18. What Is Balance??

Well, I will argue that fact, actually, to be fair, that, look, if I don't eat for 24 hours and then I eat six blocks of chocolate, that is balance to me. That is balance in my life. G', day, boys and girls, and welcome to. Well, not having chocolate or sugar, per se. Actually, we've got a sugar free chocolate bar the other day that was good, not bad, wet the whistle, wet the beak a little bit. But look. Welcome to today's podcast. Today, tonight, whenever it may be, whenever you're listening to it, to be fair. And what I want to touch on today is the topic, the subject of balance. What a funny one. What is balance? And that's what really, really intrigues me with many, many things in this world. And those of you who have been following me, oh, by the way, this is Alex, this is Big Red. Welcome to the Big Red Real dad Movement podcast. In case you didn't already know, what really intrigues me, guys in life is the absolutes. And he's considering a good friend of mine, Mick Turner. Mick the man told me that word and I really like that word, absolutes. In fact, I'm going to write a book called Al's Absolutes. And there are seven absolutes that I have, I would say, created, discovered, in which you can call them universal truths. That's another way to look at it, however you want to see it. But those seven are certainly in no way, shape or form, not aligned with things that people feel are so concrete and black and white in today's world. And balance is one of them. Like, what is balance? What is balance to you? What does it even mean to you? What does it correlate to in relation to the parts of your life where you feel there has to be this juggling act? And what does that even mean? That's quite a funny one. And I'll give a quick example to get you all started. When I was running CrossFit Wellbeing, that was balance in my life. Barely making enough money, living at times on Corinne's credit card. Sometimes she knew about it. More often than not, she didn't. Sorry, honey, but she knows now. That's all squared away. But look, when I ran wellbeing, three things comprise our life. Our lives, yourself, your family and service. Significance, value that you add to the world, what you're doing outside of that inner circle and yourself, which ultimately does affect your inner circle, family and yourself. And for me, that was a balancing act and something I felt I had nailed at the time because for me, balance at that stage When I was running CrossFit wellbeing was being an elite athlete, getting as far as I can with the CrossFit regionals. Now people would look at me and go, well, Al isn't putting in enough training. If he wants to go to the Games, he's not balanced in what he's aligned with to his goals and dreams. And then obviously on the flip side, people will look at that and go, that's mad. Al's training three hours a day and he hasn't got balance at all because his business is just sustaining himself from where he's at at the moment. That's what it was. The gym had a nice little community there. Great, great culture and community. Loved my time there at wellbeing. And it was my baby, obviously as well. First gym I'd ever owned. And everything from the heart flowed there on from it. And look, I had a great community of people there, so I was still adding value to the world. There was that level of significance in helping others. There was one member I wasn't huge on. His name's Alistair Cran. He was a physiotherapist who had some ridiculous hair and was a surfy and would just lose things. Quite aloof. But anyway, I'm only saying that because I know he's going to listen to this episode. But look, it was a great community there of people turning over just enough money to keep the gym running to fuel my efforts and body and supplements and food and whatnot. And look, it was balance for me because Corinne and I didn't have kids at the time. We could catch up after hours, so to speak. No dirty thoughts there, guys. I mean, staying up late and doing things, going out, going out at night, late dinners, all that sort of stuff that clearly doesn't exist in my life anymore, nor do I want it to, because getting a good night's sleep is imperative to fatherhood and to what it is that I want to achieve now. But the reality was, at that stage of my life, I felt like I had a balanced life. I was hitting the area of service, helping others around me, and I loved doing that. And I was doing it enough to be conducive to the other parts of my life where I could still spend time with Krin and have a little bit of freedom and flexibility there. Being a business owner, the stresses weren't enough for me to cave in where I felt I could train and move my body and nourish the body and be an elite athlete as well, which I loved doing at the time. Now if you gave me and presented that opportunity right now, my life where I am right now, and certainly not downplaying that, that's a phenomenal experience that I'll never forget. And I'm not taking that away if that's what people love and want to continue to pursue. But, man, if you presented me with that right now, I'd be like, that is ridiculous. That does not even connect or align with me at all. So what is balance then? And I've got the definition right here. Situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. Now, look, you might call a spade a spade, or you might look at the lines when you're driving on the road and going, you know what? Serves me best to stay inside these lines. Otherwise things could happen. And things that are undesirable could certainly happen. But the reality is, look at that definition right there and what it means. Situation in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions. Now, call me if I'm nuts, but my very first question here is, well, who decides what equal means? And who decides what the correct