Finding balance

For the first few years after moving to NYC, I did what any respectable overachiever does—I worked my ass off.

And I was proud of the work I was doing. I was paying my rent, working a flexible job, and auditioning constantly. It allowed me to do what I wanted to do (pursue acting) while still doing what I needed to do (pay my bills and eat).

But it was not sustainable.

I was fully out of balance.

When you’re out of balance, you’re wearing yourself down.

So it got me wondering. What does being balanced truly look like? And, also, who are these people who claim to be balanced? What is their magic? What kind of fantasy world do they live in for that to be possible for them?

Well, I’ve got some good news. Not only do I have their secrets, but they’re not hard to understand or implement.

Obviously, there are no hard-and-fast rules about this. At the very least, I imagine that being balanced feels good. And we all want to feel good, am I right?

Understanding balance

When I work with my clients on addressing imbalance, there is a common denominator--time. There's only so much time in a day and, well, what you focus on grows. So a natural effect of an unexamined life is that some things will naturally take precedence over others. The bulk of time is often spent on things like work or social, but it truly does vary from person to person. It certainly isn't the case that these are poor uses of time, but they may lead to imbalance if too much time is spent there at the expense of other priorities.

How do you become more balanced?

My favorite tool for assessing this is for a client to complete the Wheel of Life.  Here’s an image of my wheel:

But definitely download the full exercise here.

This very simple exercise is incredibly informative. Through measuring your satisfaction in different areas of your life, you're also able to see both where you've invested your time and where there is an opportunity for growth. 

It’s important to grasp that being balanced doesn't necessarily mean getting 10s across the board. Rather, someone in balance will have numbers that are all similar. There's no area that is not being addressed and all of them are reasonably good. 

If, after completing this exercise, you’re still unsure how to fix an area, ask yourself, what would it look like for that scale to look 1 or 2 points higher? And then, what would need to change in order for that to happen? Finally, what’s one small step you could take now to begin that process?

Perfect balance isn’t possible.

I’m just as much a teacher as I am a student (and I hope I always remain that way). One of my clients was incredibly resistant to the notion of balance. As she explained, true balance isn't feasible. In life, you never realistically have fifty on one side and fifty on the other. As a result, she pushed back on that terminology. She found better alignment with the term harmony. I love that!

Use what works for you!

How can you create balance in your life? Or, if you can’t, what would it take for you to feel harmony with how things are?