Q&A: Life Balance

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This is Wendy Greer. I'm one of the coaches here at Learning Strategies and from Mindtracks. And today I wanted to talk about life balance. This is actually sort of a funny situation because you know how authors say that when they're writing a book about a topic, often that topic shows up big time in their lives. Well, my life balance has been tested to the ultimate this week and I'm recording this early because I told totally goofed up my back this week yesterday. And so I'm headed for the chiropractor when I should be recording at one o'. Clock. So this is pre recorded due to the fact that my life balance capacities are being tested. So don't you, you love it? I don't love it, but it's, I think it's an interesting synchronicity that my life balance muscles are being flexed. So anyway, I want to talk about life balance before I go into the questions. We only had a couple questions and I apologize if you entered a question later, you know, shortly before 1. I'll, we'll catch that next time. But life balance is a tough nut to crack because it changes so much, not only throughout your life because you're at different phases of your life. You know, like when you're a parent, your kids become a very, a very strong focal point for most of us. When that happens and that empty nest business starts, then a lot of people get adrift and their life balance has to be readjusted because the whole focus of their life and what they're here to do has shifted. And what was their primary focus and function is no longer necessary. So they find another way to fulfill that. And then also as a prime example, what happened to me this week, I just had so many bizarre things happen and this thing with my back was sort of the final straw. It's like, give me a break, what's next? And then you find out what's next. So balance can be a very tricky thing. So basically when you're living wholeheartedly and you're focused on what has value to you and you're in alignment with that, you're congruent with that, you're going to sort of naturally find a center point. But what happens is, because this isn't a static situation, being balanced, you sort of find you're vacillating and you can swing to these incredible extremes where it's really hard to find that center point anymore. And so that's what I sort of want to talk about today. One of the analogies I love for life. Balance is. Life is, is like a big ocean and it will throw waves at you. There's. Some will be ripples, some will be. Some will be waves. Some will seem like cyclones or typhoons or whatever those things are that come off the ocean, that are hurricanes, that just totally discombobulate you. But you can learn to ride the waves. And that's, that's the, the focus of life. Balance is learning to ride them. You know, in every challenge there's opportunities, there's, there's resources. We have the things. In fact, one of the things I wanted to start with was. I don't know who to ascribe this to, but I had, I had. I. I keep notes on things that, that I find to be very inspirational or pertinent to my life. And this was one that, that just really resonated for me. An unknown author, but the comment is. The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom and joy in the universe are already within us. We don't have to gain, develop or attain them. We're like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight. We don't need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds and the sky. We merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we really are as soon as we quit pretending we're small or unholy. And I think that is such a great summary of what it's like to be in overwhelm because you've forgotten your resources, you've forgotten who you are, and you've forgotten your connection to source, that you have this infinite pool of energy and possibilities around you. And you forget when you're out of balance. Everything gets discombobulated and it's hard to even. Sometimes you're spinning like a tub, you can't even tell which way is forward. I found a really good tool in my young adulthood. I was going through a really tough time. There was some family strife and a lot of things were not going swimmingly. And I was having, I was having trouble riding the waves. And what it was, was a tool. And I can't remember who to attribute this to, but you do. Two circles. You make a list of all the things that are really important to you. What's important in your life, what is crucial to your self care, what is crucial to your mental well being, your spiritual well being, your emotional well being, and make a list of those and then prioritize. Where are they? Is this one highest? And it's maybe 30% and this one is at the bottom. And it's only 10%. So you do that and put it on one of the circles, make it into a pie chart and see how it divides up. Then you take a look at how you're spending your time and you do this over several days and you see where your time is going. My time being spent was so disproportionate and out of congruence with what mattered to me. I immediately saw why I was having so much trouble because I wasn't doing the things that were important to me. I wasn't doing the things that were high priority. And so naturally I felt out of balance because I couldn't ride the waves, I couldn't go with the flow. I was constantly banging my head against a wall because I was doing things weren't as crucial to me as some of the things that seem so darned important. So there's a really good book by Joan Borisenko I wanted to bring up. It's called Fried. And what she talks about a lot in there is a lot of us live in a way that isn't sustainable because we're not taking care of ourselves. We're not aligned with our values and so we get burned out. And it's really challenging to revive yourself and to recover from burnout if you don't take care of yourself. She felt there were three major components of burnout. There was depersonalization, which is you're detached from others, you're detached from your spiritual center, you're sort of detached from yourself and what you value emotional exhaustion because you're just worn out. You've been in overwhelm so long that your balance is so cattywampus that you're up, down, up, down, up, down. And it's like a seesaw. And there's a sense of diminished personal accomplishment because you sort of subconsciously know you're not doing what is important to you, but you keep doing what you're doing because it seems like it's the highest priority. And so what her suggestion was was to develop habits of a stress hardy personality. And it was to overall have more self reflection, more discipline, more open minded, out of the box thinking when you came up against life's challenges. And she broke these into control, which is taking self responsibility, taking a look at what's going on. How can you ride that wave? What can you do to get on the wave and go with challenges? See them as possibilities, as chances to step up to the plate and see what the possibilities are. What are you capable of? I mean we are all we are all capable far beyond what we're, what we're doing. And then commitment. You have to commit to self respect and self care and stay engaged and live what I've called wholeheartedly in the past. You know, where you're totally in the moment, you're doing what matters to you and so you're wholeheartedly involved. And that's being passionate. That is, is. Passion is like pure energy just distilling directly from source. And, and it, and it's a vital self fulfilling growth, expansive energy. And that what, that's what gets stymied when you're, when you're in burnout. So you know, daily practices like movement or time in nature, time with things that are beautiful. Simplicity, connection, you know, both spiritual and physical connection to source, connection to others. All of those will help you to find that balance that we're all seeking. Now what I find really intriguing about balance in the, you know, we have that, the listening by topic and the accelerator. I've mentioned that before. If you go to the parallel accelerator, we made a list of those parallel. Those of us that use them a lot, put our heads together and came up with a listing of what we think is most pertinent to a particular topic. And it was a scream. Because in balance, listen to this. We had over, we had overcoming overwhelm, which clearly when you're in overwhelm, you're not focused, you're not, you're not clear on what's important and you're going to spin, you're not going to be able to ride the wave. Deep relaxation because you get so wound up and so tense that you, you, you, you, you contract. You're, you're not resourceful. You, you, you sort of, you bring your energy in so tight there's no openings for light or expansion. Gratitude. We did an entire session on gratitude. If you are grateful for what you have in your life, you tend to get more to be grateful for. The other interesting phenomenon with gratitude is if you're expressing gratitude for living a life full of balance and, and well being and.