proportions are? And that's what really gets me as people and human beings. And this isn't just with the term balance. In many different areas of life, we seem to buy into or cop out or just take it is what it is in certain elements or terminology that it's fixed when the reality for you right now is your idea of balance comes from a whirlwind, a whole whirlpool really swirling around of your life experiences. Your parents, their values, beliefs put onto you, the conditioning you faced in childhood, relationships, the education system, the workforce. More importantly, though, more often than not, influence from those around you, someone else's opinions, beliefs, values on what they deem to balance. I've had people contact Crin's friends, contact her, worried about her, that I'm not spending time with her. Spent all weekend with the whole family. But Yesterday I spent 12 hours in the office working. She was down in Sydney. I saw her and the kids for half an hour. It's really funny when people look into other people's lives and it's not that you have to be a closed or an open book. It just is whatever you want it to be. But it's funny when people look into other people's lives and not necessarily cast judgment, but put things out there and put influencing factors like what they're talking, saying, messaging in what's going on here, when they're imposing their will of what they believe to be a certain understanding of that Circumstance or situation. And with balance, man, I see that so often. I see that so often. Like, Karin looked at me today and said, my eyes are a little bit tired. I'm looking here in the camera and I don't feel they look that bad. I am getting older and the wrinkles are coming here and there and they will continue to come. But I'll just get that Facebook app or that app that everyone seems to have at the moment that can show your age when you're old or young and then we'll fix that one up. Look, Corinne thought that I was tired, I needed rest. Honey should just come home. And I said, no, I've got things to do and I feel good and I'm fine and I'm going to see you later. We're going to go for a swim at the pools with the kids and do all sorts of other things. Look, that's balance for me where I'm at right now. And you can't have a limiting belief and certainly a limiting belief system, guys, on what other people impose on your will. Live your truth, whatever you want your truth to be and whatever you want balance to be in your life and equal and correct proportions. I keep coming back to that. So who decides what equal is? You do. Who decides what the correct proportions are? You do. Because between family, self and service, you're never going to have them all lined up like ducks lined up in a row equally like. That would be ridiculous. Say, okay, I'm going to sleep for six hours, work for six hours, spend time with the families for six hours, and invest in myself for six hours. Hours. Absolute madness. Can you see here, guys, when you're looking at terminology and things that are written down, literally letters like ink or something typed in a certain shape that says B A, L, A, N, C, E, that means sweet. F A compared to your life, where your life's at at the moment and what's important to you. Have a look at old people. They don't have to get up early, but all of them get up at 4:30 in the morning. I'm like, relax, go back to bed, have some sleep. Catch up on that balance. I'm sorry, I'm losing. We're back. Catch up on that balance. You missed out with 40 years of parenthood and being a great grandparent as well. Life is a journey and you don't need to be 80 years old to realize that there are different lives that you will live. Call them stages, if you will. Childhood, adolescence in your 20s, which to me is glorified Childhood, certainly not an adult then, 30s, 40s, 50s, and so on. So where in the world have you gotten this in your mind that you feel that you have to put some sort of balancing act, like literally go through that yourself, six hours of each. It doesn't make any sense. You don't have, and I say this to my dads, you don't have to have balance in your life collectively or momentarily or compounding in a compounding format, in a repeated rinse and repeat format to live a balanced life. It truly is a roller coaster. And as long as you stay on the ride and you're aware of your environment, surroundings on that ride, you'll come out the other end, okay? You're going to go forwards, you're going to go backwards, you're going to go up, you're going to go down. As long as you're aware of that, you'll keep moving forward and you'll move forward in different ways. You'll move forward. When you're upside down, you move forward. When you're twisting and turning, you'll move forward sometimes with your eyes closed, you'll move forward, sometimes screaming. The reality is you can have whatever reality and whatever that sees fit for you through the balance that you have in your life. Another perfect example, talking about elite athletes, some of the big wigs, motivational speakers, and both elite athlete coaches talk about balance being bad. You don't want balance in your life, you don't need balance, blah, blah. Again, to me, no disrespect to them, but they're coming from a closed mind because they're accepting other people's opinions and views what balance is as an absolute, and then they're rejecting that man. That seems like a lot of work to me. How about we cut out the middleman and you create whatever you believe balance to be. That's a better way forward. But hang on. We won't judge those people because they've probably got millions of followers and I don't yet. But that just makes common, that just makes complete sense to me. Don't make someone else's opinion your absolute and truth, and then castrate it. That's ridiculous. That doesn't make any sense. Look