Busting The Balance Myth
I was about to give a talk to a society of businesswomen in Atlanta one winter. One of the organizers took me by the hand and made a heartfelt plea: "Please don't talk to us about living in balance. No one does. Even space shuttles veer off course during the trip, and they have computers to guide them. Just teach us how to be better jugglers."
She had a good point. One of the ubiquitous polls on how Americans live revealed that a mere 2 percent of us believe that our lives are in balance. The problem is not so much that they aren't, but that we think they should be. The belief that there's a way to organize our time so that everything stays in balance can lead to the conclusion that there's something desperately wrong with our unbalanced ways. Perhaps a more livable truth is that we're jugglers rather than tightrope artists. From that perspective, we can accept that some things will always be up in the air. Outer balance isn't always possible. The trick is to keep our eye on the balls, and to manage their perpetual flight with grace and inner balance.
Juggling is a familiar metaphor. The late Yale psychologist and author Daniel Levinson, who wrote about the passages in men's and women's lives, interviewed people at different times in the life cycle. Many of the 40-something women who both worked and had children commented on the disheartening myth of the Superwoman. By 40, you realize that there is no Superwoman, they concluded irritably. Who can keep all the demands of life in balance? The best you can do is keep juggling. Almost all of the women planned to do more for themselves in the second half of life than they had in the first. The mistake that many of us make, I think, is waiting until we're 40 to do that.
Juggling requires maintaining your center. The idea is to stop managing life so much, and begin managing yourself. Long ago I learned that it's better to prepare the speaker than the speech, particularly when I'm well acquainted with the subject matter. If I meticulously outline a lecture, rehearsing the points as I get ready to begin, I'm likely to lose my center. But if I chat with the audience first, put myself at ease, or take a few minutes for some deep breathing, the talk always goes more smoothly.
When I'm centered, it's easier to respond to people, to catch the nuances of their attention, and to let inspiration flow. Thinking of myself as an instrument that life plays, rather than the source of the melody, has helped me be a better juggler. The instrument needs to be cleaned and polished, treated with care. When I'm in balance, the unbalanced hodgepodge of things on the to-do list are accomplished more effectively.
This week, review your priorities. If self-care is not one of them, think of an activity that you would really enjoy and add it to your to-do list. This may seem like it will make you even busier, but the truth is that it will actually generate more productive time. Feeding your soul with the things you love creates happiness and gives you energy. Taking the time to enjoy life is one of the most important secrets of staying sane in an insane world.
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Her fourth paragraph was very timely. The best piece of advice I got about juggling (and I guess, life) was from the Clown that taught me and about 6 other people years ago. He said if you walk into a room full of jugglers, and you don't see balls falling, that means they're not pushing the envelope. It gave me a whole new way of looking at mistakes.
Much love to all jugglers.
People say they want to juggle their lives, but the failings of juggling as a metaphor are easy to see if you approach juggling in its literal reality. How many of these people who aspire to "juggle" their lives ever actually picked up three balls, or bean bags even, and tried to juggle them? It's not nearly as easy, or as practical, as it looks. I juggle, not well, but well enough to know that it isn't possible to do it all day long. (Incidentally, the world record: 11 hours 4 minutes 22 seconds).
If you juggled three balls for three minutes you would know that the idea of choosing between juggling and balance is nonsense. Lose your balance while juggling, and all three balls fall to the floor.
And so someone who asks to be a "better juggler" as an approach to life is really saying, "I'm not ready to face reality. Let me try to live in my fantasy world a little longer."
Yes!
These people seem to be mistaking balance with equal time. Balance recognizes that life is a series of changes, it is dynamic.
The only time your life is static is when you are dead.
Juggling is a powerful metaphor for living, especially in our speeded-up world. Joan hits the proverbial nail on the head with the key being focusing on the internal balance instead of focusing on the external one. Juggling is one of the many tools I teach to corporate execs as part of my work for an innovation-related consulting firm and it never fails to produce incredibly powerful insights for people as to how they approach their own selves and lives. After all, how you approach a challenge like learning how to juggle can't but help reveal how you approach any new challenge in your life. And the results are immediate, graphic, tangible and easy to see, feel, and touch. It's a great learning tool. Thanks for the reminder!
Most American people are plain overworked
I'm a senior...m
We've been speeded up to increase productivity and short term profits.
We most certanly should look to other cultures who live better...b
ah... juggling works because you become the mechanism to create balance, of things that aren't in balance.
six thousand years of Asian wisdom in response to challenge & cultural change is inferior to the philosophical depths of American culture, right?
come on... just because it's hard to achieve doesn't mean its WRONG...
it just means that the things influencing the difficulty of achieving balance... might not be valid.
maybe, just maybe... you have to choose on which items are to be handled... while keeping an eye on what's coming up...
THEN creating balance from what you can influence.
if you can't? then drop what doesn't fit.
YOU CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING
sometimes, you have to trust that gravity works.
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BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian com
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"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
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"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄┄
BlueBerry Pick'n
can be found @
ThisCanadian com
┄┄
"We, two, form a Multitude" ~ Ovid.
┄┄
"Silent Freedom is Freedom Silenced"
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