figure out what it was. And I was having just like a meltdown around how I just still felt so unwell. So far past, having COVID. And my brain started telling me all these crazy stories about how I'm never gonna feel good again. And this is my new reality. And I don't know if I can keep doing all the things I'm doing if this is my new reality, like so I was just basically in a full spiral. And I was still going about all of my life doing all the things. And one of those things specifically is teaching at SoulCycle, which is very, very taxing, I guess you could call it on my nervous system on my body on all the systems. And normally, if I was well, it wouldn't be as taxing. But I was just finding all aspects of it to be more than I could handle. So I still didn't feel strong on the bike, post COVID having to interact with people so much was feeling overwhelming, because that's something that is hard for me anyway. And when I'm depleted, it's even harder. And so I was really giving a lot from a very empty cup. And the messaging that I was using in the classroom was all about how sometimes we show up needing something from other people. And that's the beauty of the community of SoulCycle. And to not be afraid of that, right. So this is where balance came into it. Because it's an imbalanced environment. Not everybody's showing up with the same amount of energy, the same amount of skill. Some writers are brand new, some have been writing for 10 years, right? So you're just walking in right from the get go baseline, there is not like everyone's not starting from the same place. And then everyone's not necessarily in the same place. Emotionally. Everyone's not as resourced. I live in a very affluent suburb of New York City. But that doesn't mean that everybody walking into the room has a lot of money. But there are a lot of people in the room with lots of money. And there are people who don't, right, there are teenagers who are you know, clearly they don't have money, but maybe their parents do. There are people who are, you know, for them. One like $40 class a week is a big expenditure, right? So there's just like so many different tiers of access and privilege, et cetera. And in addition to that, emotionally, mentally, we're all coming in at different tiers at different levels. And the beauty of that space, is that throughout the class, we're constantly choosing to work together as a community. And that's one of the things that I think is so beautiful about that experience is that, you know, there aren't metrics we don't know like how many pounds of resistance we're adding, you know, you can't really with any accuracy actually count the amount of turns of resistance you're putting on. Because it really all depends on like your specific like twist of your wrist right all of these things and And we all get to sort of be in our own space, but also give whatever we can. And I started talking to the class about just showing up, and giving whatever it is that you had to give in the moment. So whatever we all had to give, putting that out into the room, and trusting that someone else is going to benefit from that energy. And that there will be another person who is putting out an energy that I could benefit from, that you could benefit from. And it's not balanced, but it doesn't need to be balanced. Because there is this like interdependence going on. In terms of drive, push, motivation, commitment, we don't all have to have the same level of commitment. Because once we get into that room, we're going to collectively create 100%, commitment, whatever that looks like for each person. And this got me thinking even more about this idea of balance. And that, in dance, I actually did an Instagram post about this, but in dance, right? You we create the illusion of balance, but it's an illusion, right. And that illusion, is of stillness and in balance, right? So you can be on one leg, balancing in space, and look very still look very strong and grounded and connected. And as if you're not moving. But what is creating that balance is constant movement, it's minor, little adjustments that are happening the entire time that someone is in that balance, and balances happen. Like in like being still they also happen in motion, like when we're doing turns, there is a balance that's happening when people are doing partnering work. And there's always kind of this illusion of stillness and any of those things, even when someone's doing a payroll at right there is this illusion that their spine is just completely upright and not moving. But really, there are little adjustments happening with the trunk the entire time, right. So we need to kind of lean into this idea that balance is not a fixed state. Again, even when it looks like a person is balanced in their body, right? on one leg, they are in motion, there is not stillness, anywhere, even though like their breath, they're still breathing, internally, there is still movement, their blood is still pumping through their veins, right. So there is never going to be a moment where someone is seemingly still where there's not still motion happening. And that's the same thing with life, we have this false idea that we're somehow going to reach a space or a time where our lives become this fixed, balanced thing, right? So many of us are wanting that we're wanting things to kind of just stand still for a moment so that we can like get our bearings. But this is just not reality. So in order to find this idea of balance, we really need to slow down for a moment and kind of get more clear about it. So what is your definition of balance? It's always going to come back to you and what you're trying to create, what do you want it to look like? And so if your answer to that is that you just want to be able to spend equal amounts of time here, like with your family, and with your friends and on your job. Like, right, if there's this idea that you're somehow going to have a life where you get to spend, like equal amounts of time and energy on all the things that are going on in your life, I have news for you, that is probably not going to happen. So redefining balance, and creating a new image of what that is, is going to be the first step. And I think I've talked about this in other areas, but this is where like our values come in, and what we value and what we prioritize and what matters to us is really important, and to kind of look at that realistically from a time perspective. So for instance, I think I've used this exact example. Your family might be the most important thing to you. What however you define family, but you might not want to spend the majority of your time with your family for whatever reason, right?