at it and go, okay, if you want to be Catherine David's daughter or some sort of Rich Froning or some sort of world champion elite Crossfitter, then how about this? Look at what's important to your life and strike balance from that. Look at Rich Froning, perfect example. The guy gets up, trains, he's an elite athlete. Or when he was the number one in the world. Matt Fraser is now in the CrossFit game. For those of you who don't know. CrossFit World Championship, both of those guys doing what they want, doing what they love. They still have time with their family, they're still engaging what they love doing, and they're still adding value and service to the world through inspiring, inspiring others or running their own gyms or boxes, or doing talks or workshops or seminars. So they're hitting the circles of significance, family, self and service. And they're doing what they want and they're happy. How is that not balanced? Not because they train for four hours instead of what someone else or some doctor or some wizard who talks about mental well being says we should just work, walk or move for 30 minutes a day. That doesn't make any sense to me. They can train for four hours and still learn all those things in life. Another guy who I do like and I look up to, he's a bit extreme at times, but Grant Cardone, the guy's a billionaire. Now, regardless of that, he's 61 or 63 or something. He's got young kids, so had children late and met his wife and partner later in life. And look, the guy's in a position where he probably works 16, 18 hours a day consistently, just like guys like the Rock or any other big figureheads you might see breaking out of just the standard entertainment industry or Hollywood. And they work their asses, often work a high amount. And people who want to work 9 or 5, 9 to 3, 10 till 4, whatever, and want to earn X amount of money and do this with their life and watch TV and watch these soap operas and credit to you all, power to you. Like, balance can be whatever you want it to be. I look at someone like Grant Cardone, though, he has a jet and helicopter, so he can obviously get around a bit easier than most. But the guy works relentlessly and people will look at it and go, he works too much. But also look at the areas of his life he sees. His children every single day is showing them experiences and parts of the world that no one else will be able to show or no one else may be able to show their kids unless they're putting themselves in the position that he's in, that he's had to go through, and nor should they have to. But this is a guy who had one of his daughters up on stage talking in front of 35,000 people. She's nine years old. That's a pretty incredible experience. Now this is someone who's got a relationship with his wife. He's seeing his children every day, he's traveling around the world. He's very fit, man. He's actually quite fit. He's gotten fit over the last few years and strong because he sees the importance of that. So he's looking after himself. He's adding a huge amount of value to the world through charity, through services, through doing things for free, through business and helping others and giving jobs. All these different areas of his life that to me looks like a pretty balanced life. I'm not saying that is going to be my life or that's what I want. But for him, if someone looked at him and said are you living a balanced life? Again, he's closed minded. He'll say, no, I'm not living a balanced life. Balance is overrated. But he's saying that, adopting their truth of balance as an absolute. And I hope this is coming through, guys, I don't think this is a tongue twister or a riddle to try and figure out again, even he's being closed minded and going, no, this is balance. Look at what I'm doing, man. I'm making a huge amount of money which gives me impact and influence to help change the world and give more jobs out to other people. I'm seeing my wife every day. She's in business with me as well. I'm spending time with my children, showing them the world, adding value to the world. I have time to train for myself, invest in myself and my knowledge and my wisdom as I grow and get older like that to me looks pretty awesome. Personally, I'm not going to adopt the line that he adopts with certain parts and areas of his life. That's fine, that's his choice and right as it is mine. But for someone to look at that and judge that, it's really limiting, guys. And that brings me to my point in which I wanted to try and just skew the appreciation of what we want to strive for in our life towards a different term and a different word. And I hope those examples of health give some resonance into understanding what balance can be. But as human beings we certainly get triggered or attached to certain terms and our conditioning in listening to this for a moment, as opposed to decades of our life in a being filtered through to balance has to be this. It can be hard. So how about we just remove that and eliminate that roadblock and come up with a new word. And the word I love which will connect you a lot better is alignment. Alignment is such a Great word. It's such a powerful word. Look at your body as a horizontal plane of balance, juggling this, that and that, left and right of you. Look at alignment as something through the center, through the center of you. What centers you, what makes you you, what gives you fulfillment in your life. And when you do that pull away, you open the floodgates to what's possible instead of limiting factors and limiting beliefs inside of your own mind based on the misconception that you have about the term balance, what it means to your life. Alignment, the definition, arrangement in a straight line or in correct relative positions. Now that's what I love. First, arrangement, arrangement, putting the pieces together. Those who can't