Happily Abandoning My Quest for Balance

Self-Care: Choosing behaviors that balance the effects of emotional and physical stressors.

~Psychology Today

For the past several years as I have focused on taking better care of myself I have tried to live a balanced life.  By that I mean that I have tried to focus equal time on being a wife, mom, daughter, sister, friend, employee and volunteer while finding time to exercise, plan and cook healthy meals, sleep, relax, have fun . . . that’s a lot to balance. But everywhere I turned I was being told to seek balance. There were articles about finding balance.  News segments about balance. Our pastor even preached about finding balance. However, I was finding balance to be impossible!  This led to feelings of frustration and failure.

While doing research on self-care for a presentation, I came across this definition in an article from Psychology Today:  Self-care is choosing behaviors that balance the effects of emotional and physical stressors.

There was that word - balance.  I read the sentence over again several time.  The word CHOOSING stuck out to me.  I had been focusing on the wrong thing.

Taking care of myself by chasing after balance was never going to work.  Something was always going to need more time.  During tennis season, my focus is on my son. I’m taking as many afternoons off as I can to get to a match. The scale tips towards my family. When I’m leading a training at work, I may have to stay late a couple of days to prepare. The scale tips towards work.  By putting emphasis on balance I was setting myself up to fail.  I will never be able to maintain balance.  However, I can maintain the practice of making healthy choices.

In the midst of a busy life and a heavy workload, I can successfully focus on making healthy choices.  Do I eat the apple in my lunch box for a snack or run across the street and buy a candy bar?  Do I sit in the car and nap during my daughter's piano lesson or take a walk around the neighborhood?  Do I watch a movie with my husband whom I feel like I've barely seen the past couple of days or head to the gym because I still haven't reached my step count for that day (Healthy choices include choices that are good for your family, your emotional health, your financial health and other areas of life - not just your physical health!)?  These are small choices, but a bunch of small choices can add up to a big impact on my health.  Each healthy choices is a victory.  A feeling of victory sets me up to want to make the next healthy choice and succeed again.

Just this morning, I read this quote from the Harvard Business Review and while it is talking about the workplace, I think that the content can easily be applied to leading a healthy life.
"Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation and perception during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work.  And the more frequently people experience that sense of progress, the more likely they are to be creatively productive in the long run." 

Have you ever watched someone try to run when they are being sprayed with a fire hose?  It's a fight.  The force of the water pushes her back sometimes even knocking her to the ground.  She gets back up and tries again and may even make some progress, but she gets pushed back down.  That is how I felt trying to achieve balance.  It was a fight.  I kept getting knocked down over and over and over again.  It was exhausting and not very fun!  I was not making progress toward my goals in any area of my life. 

Focusing on making that one healthy choice in the moment gives me a sense of progress.  In the long run, those small steps moving forward get me to where I want to go.  I may take a step backwards every once in a while - choosing to eat that second (or third!) cookie or taking the elevator instead of the steps - but that's one small step and my next step forward is right around the corner. 

So - I am happily abandoning my quest for balance and turning my focus to making healthy choices.  My stress level is going to go down and my health, in all areas of life, is going to soar.  This has been a tough lesson to learn, but I'm ready to fly.