WORKSHOP ALERT: Come dig deeper with me on the topic of prioritizing your priorities. 

Save the date: April 27, 2-4 pm EDT  https://prioritizing-your-priorities.eventbrite.com

Key steps to finding true balance

My clients are high achievers. Excellent at their job. Wanting to meet all their targets. Considered top talent and successful. 

These women are also working hard to be a good parent or partner, ensure everyone is fed, and maintain their home. They want their family to be happy and healthy. 

But trying to do it all comes at a cost. Everything is a priority. The success is at the expense of their health.

When my clients talk about the desire for balance it's because something doesn't feel right inside them - their energy is unstable and their mind feels unfocused. They have aches and pains in their body and they are exhausted all the time. 

I want to start by shattering the concept of work-life balance. It simply doesn’t exist. 

Society has given us a way to compartmentalize the tasks and conversations “in the office” vs “in the home” so that we can cope with the absolute volume of work that we are expected to complete each day. 

We allow ourselves to step away from the responsibilities and burden of accountability at the office and pick up the responsibilities and accountability in our home life, and visa versa. The work - tasks and conversations - doesn’t change, just the context. 

What I hear from my clients, and experienced in my own life, was that the volume of work placed upon us day-to-day feels unbearable. We pick up the weight of that work everyday and carry the load. The weight looks like tasks and conversations that advance our career, facilitate home maintenance, support our family …  and somewhere in that mix, social media tells us that we also need to sustain ourselves through self care - another set of to-do’s to add to the ever growing list.

The myth of work-life balance continues to prevail in society because we all need there to be a common expectation of separation in order to sustain our mental health. We visualize ourselves in three parts (work, home, self) so we can mentally take a break by compartmentalizing. However, we never truly rest - we simply keep shifting the work from one part of our “self”  to the other.

We think the word balance means “a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions” but there’s a second definition “an even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.” 

Balance is an action word - to keep in a steady position so that you do not fall. When was the last time you stood on one leg? It felt like work to keep your balance! Your whole body got involved - leg muscles activated, core, arms out to steady you. 

You are making micro decisions all day long to be in balance and keep balanced. It feels like choosing success at work vs happiness at home. 

I imagine a see-saw or teeter-totter. For each time it's your turn - you have to squat down and build up tension in your legs, push off forcefully from the ground to get to the top, where you pause to rest and anticipate the moment of absolute joy as you drop into free fall. Then, back on the ground where your legs generate tension so you can spring back to the top. 

It's normal to see kids pumping their legs over and over - putting in the effort for that fraction of a second to feel the fun of being in free fall. 

It's more fun when there is someone else in the other seat because you get to stay at rest for longer, not knowing when the joy will come ... 

But in life, you make your own decisions. You’re  the only one on this swing. And it can feel tiring - jumping all the time to capture that moment of joy!

And yet we cling to a myth that encompasses the fourth definition of balance - to offset or compare the value of (one thing) with another. 

Our society compares the value of work vs life. Are you having to trade off time and effort to build meaningful relationships with clients at the expense of family and friends? Taking time to raise a family at the expense of career? Brown bagging a healthy meal or buying a heavily salted lunch? sitting for hours at a desk and in transit instead of freedom to move throughout the day? 

Think of the effort you have put into trying to find some semblance of equal weighting by constantly making binary decisions between work or home? Family or friends? Success or health?

We called this whole exhausting process being in balance.

I propose that there is a different perspective we can bring. One that allows us to be our full and authentic self at all times.

Throughout this program we'll be working together on:

  • understanding the natural cycle of energy in your body to help better manage situations that leave us feeling exhausted
  • gathering those pieces of your self that have been divided so that you can start feeling whole again
  • learning how to let your body be at rest to build resiliency and heal
  • reflecting on the sources of tension in your life (within and around you) so you can manage them from a holistic view and set healthy boundaries, rather than emotionally dividing yourself to cope with the stress
  • committing to make a change

These steps require thinking work, which we'll do together through reflection questions in each of the units in the program. There is additional support available if you want to connect and share your insights and challenges in a group coaching call, or through a private Clarity Coaching Call.  You can also expect new resources each month to help you feel well again


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