No Such Thing as Life Balance
Yes, you read it right. I don’t believe there is such a thing as Life Balance. I think someone in the Personal Growth Industry made the term to label what people were feeling. They felt better about having a label.
What I think is that there is no such thing. Life is not about balance BUT life has everything to do with relationships. Relationships with your partner, spouse, children, family, work, business, friends, colleagues, co-workers, employees, staff and most importantly YOURSELF are the meat of life.
I can’t even begin to imagine what any of these relationships look like for everyone I run into. I can’t even begin to understand how they work for everyone. This is a story about why.
I went on a journey to discover what made me “tick”. It was a long one. Personal Development courses taught me to explore who I was and what I Value. I created all sorts of goals around my values, did the work, got the skills and then sank in the water.
I started to think it was an issue with motivation. No. I was always motivated to change what I was doing. I took tons of courses promising me: life balance, a changed life, and a new way of doing things, goal setting. None of it seemed to last. Oh it did for some people but not me.
Was there something wrong with me? I went on a quest for some inspiration and found what I was looking for. I learned how an inspiration worked, how to take that energy and channel it into motivation and created a ton of Flow in my life.
Did I have to explore my life balance? No. Did I have to rearrange my life so it was in balance? No. What meant balance to me was not the same as what it meant to someone else. What my experiences, upbringing, values and perceptions indicated to me, in a sort of relentless way was: Life balance had a special meaning to me. It had nothing to do with a balancing act at all. It had everything to do with my relationships. It had everything to do with a holistic lifestyle that was unique to me as my fingerprints.
Yes sometimes a model or method clicked with me but never exactly. I found that being INSPIRED by an idea to create my own way was the most powerful way for me to change. I found that it was not only the idea of relationships that created the life I wanted but the time I WANTED to spend on each relationship, HOW I spent the time and even WHY I wanted to, was so important and unique to me alone.
No one could have possibly told me what that would all look like. Only I knew the answer and only I could be inspired to make it that way.
So how is it that some of these things really work? I mean how do you explain the testimonials? I think that the relationship maps every one of those people had, in their minds, about what it was the worked for them made the idea, technique or program work for that person. What the testimonials never do say, however, is how that individual adapted what they used to “fit” in with what inspired them in the first place.
I think they were inspired and THAT is what made the difference. Not WHAT they used to get what they wanted but HOW they used it.
Personally the people I run across are all pretty smart people. They just needed a nudge to think different and create a revolution in their own mind. That’s what I like about what I do.