I know for me, like my dog Benjamin, he's 18 years old. I want to spend as much time as possible with him. While I still have him, but I also don't want to spend all of my time with him. Because like, at this age, mostly what he's doing all day is sleeping, he is not really, you know, I can sit in a room with him while he sleeps, but he doesn't sit on the couch with me anymore. He doesn't sleep with us anymore. Like he's just, he exists in his own space. And I want to share space with him. But I'm also just not going to sit in the living room all day just to spend all my time with him. That's not practical. Now, if I could take him with me from room to room, and he was happy with that, maybe, but that's just not gonna happen. Because he likes sippy and his bed in his space. He's 18, I leave him alone, right? So the things that you care about, again, might not necessarily be the things that you want to spend all your time doing. Some people really love their work, and they actually want to spend the majority of their time doing their work. And that's their prerogative, right? Like, we all get to decide what works for us and what works for our family. Right? What works for the people in our lives. This is where I say it's like time to kind of communicate, like get together with the people in your life and like decide, you know, what you want your life to look like? And what makes the most sense for for you, as a unit, do you know what I mean? And once you've done that, once you've kind of laid it all out and you see like, what is important to you what you value, what means things to you, then you can sort of look at like, Okay, and what does that look like from a scheduling perspective. And this is where like having a system like intuitive scheduling is really helpful. So if you haven't downloaded that yet, this is a great time to start doing that work. It's December right before the New Year, like why not start getting your time in order before we hit January. So you're already in the groove. But this is where you start to plan. And so then once you do the work to kind of look at like laid out, where you want to be spending your energy and your time really look at that. And make sure that the visual of it really does represent what matters to you. And what's going to feel the best for you. And this is where we might need to do a little bit of like deconditioning work, because I know a lot of us have an idea about what we think we should be doing or what we think we should want. And that's how we're creating our schedules, and how we're building our lives. But we also want to be realistic about whether or not that actually works for us. So one of the things that I've noticed for myself over the last year, as I've been really working outside of my capacity, I have not been working in a very, like balanced for my energy kind of way. And once I got my ADHD diagnosis, I really like saw how much I was pushing myself beyond what actually felt good for me just because I thought I was supposed to be able to function that way. And when I stopped trying to perform at that level, and I no longer just saw myself as like a defective neurotypical person. And I really started understanding what my limitations are. It opened my eyes. Because I kept comparing myself to ways that I could perform when I was younger, or when I had more support. And I think that's something that is really crucial. A lot of us, especially those of us who have been diagnosed late, we don't realize that when we were growing up, we probably had more support around our basic needs, and even around some of our not so basic needs. Like I remember my mom used to make a lot of phone calls for me. And then when I you know had to do them by myself, I was like, why can't I do this, but like, I can't make phone calls. Like it's like the hardest thing for me. And so when you lose the support that maybe you had when you were younger, or maybe you were in a relationship with someone who gave you a lot of support, but that relationship ended. And now you're seeing that like you can't function at the same level. It's like well, you don't have the same level of support. And I think support is such an important thing. And I talked about this with Mattia when we had our conversation, but adjusting your expectations of yourself around your support needs is definitely something that I think you know what I think all of us could do because I'm not sure any of us are really being realistic about the amount of support that we need. I was just talking to a friend of mine about how like, as we've grown as we've gotten older like she has a child and a husband and this is often when we start to notice missed diagnosis right when we have been doing fine when it was just us and we were doing fine maybe when it was just you and your partner. But then you add a