see me, I'm moving my hands around, but alignment, arranging, arranging those key three things, the circles of significance in your life, family, self, and service. In a straight line. So through the middle, through the middle of yourself. Or incorrect again, your version of correct. But what I love about correct, what flows here? Relative position. All relative to each other. If you're investing in yourself, that doesn't mean you're throwing out and throwing away your family and your career in that period of moment in time, you're investing in yourself, which is going to make those other two things more heightened and more enlightened anyway. And you'll have better influence and output over that relative position. That's what I love about alignment. Because two of those things. One of my friends. I'll get him on here soon. Shannon Brenton. He's a phenomenal man with all the words in the world that sometimes you need to be a neurophysicist or an astronaut to decipher them, but the man knows his stuff. He's a wizard and. And an absolute gentleman. I do love Shannon. He's one of my best mates. He told me this a few years ago and I do believe it's true. I do believe there's part truth to it as well that can be changed or adjusted. And he said if family, self and service, significance, the value add to the world, you'll only ever be able to do two of those things really, really well or at an excellent level. Now, I do agree with him. There are two things out of yourself, your family and service that you can absolutely crush without it being overly difficult. Like, I can spend time with my family and train four hours a day and have a killer body, killer output and energy and fitness levels and have a huge amount of experience with my kids. Other areas, my life might fall apart and we're not really in the caveman. Era where we do actually need a monetary value of using income as a resource for expenses, other things that we need, and that generally comes from the service we add to the world. I can run RDM and have a phenomenal business, run RDM and Roll Commander and have both of them absolutely pumping with minimal help, but not invest in myself or my family. And that would work really well. Just one thing, but I do believe you can get all three guys. And it's not easy. It's not easy, but at times. And I've got a chart with this, which is pretty cool in the circles of significance, actually. I might even post that as the picture for this podcast. There are times when you won't nail them. You can always get at least two, but it doesn't mean disregard the third. Throw the baby out with the bath water. It's all collective. It's a whole. It makes you who you are. The self is important. I do feel that's number one to begin with anyway, because it gives you a higher level of output for the other two. There will be times, but it's about blending and combining those. There's times where I'll work on my family and my business more so, and the body pulls back a little bit and then I pull it back in. If you never completely neglect or let it go. You can get all three. I believe you can get all three. It's not easy. You need to reach a high level of greatness within yourself, which is absolutely possible for all of us. But that's hard. And that's not something that happens overnight either. That can be a period of decades in working and refining your craft. But in the end, there will only ever be the present moment in which you're living in which you'll constantly juggle and balance that, so to speak. And that's where I come back to the definition of balance as opposed to alignment relative positions. Now, balance isn't trying to get all of them on the exact same plane because all of them have different meaning to you in different periods of your life. For me, I don't care about becoming the next number one CrossFit. Even though I am the fittest man in the world or I was at that stage when I was at Regionals. No arrogance intended. Look, even though I was at a phenomenal stage there for my size and my body weight, it's not something happened overnight. I trained for 20 years and grew up with soccer and cricket. Like. Like I'm very sharp and coordinated and pick things up like that. But I don't need to be in that top 1% anymore. That doesn't serve me. Being fit and strong and healthy absolutely makes me a powerhouse for my children. The temperament I have, the nature I have towards the children and wife and what I'm doing as well as business, like, I can go and go and go. My capacity is massive because this is easy. This is so easy compared to having my ass hanging out, just ripping into the gym and really, really hooking in and getting that state of discomfort and pain at that higher intensity pull back to this. Piece of cake. So I'd like to maintain some level of fitness, but it's not right up there at the premium which allows me more time and more output at a higher level of output because I'm still keeping that important to me and staying aligned with that, with my center to dive into family and business and crush that at a higher level. And that's what it's about. It's literally like these chess pieces. Maybe not on a chessboard, but these pieces of your life where you're just constantly pulling them in. Okay, you just tuck the side a little bit. I'm going to work on this. Bring this one in and bring that laser focus into one thing and work that one thing which benefits the other two, but then work the other one and then work the other one and bringing that in which collectively forms up your life. And that's what I love. Forming up alignment, framework, building from the inside out. What's important to you and your definition of that relative position relative to the position of you, your life, where you're at right now, and what truly is important to you. And that's my phone ringing, so I'll just