Balance is not a final destination

But balance isn't a destination. And by that, what I mean is that it isn't that we get there and we stop and life is good, but the process of trying to get to balance, trying to get to that point of balance. We should enjoy it, much like my kids enjoyed it on the seesaw. You're listening to the Circle Sea Project. Welcome to the Triple CE Project, the podcast that helps you gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live lifeless. I'm your host, Ryan Spence, the big lore dropout, life coach, author, speaker, lover of hoodies, hip hop, and big hairy, audacious goals. If you're tired of living the life you think you should want and ready to start living the life you want, this podcast will help you get from where you are to where you really want to be. So now with friends, I invite you to grab a drink, take a seat, and allow me to guide you towards living a life that's lit. Hello. Hello. Welcome to episode 27 of the Triple C Project with me, your host, Ryan Spence, life coach, author, speaker, and former big law lawyer. And I'm here, as always, to help you gain clarity, boost confidence, and build courage. And so you can live life lit, author of the Triple C Method, my book, which is a toolkit to help you stop living the life that you don't want and start to live the life that you do want. You can grab the book now, paperback, ebook or audiobook, or all three if you're so inclined, but the book is going to help you stop living the life that you don't want, start living the life that you do want, as I just said. And it's a great read. Go ahead, check out the reviews. And yeah, if you pick up a copy, let me know what you think. Let me know what insights you take away. I'm proud of myself. And the reason I'm proud of myself is because as you are listening to this, I'm actually on holiday. And what that means is that I actually recorded this episode in advance, which, if you've been listening to the show for any length of time, you'd have heard me talk about my. My disorganization. It's not really disorganization. I mean, it's more the case of the fact that it's just the way that my brain works. I have these ideas and I know what I want to speak about when I want to spe about it. And that doesn't necessarily correspond with the. The prescribed method of having a schedule and doing things at the same time at the same place every single week. But this one is here. I batched a couple of episodes to cover my two week holiday. Initially I thought I was going to have a break and end the season and start season three in September, but I haven't. I thought, fuck it, let's keep going. So here we are. So I might do another episode about this at a later date, but just for now, I want to say if you are beating yourself up for being a little bit disorganized, not having a plan in the way that people say that you should, maybe it's just the way that your brain works. I think the more that we learn about neurodivergency, the more that we learn about the different ways that people's brains work and the different way that people feel good about working, the more accepting it's, the more acceptable it's becoming in society. Not that it should be acceptable, but. Yeah, do you. I guess is what I'm saying. I do want to talk more about this in a later episode because I, I think it's really important, particularly having a neurodivergent son and seeing a lot of his behaviors reflected in the way that I used to behave and now questioning certain things about myself and the way that I did things. But yeah, that is a topic for another day this week. We. I want to talk about, I want to talk about balance. Balance is something that comes up a lot in the world of personal development and just comes up a lot in the, in the world generally. Particularly when you're working in high pressure, high stress, corporate job. In the corporate world, work life, balance is obviously the, the key thing that people talk about and stress about. But I always talk about balance not just in terms of work life, but just balance generally. I mean, how, what is balance? What, why is balance important? So I want to show a story and a few weeks ago we're at the, at the park. We were away on a different break actually with the family and kids are in the playground and they got on the seesaw and I have a 6 year old and 4 year old so obviously they got on and the, the weight was, was unbalanced. You know, the, the four year old was, was, was higher up in the air than the six year old because of the weight differential, as you'd expect. And then the four year old asked me to come and sit on his side so I went over and sat on his side. And then obviously me being a grown up, not at all heavy, but me being a grown up meant that the balance shifted. So now my 6 year old was way up in the sky and me and my 4 year old were flat on the ground and then they wrote my wife in. So my wife got on with my 6 year old and that changed the balance a little bit, but still we were nowhere near balanced. And we played around with this and changing the sort of configuration and stuff and it was all a bit of fun and a bit of a game, but it was never entirely balanced. And it got me thinking that this is, this is life. Life is never fully balanced. Everything is never fully in check or fully where we want it to be. There are peaks and troughs, you know. I mean, sometimes some things are up, sometimes some things are down. And sometimes you'll have that occasional moment, that split second in time where everything might feel and seem to be aligned and then something will throw it off kilter and we're back to where we are. And we can beat ourselves up over this. We can beat ourselves up for neglecting certain things, for not spending as much time in one area of our life as another. But I think that's wrong. And I think that that does us a disservice. It places an expectation that we're supposed to be these perfectly balanced and perfectly aligned human beings all the time. And that's not realistic, particularly in the modern world when there is so much going on, there is so much information, there are so many things that we have to do, we feel we need to do. And we're not going to get everything in line and everything right all of the time. So what does that mean? Does that mean that we should ignore balance completely and accept that we are all flawed human beings? Well, yes, I think we should accept we're all flawed human beings. I think that we would be a lot happier and healthier if we accepted that premise. But just because you accept that you are flawed, it doesn't therefore mean that you give up. I think that we should be on a quest for balance. I think that we should try to get things in balance. But balance isn't a destination. And by that what I mean is that it isn't that we get there and we stop and life is good, but the process of trying to get to balance, trying to get to that point of balance. We should enjoy it much like my kids enjoyed it on the seesaw. We knew that we were never going to get perfect balance between my wife and I, because you're not. You need the perfect exact way at the perfect time. And that was never going to happen. But there was still joy in trying. There was still joy in the process. And that's what I want to share with you today, is that we can get so fixated on work life balance, on this