child and you add a dog and or you add like a sick parent and you add some other stressor, right that like requires attention. And we can no longer keep going at the rate that we were going. And that's when it starts to put a strain on our executive function and our focus and all those things. And that's when that's when it's like, revealed that there's a problem. And that happened for me, too. It was like I got, you know, the depression was kind of under control, the anxiety was kind of under control. Like I was dealing with the trauma, I was feeling good, and I still was anxious and couldn't focus and there was all this stuff going on. And that's like, okay, it's revealing something that is underneath all of that, that isn't going away on its own. And I'm going to need like medicinal support around, right. And I think a lot of us noticed this post lockdowns because I think for so many of us, when we didn't have to go outside, aren't we weren't being pulled in multiple directions. Even if you had kids, like your kids were doing school at home. So if they were old enough, and they could like do their own thing, you weren't taking them to things, you weren't driving them around everywhere, right? Like for so many of us, our lives got so much smaller, and they became more manageable. And then when we tried to like expand them back out again, we were like, Whoa, what the fuck, I actually can't handle this, I can't manage it. And that's been a really big struggle for me, especially since I went back to SoulCycle is managing like expanding my life, and trying to kind of figure out like, what I can handle and what I cannot handle. So again, we can see that this idea of balance is a project that's ever in motion, right? It's like testing things out. Failing, coming back, seeing what works, what doesn't work, readjusting all of those things, there has got to be a lot of acceptance going on. And it's really acceptance of all the moving parts and, and the idea that like, it might always be this kind of like juggling act, right where we were, we're kind of got a lot of things up in the air. But we can be more intentional and more clear about the way that we pull those things down, interact with them, and then put them back on the shelf. Do you know what I'm saying? I just use like a lot of different analogies, metaphors, like, we're juggling, we're putting things on shelves, we're taking things off shelves, it's a whole thing. But all of this is to say like, if you've been finding that it's hard for you at whatever stage in your life that you're at, to make all the moving parts fit together, you're not alone. And you also don't have to do it alone. So this is one of the things that I work on with clients, is helping them figure out what makes sense for them to be focusing on and interacting with, and what makes sense to maybe like, just check off the list, you're never going to do it. And what makes sense to be like, we'll deal with that later. And why it's so helpful to do this work with other people. And with support is because, you know, I, our brains are not meant to keep all of the information that we try to keep in our brains. And I know for me personally, like when it was just me and I was just trying to keep track of myself like I could keep a lot of stuff in my brain. But then it became too much stuff. And then I was still trying to keep stuff in my brain that was not actually supposed to be kept in my brain. And I felt like I was failing all the time, because I couldn't remember all the things. And so when you're sitting with someone else, and you're working on this stuff, like we can look at the stuff that's in your brain together and decide like what's important to like, put on a list or put on a calendar. Because sometimes we don't know that on our own. Sometimes we think everything's important. And I've had that conversation with clients many a time of like, the things that they think are really, really important that maybe aren't so important. And this is why their life feels so off balance or out of kilter because they're trying to pile on too many things that just don't fit anymore. So if that's work that you want to do, I would love to do that work with you, like reach out to me, you can DM me on Instagram, you can email me at Chris at the only Chris hale.com. But like, you don't have to do this alone. And you can find a structure and a routine and a balance that works for you. And you can also acquire the tools to understand when that balance needs to shift and how you do that through transition and how you don't lose your shit every time. Something has to shift and change. Because that's just the way the world works.

Alright friends, that's it for today balances a myth, but we can help you feel more balanced in your life if that's something that you're looking for. Have a great day