turn that off. Apologies for that. And that's where I want to wrap this up, guys. Look at your life and ask yourself, ask yourself this question. What is balance to me? What does balance mean to me in my life? What's important in my life from which I feel that I've struck that level of balance? And I guess in a roundabout way, contentment, happiness, fulfillment, satisfaction. And then ask yourself this. Maybe if I don't look at it as balance, how about alignment? What do I want to align in my life that's going to more often than not? I never say going to always because it's impossible. But more often than not, it's going to align me with what I enjoy, what I love, what my truth is, what brings me fulfillment and happiness. And sometimes, yeah, we got to eat a bit of shit, we got to go through the tough stuff. I agree. I accept that. I look at that. Because if you just live in the immediate present now, guess what? That rolls into the next present now, the next present now. And there's definitely a compounding flow and effect like that ripple in the ocean from one drop. So living in the immediate right now, which is almost when you think about it guys, when you do that, it's already gone anyway. You're actually living almost immediately in the future, step by step, you're going to neglect things that are important to you, but you can do that and you can get away with that if you have the short, medium and long term future insight and what's important to you. And that's where I love the term alignment. Ask yourself that question as we finish and wrap up here. What can I align in my life to get where I want to get to through family, self and service? What does that look like to me? How can I get there? What do I need to do both physically and mentally to put myself in that position to get that, do I need to be a bit fitter and a bit healthier so I can have more clarity of thought? People think they train because of their bodies. You don't train because of your body. Your body doesn't mean anything. You train because you train for your body and train your body and work your body because that, that taps into the mind, that taps into the heart and soul, how you think, how you feel, how you see yourself, how you see your life, the standards of your life, the standards of yourself, the ability of resilience and the ability of persistence and how you can tap into those and overcome other things outside of the gym. Do I need a coach? Do I need a mentor, someone to look at my life and go, these are things that you can't see. This is the glass ceiling in your life right now that you need to break free from. Do I need a team? Do I need a different environment? What do I need to align myself with the highest output possible in collectively balancing or a.k.a. like I said, aligning my family values, principles, beliefs and output. The service value I'm adding to the world significance I'm adding and leaving my mark in this world and the self being the greatest I can be inside from which everything outside in family and service reaps the rewards and gets the benefits? I'll tell you what, guys call me nuts, but you'd be damn rest assured that if you can really nut that out and when I say not that out, it does take time and it's never really finite something that Continually moves forward in life. But if you can nut that out and be aware of that and start tapping into that, and I guarantee you your life is going to start moving forward in a completely different light. The opportunities that will present themselves huge. You don't even know about. You don't even need to know about them right now. You don't even need to know about the house. But asking the whys and the purpose and going one step further back, the who's who do I want to be in this life, in my family and in a circle, in the service I value added to the world and in myself. Because you have different hats. People say hats, different identities. I handle my clients differently than I handle my grandmother and talk with her differently than how I associate with my kids. Like it's. You'd be madness if you were just to set and forget. This is my personality type of person that doesn't exist. Alignment much better than balance. But balance can be whatever you want it to be. When I talk about that, I mean from a light of Instead of being triggered in a way that you think you should have your life, how about you align with what you believe you want to have in your life and be that first in which you want to have in your life and that will become your life. Thank you again for joining me, boys and girls. I will start to get back on the podcast more frequently. I know it's been a little bit of time, maybe about a week or week and a bit since I've been on. Life gets in the way. You guys are certainly a priority for me. I hope you enjoyed this. If you ever need anything, please reach out. Let me know. Get in touch alexealdadmovement.com or there's many different ways to find me. Podcasts here, YouTube, Facebook, obviously on Twitter, a little bit. Instagram a fair bit as well. Hope this helps, guys. And this is what I love doing, really adding value to your lives. And if not for me, if no one listens to this, it doesn't matter because this helps me realign with what's important to me and helps me refocus. Because there's always going to be something happening to and around us that tries to knock us off the path, tries to sway us from what we feel is important to us. And we forget that that's what life is about. Remembering who you want to be, why that's important, what it looks like. Visualizing that things happen twice in this world, in the mind and then in the real world and then how to get there and mapping that out. Take care, guys. Much love. And if I don't see you, good afternoon, good evening, and good night. Take care, and I'll see you soon.