Do you think it’s possible to create meaningful balance in your life?
If you ask the internet, it will tell you yes. If you ask us, we will also tell you yes. But we think it’s a bit more complicated than that. Balance is often touted as a desired end goal. Balance is a place you reach and from that point on, you are balanced.
The wellness industry often wants you to believe that the right combination of bubble baths, homeopathics, and supplements will help you create meaningful balance. We find value in all those things, except bubble baths, they just aren’t for us. However, our perspective on balance tends to be a little different than what the latest health craze tries to sell you.
The battle between balance and productivity
We started using this graphic in our presentations on burnout a few years ago. For us, it’s such a great example of the difference between meaningful balance and culturally appropriate productivity. What do we mean by that? Well, our culture tells us that being productive all the time is how to be successful. But the problem with that is, it doesn’t leave time for the other activities in our life that help us create balance.
Being productive takes way more than hard work. If we only believe that hard work equals productivity, we’re putting ourselves on the path to burnout. In order to put ourselves on the path to balance, we have to consider all the dimensions of our wellness. We’ve written before about our wheel of well-being, but it’s worth repeating here. This wheel is the graphic we use to teach ourselves and others about how to create meaningful balance.
The Wheel of Well-Being
As you can see from our graphic, each of our 8 dimensions of wellness are given their own spoke on the wheel of well-being. However, this doesn’t mean that they all should be given equal weight.
As we wrote about balance for our book, we knew we had to share our insights. I’ve learned from my yoga practice that balance is not an end goal. Balance is not a static state of being. When we teach about balance, we call it a controlled wobble. Balance takes work. We will always fall out of it, especially when we’re building the muscles (or practices) to keep us there.
Balance requires that we consider all our dimensions of wellness. It means we take a realistic look at our wheel of well-being and see any of our spokes are broken. Or if any of them are carrying too much weight (or importance).
No one’s wheel’s look the same. We all have different bodies, minds, lives, and needs. Creating balance means being willing to experiment with different dimensions. What does financial wellness look like for you? Are you spending too much time and money on physical wellness? These are the questions we need to ask ourselves. The answers will help us to truly create meaningful balance in our lives.
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