Betsy Guerra reflects on struggling to find balance across work, family, self-care and spirituality, and describes how reading Off Balance on Purpose (Dan Thurman) reframed balance as something achieved across time rather than moment-to-moment. She uses the metaphor of Chicago’s distinct seasons to show why being "off balance on purpose" is acceptable, urges mindful prioritization of the present moment, and describes personal habits she uses to verify balance across her days.
Chapters
Do you struggle with balance? Are you able to have the exact amount of time devoted to work and family and relationships and friends and personal interests, self care, spiritual life? Do you have time for all of that in a perfectly balanced way? I have always struggled with that. I want to always, like, build up and strengthen my mind, body, spirit, but also be fully present at work and with my family. And I always set myself up for failure. And it wasn't until I read this book, Off Balance on Purpose by Dan Thurman that I realized that the problem wasn't me. The problem is that I was defining balance in an erratic way that was always going to set me up for failure. So something that I learned in this book is that balance is something that you acquire across time in a period of time, not something that you experience experience in a particular moment in the day by day present moment. He gave an example that I thought was amazing, so I have to share it with you guys. Chicago is like the perfect example of balanced seasons. There is the winter, spring, summer, fall, and when you look at the whole year, it's like perfection. Winter looks like winter, spring looks like spring, etc. But at any given moment, you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, it's freezing cold at 2 degrees. And the same is true for us. There are moments in which we're gonna be in a colder environment or weighing more on the side of career, and then other moments in which we're gonna be fully present with our family and we're not doing anything first for work. And there's going to be moments in which we're going to be taking care of ourselves and our spiritual life, our bodies, and we're going to be investing in that. And during that particular moment, you're not with your family, you're not at work. So Van Thurman gave me permission to understand that it is okay and necessary to be off balance on purpose. So what matters really is to be mindful of what your priority is at the moment and choose to be fully present at that moment. And then you can look at your entire life and be like, across my day, did I practice my spirituality? Was I kind to others? Did I spend some time with my family? Did I do well at work? Did I advance? Did I serve? So I have this list that I. That I have that I use every day where I have to do different things and I check it off the box to help me feel that I'm balanced. But the idea here is not to check off boxes, is to become aware of the balance that you're living in your days. And then I It gives me peace of mind to know that when I was at work, I was 100% present for my clients. When I was at home, I wasn't checking my phone like I used to because I felt, you know, I was at work and I was guilty about not being home, so I wanted to go early. So then I left work early, and I'm home, you know, on my phone, making appointments and trying to finish some things and not being fully present with my kids because I was everywhere. So now I get to be off balance on purpose at any given point. But I also have my ways of verifying that across the board. And in my life and in my days, I am balanced.
