Balance is a Unicorn

Balance is a unicorn. 

It’s that thing everyone is chasing. A balance between work and family. A balance between work and resting. Balance in your marriage. In your friendships. Balance in all your relationships.

Here’s the thing… Balance is a unicorn. 

Maybe it exists in the world, but it feels more like a mythical creature. 

What it comes down to is how you honor your priorities. 

If I say that my #1 priority is supper with my family every night, I will leave work to make supper every night. 

If I want balance between work and rest, then I have to create time for both. I can always see another thing that needs to be done. Another task that needs to be finished. So, I will work myself to the bone, and wait longingly for the day that comes where there is time for rest. Wait longingly for that day to come where everything falls into place and it’s perfectly balanced. But it’s unrealistic to think that that day is ever going to come. It doesn’t just show up on the calendar. It doesn’t just show up after I have accomplished the first 10 items on my to-do list. It’s not going to happen because I want it to. Because I’m wishing it into reality. It’s not going to just fall into place. It’s going to happen because I consciously create that balance. I make the decisions that allow me to create that balance. 

It comes back to what your priorities are. If it is a balance between resting and doing, then schedule both into your life. And let BOTH BE OKAY. 

Take the time to go visit your family. Take the time to go on your kids' field trip. Take the time to watch that movie. Take the time for that massage or that long bath. 

You get to decide what your priorities are. You decide where and how you create balance in your life. Maybe that means finding a new job. Maybe that means creating new expectations with your family and your friends. Maybe that means you create new expectations within yourself. 

New expectations where you allow yourself to honor your desire to be with your family. Or your desire to rest. Or your desire to take on a new hobby. Or your desire to spend time in nature. You honor this idea that being busy isn’t necessarily productive and being busy does not equate to success. 

Maybe you’re currently honoring the idea that when I have done x,y,z, I will create balance. Work hard now so I can have balance later. I have to be real with you here. What you’re creating in the meantime are habits for yourself now, that will be harder to get out of later. You might even be creating a life that will never allow for balance. Because there will always be another bridge to cross.

Let me give it to you another way. 

If you tell me you’re trying to create a work/life balance, but you’re working 80 hours a week to earn a promotion, your priority isn’t balance, it’s that promotion. That’s not good or bad, it's just your current truth. It’s the life you’re creating at this moment. My priority is this promotion so my family will suffer. My mental well-being will suffer. My stress level will suffer. 

You’re allowing this one priority to disturb your balance. Again, there’s no judgment here. But if you want balance, however, you’re not creating it in your life, then that’s on you. You cannot let this one priority overshadow the rest and not expect it to disturb your balance. 

So here’s what I challenge you to do today. Make a list of your top three priorities today. Your health, your family, your finances, your relationships, your self-care, a clean house, whatever you want that to be. Pick 3. Then grab your calendar. Yes, right now. Schedule those things in your life. If self-care is a priority, schedule it in. Call up your massage therapist, or your healer, or your friends and get on the books. Then schedule your next priority. If that is work, then you establish your working hours. Now the ticket is that you cannot give up one to have the other. So if you’ve scheduled your self-care, then you cannot schedule your working hours during the same time. This is how you create your balance. You schedule them all into your life and stick to that schedule.

The way that you find balance, is to honor each of your priorities. You don’t find balance by finding one priority and then chasing it for a while. Then the next priority and chasing it. And then another and chasing that. That’s not balance, that is a shifting of your priority. 

To find balance is to honor each of your priorities with an equal amount of passion. 

So tell me in the comments, what does your unicorn look like?