part of our life not being great or that part not being great. But I think that once we're aware that awareness is what's important. It's being aware of, okay, this particular part of my life has been neglected right now and maybe I need to come back to that at some point. It's noting that it's not just letting it go. And I think as long as we carry that awareness with us, that's all that we can ask of ourselves. Maybe you've been through a particular busy period at work and you haven't spent as much time with your kids or with your partner. But as long as you recognize that and you're earmarking that as you're going through that period so that once that period dies down, the period at work dies down, you can focus on redressing that balance. Then you might have a period where works pretty quiet and you're spending a lot of time with your family or you're spending a lot of time on your hobbies or seeing your friends or on your side hustle. And it's just being aware of where that time is going and where you're spending maybe too much in one area and not enough on another area and looking for those moments when it's appropriate to start to redress that balance. What I don't want you to do and what I don't think is productive, in fact, what I know isn't productive from my own experience is using this quest for balance as a stick to beat yourself with. Of continually self flagellating over the fact that I haven't spent enough time with my partner, I haven't spent enough time with my kids. I should have stayed at work longer. I haven't been to the gym today or for the last few weeks. Stop beating yourself up. What you need to do. And this goes back to one of the early episodes where I talked about values is again, come back to your values. Always come back to your values. Come back to what's important to you. And then look at where you can address those. Look at where you can bring your life into slightly more alignment with those values without beating yourself up. And you will fall out. Sometimes we all fall out of line. Sometimes things come up, you know, I mean things come up to derail us, but it's maintaining the awareness. And a good way of doing this is maybe just checking in each evening or at the end of each week, if that's more useful to you. And just looking, okay, these are my values at the moment. These are my core values at the moment. Where did I live them this week? And how could I have lived them better? I mean, how could I have lived them in a more aligned way? Just ask yourself those two simple questions. It doesn't have to be a long convoluted process. And actually sometimes this is where doing it sort of daily can be useful. Takes like five minutes. Where to, I mean, today, how did I live my values today? And where did I fall short? Where could I have lived them? Slightly more aligned way. That's it. Very simple. And look at balance as somewhere where it will be nice to get to, but it's not your final destination. It's an ongoing quest like a seesaw. And like kids on a seesaw. Enjoy the process, have fun with it. Recognize, oh, I'm up here and this part is down. And then, you know, keep going back and forth and redressing it because that, that is life. That's the ebb and flow of life. So that's what I wanted to leave you with this week. Don't beat yourself up over a lack of balance in your life. Just recognize, be aware and ask yourself those two questions as frequently as you feel is needed. How did I live my values today, this week, this month? And where could I have lived them? Or what could I have done to have lived them in a more aligned way? That's all you need to do. Pursue balance, but don't look at it as a final destination. Okay, so that's it for this week. Before I go, I want to remind you that my book, the Triple C Method, is out now. Amazon, Audible for the audiobook, your local independent bookshop. If you can go and order there, that'd be great. Support your local shops. We need to be doing that. And yet paperback, ebook and audiobook. Download the free workbook that comes with the book. Please do that, because that will get you doing the work and it will stop the book sitting on your shelf looking pretty, getting your word inspired, but stopping you from taking action. Look at the book as something where you will always come back to it. And once you've read it, do the work and keep coming back. And make a promise to yourself, Make a commitment to yourself that no matter what happens in a month's time or however long it takes you to read it six months time, you will not be in the same place as you were when you started reading the book, it doesn't mean you have to have made some huge quantum leap. But maybe you, maybe you've just made a decision about something. Maybe you've just taken a few steps towards figuring out what it is that you want to do. But you should be different. I want you to have felt, feel that there's been some shift, there's been some change. Because that, that's why I wrote the book. That is why I wrote it for you. I want to start to kick off this shift within how you see yourself and how you see what your life could be and what you are capable of. So the Triple C method Gain clarity, boost confidence, build courage so you can live life Lit Go grab the book and once you've read it, please leave a review. It helps more people see the book. It helps me know what resonated with you, and it helps to let me see where I could go a bit deeper, whether for this podcast or for the next book. And if you do write a review, please share it on social media. Tag me. I really, really would love to see that and give you my personal thanks for supporting the book and more importantly, for taking control of your life and the direction of your life. Cool. That's it for me this week. You can always hit me up on email hey@im ryan spence.com or DM me on Instagram where I'm you can me at I am underscore ryan Spence or LinkedIn. All the links to all the places will be in the show notes and I look forward to catching it with you next week. When I were talking about, well, as I said, I don't know what I'll be talking about. Whatever comes to me at the time. Until then, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life. Thanks for tuning in to the Triple C project. Before you go, I want to share something with you. When I was in Big Law, I struggled with limiting beliefs. I didn't have the confidence to believe that I could change my life, that I could leave Big Law and do something differently, that I could move from a life of lethargy and create a life that's lit. That's why I created Confidence Journal for people like you who are in the same position that I was, who is struggling with that confidence. I need a boost to allow you to believe that you can do the things that you want to do. Confidence Journal is six journal prompts that I've used and I still use to help me get from the guy who was too scared to post on Instagram to the guy who is now committed to giving a TED Talk to the guy who wrote a book. To the guy who launched a podcast. You can do any of this, too. All you need to do? Stop boosting your confidence. So to do that, head to iamrinespence.com and download the Confidence Journal. It's free, it works, and it's going to change your life. Thanks for tuning in. See you next week. And remember, stop living a life of lethargy and start living life lit.