Serenity and a calm center that you can readily find. If you're giving gratitude for that, your other unconscious mind and your conscious mind, if you're not there, will go, oh, she thinks it's already here. We better get busy because this isn't what we're experiencing. So gratitude is a really, really powerful tool. We listed Soul of Money, the, the parallel with Lynn twist that I just love. It's about sufficiency. When is it enough? When can you Stop beating yourself up and trying to do more or get more or be more and be here now. Be content with what is and from what's important to you. Simplicity. A lot of us are overextended because our lives are so complex. We've taken on so much, we have so much. So simplicity is sort of a distillation of that so you're not again spinning like a top because you got things pulling you from 360 degrees anxiety free. That was included because this does engender anxiety. When you're feeling out of balance, you're incredibly anxious and letting go. Because a lot of us carry forward the day, we carry forward the week. We carry forward slights and resentments and judgments and if we can let those go, we release all that energy and it's available to us to use for moving forward. There are several from the new ones. When we revamp the topics, listening by topic, I want to add fearlessness because when you're in fear, you're shut down, you're contracted and it's really challenging to find the other possibilities, all the other ways you could be doing things. The self love. Because if you're in self love, you're going to take care of yourself, you're going to embrace self care, you're going to embrace the resources that build you up and add to your energy pool so that you can really have, have the space and the energy and the volition to do something about balancing your life. And I mentioned before, success built to last. Because what you're passionate about is, is going to be a very vital, vital energy coming into your life. And so that is really, really important. So that's in a nutshell, what I wanted to say about life balance. I've been, I've been testing it thoroughly this week and these are the things that, that I, for me, you know, we all have to ride these waves and sometimes they knock us down and we have to spit the, spill the water out and stand up and, and try again. So hang in there. If you're in a state of, of imbalance because it is possible and it is inside us. You know, that thought I read at the beginning is, is so apt. Everything you have is within you. It's how we, how we're approaching the world, how we're seeing it, how we're perceiving it. That's, that's hanging us up. So we had a couple questions and they're both interesting. They both relate to procrastination. The first one really struggle with anxiety which leads to procrastination how can, how can I help myself?

