Balance. The quality that we all want to embody, but which often seems elusive. How does one achieve healthy balance in life, and what does it mean to stay balanced? I get this question often and so I thought to dedicate a blog post to this topic.
Read more: How to Achieve Healthy Balance? And the Truth about StressThere is no one recipe to balance because it is always going to be relative to your own life.
In its essence the definition of balance is a state of equilibrium, balance means that any opposite forces are equal to one another. This is important to understand, as this is the very reason people find balance is a tricky quality to pin down: there is no one recipe to balance because it is always going to be relative to your own life. Someone could be experiencing balance in wildly different ways than you. In this view, there is no right or wrong about balance – there is only the question: how do YOU achieve balance in YOUR life?
To give an example, someone may be living what appears to others to be a very hectic life, being very physically active, having lots of mental decision making tasks, back-to-back meetings, and skydiving on the weekend. However, if this person also spends 1 hour doing relaxation practices and meditation every day, he may very well be balanced, simply because he is managing to balance out the opposite forces in his life. Ironically, someone being far less active and busy may be experiences greater imbalances because they do no balancing practices at all.
Stress cannot be said to be unhealthy in and of itself. Stress is only unhealthy if it becomes excessive and unmanaged.
This comes back to the important notion that stress cannot be said to be unhealthy in and of itself. Stress is only unhealthy if it becomes excessive and unmanaged. Statements such as “stress is bad”, or that we should “remove all stress”, are essentially erroneous statements that have no basis in reality. Stress is natural, and essential for survival, it is about managing it, not eliminating it.
Balance is best achieved by learning to tune in to one’s own being and experience of life. For this reason, the answer to what balance is, cannot come purely from an external source or a set of rules. Having said that, there are various tools that can be applied which will greatly enhance your chances of achieving balance in your life. Examples of such tools are: a regular yoga practice, breathing exercises (pranayama), regular exercise, meditation, regular sleep, spending time outside, and a nutritional diet.
Essentially you need to know you, in order to know what balances you out.
Whatever stressors you have in your life, it is a matter of balancing them out. If you are very physically active, are you doing something to care for your body, to rest and restore it? If you are very mentally active, are you doing something to calm and soothe your mind? If you are very emotionally active, are you doing things to calm your emotions? Yoga and meditation are two major tools that help balance most areas of life, however they are not the only tools. Things like walking and getting fresh air may be equally effective for you. Essentially you need to know you, in order to know what balances you out.
One way to learn what balance is for you, is to regularly check in with yourself and ask the simple question: what do I feel that I need more of in order to stay balanced, and what do I feel I need less of? Often we already know the answers, but we may not be allowing them to come forth because they clash with our plans, self perception, image, ego etc. The only way to do this is to be completely honest with yourself, the more dishonest you are with yourself, the more complicated accessing these answers will be. Note: if you struggle with dishonesty towards yourself, you need to first address this, and particularly why you have developed this habit. Asking a dishonest person for a valid answer cannot yield a reliable response and therefor you cannot guide yourself until you deal with this issue first.
Issues like being unbalanced because you are not allowing yourself appropriate rest, because deep down you don’t feel you deserve rest, is an issue of lack of self confidence, not of lack of balance, in which case you’ll need to unpack that one first. Beginning to see how this works? So, be honest with yourself, and it will be much easier to figure out what you actually need.
Feel free to get in touch here, if you need a personal online coaching session if you need help getting your health back.
Happy Health everyone,
Kirsten Louise