The Balancing Act

Applying balance to every single aspect of your being and life.

Balancing Act

Just two stairs, so low one could climb without even noticing. A small shrubby bush to the right of the concrete stairs, a bigger one to the left, and the front door less than a foot away. I can remember with vividness as I stood, blocking the left side, my tiny 4'10'' Grandma's arm tightly linked in mine. Suddenly, "OH GOD", she gasped as she started leaning away from me towards the bushes on the right. I held on tighter pulling her toward me as she continued to pull away yelling "No No I need to lean more to the right, you're pulling the wrong way".

My Grandma had become so imbalanced in her old age, that her concept of how to get out of a potentially injurious situation was severely flawed. She truly believed that if she leaned farther onto the side she was already falling that she'd recover. Balance isn't simply something that can create fatal outcomes in the physical world, but also in our overall lives should we be incapable of creating it. As I thought of this, I found 3 ways that balance can be implemented in multiple daily moments.

Goal Reaching

Okay, so we've all heard the modern gurus, influencers, and multimillionaires yelling at us about how to restructure our lives to reach goals. They have these daily routines, morning routines, exercise routines, and more. All they ever share is how they set a goal, made a plan and reached it. Because of course, a goal without a plan is nothing. I have personally fallen victim to the overwhelm and pressure of trying to follow at least one of these routines and falling short.

Each time I miss an alarm at 6am I feel like I have to wait until the next day to try again because it won't be perfect enough since Kobe Bryant woke up at 4am everyday. I finally broke the rhythm of incompletion when I realized that I needed to bring balance into my goal planning. If I decide to follow the morning routine of a guru, or even create my own, but somehow miss one piece of it, it's ok to continue the rest that day. And, if I miss a day I can still do it the next day without feeling like I'm starting all over again.

Reality Balance

When I think back on that story about my Grandma, I remember the countless meetings I had had with aging professionals. One of the most recurrent messages I'd heard was how important it was to do functional aging exercises in order to enhance balance, because many elderly lose their lives after one broken bone. It wasn't until one specialist said, "these exercises should be implemented by all", that I realized, balance begins and ends from an early age.

Some easy ways to do this now? Working your way toward sitting and standing from a chair without the use of your arms each time you get up to eat. Switch the foot you lead with when you walk, or the hand you eat your cereal with. (Bonus points: this also helps to exercise your brain)

Value Balance

In the world we live in there are hundreds to thousands possibly even millions of opinions and ideas based on personally held values. Specifically, when it comes to politics and religion those views are held as fact and standard. More often we can find ourselves being hyper critical; not just of the world outside and their views, but even our own lives and our inability to perfectly uphold what we've deemed our value standard.

The bigger deal? We've become closed off to the opinions of others when it comes to ideologies that affect the world at large. This is where balance in our value systems is necessary. Perhaps we would live in a less anxious, crime ridden world if we could find more balance in acceptance versus the tyranny we force ourselves into.

Conclusion

So, there are obviously a plethora of ways we can incorporate the word balance into our lives. The overall lesson? Reminding ourselves that nothing is set in stone, humans are fluid beings that operate by circumstance and belief, but adaptability allows for peace and growth.