Anxiety free. The two parallels I would immediately look at would be anxiety free because that was geared toward releasing anxiety and then fearlessness because.

That often is the fear of making a mistake or doing the wrong thing is often why we don't do things. For procrastination itself I would use break the habit and get around to it. Now what I want to say about procrastination is often we procrastinate because of deeper reasons than just the superficial. I'm just not using my willpower, I'm just not getting it done. Sometimes what you're procrastinating about is not aligned with what is important to you or there's an embedded belief that what you're procrastinating about might be dangerous. And I want to share a really interesting example I came across when we released Abundance for Life. I had a young man who was an incredibly astute, incredibly articulate. I just loved his personality and the way he approach the world. But he had a bad habit of putting off things. He would not go to meetings he should go to. He was, I think he was self employed. He was starting new business but he'd miss meetings, he'd, he'd, he'd neglect to return calls and he was doing a lot of procrastinating. I was really puzzled and so I had him take, you know, sort of tune into the first and second energy centers which are the, the base of the spine and the below the, the in the navel, just below the navel because those relate to survival, insecurity and what he recogn.

His home. His dad was a real know it all and quite, quite the dominant figure. And if you disagreed with your dad, you were likely to end up hitting the wall across the room. And he had been told over and over and over he would never be a big man and as successful as his dad. So in the back of his mind, from a two year old's perspective, it was dangerous to contradict dad and, and prove him wrong. So he worked that through and everything shifted. So check, you know, you might when you go the habit or the get around to it, add to your intention that you want to stop procrastinating around this issue, whatever it is. But also add in and if there's a reason I'm doing this, please make it clear because I don't remember it. It's not clear to me at all because you're rather than conscious. It is the seed of all your wisdom and all your memories and it knows it knows things that you are not consciously aware of. So ask, ask for an answer, why am I doing this? You know, what's going on here? So in a way, I've also just sort of answered the second question, which was I have procrastination. It's a habit to remove. And so, you know, the one thing I would add to that is you might check and see if the procrastination is happening in a specific area because then you can know to look in that area or whether it's broad scope where you just sort of need to learn to relinquish some of the things you are doing and create time to do those broader scope things. Often when it's a limiting belief, I see it in a particular area. Whereas if it's wider scope, sometimes it's just overwhelm. So, so they're, they're overcoming. Overwhelm would be good in that circumstance. So those are my thoughts for today. I'd like to leave you with an inspiring thought. It's from David White, the Irish poet, and it's a simple phrase. It was, it's I was not leaving, but rather arriving. And that's how I think of coming to balance. It's not necessarily that you're leaving the imbalance, but you're seek the balance. So, you know, take a look, see why you feel like you aren't balanced. And then, then take a look at what you can do to offset that so that you can start riding those waves. You know, that sort of summarizes to me what I think is going on. Because, you know, you want to not so much move away from something, but move toward what you want more of. You know, the away from is. It's good to know what, what you're moving away from, but the toward and the forward is what really is going to give you the momentum to and move you into that space. And you're doing it from within and then it goes out through you to express in the world. So I was not leaving, but rather arriving. So take a look and see how you can ride the waves of life, you know, and it could be a great ride, even if you're having a crazy week, if you can learn to sort of laugh at yourself and do the things that bring you joy, you know, do those things even if it's just taking a brief walk or, you know, taking a break and doing, you know, going for a mini massage or just treating yourself to some little treat with the intent that you're, you're looking for balance and you're you're nurturing yourself, you're going to step out of this cycle of, of overwhelm and into something that is more serene and, and open and peaceful so that you can step into balance and ride the waves with, with, with total joy. And some of the crazy ways give you some of the craziest rides, too, so you enjoy that ride. Lots of love to you from all of us here at Learning Strategies and Mind Tracks.