Life, A Balance of Opposing Forces
100 Things #020 - Find Balance
Just wanted to take a second here to say that twenty issues of this newsletter later and I feel like we’ve hit a bit of a milestone today. I’m super impressed at the small bit of traction that we’ve gained here so far, and I’m more than happy to keep the momentum going.
Thank you for sticking around, or if this is your first read here, thanks for checking 100 Things out! Please considering sharing with a friend. It helps me out a ton.
Life, The Balancing Act
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, today I wanted to look at one practice in particular that I make a point of trying to live by on an almost daily basis. Now, it’s not that I wake up every morning thinking, “Oh, I can’t wait to make sure that my life is balanced today!” because that would be a little odd and not really my style, but rather, I find that this principle is one that just naturally gets brought up in so many aspects of day-to-day life, that life in itself is a reminder to live in a balanced way.
In this newsletter, I try to touch on a number of practices, beliefs, habits, and pastimes that I believe can help individuals to lead more fulfilling, introspective, and pleasant lives all around.
Often, though, practices and habits like these can run the risk of being unsustainable when over-indexed. Many don’t have the capacity to always look at life through a positive lens, or to live in the moment 24 hours of the day. It’s often not realistic and can lead to serious issues of burnout if attempted.
A general approach to life that I think often goes without being explicitly spoken of is to see life as a balancing act between opposing forces within oneself.
And what does this look like in practice?
This in practice can look very similar to Item #7 and Item #12 of 100 Things, which ask readers to be okay with Forgiving and Making Mistakes respectively. Though, giving a name to the general principle which promotes these specific behaviours can be an effective way of building these actions into habits.
It's important to recognize that it’s impossible to be your ideal self at every moment, and acknowledge the balancing act that is often taking place within our minds daily.
Several specific aspects of life remind an individual of this need for balance, even when it may seem like the correct answer is instead to come down on either side of an issue, instead of trying to find a healthy middle ground.
Take the need for intuition in decision-making for example. Knowing when to rely on personal judgment, and when instead to defer to authority or expertise can be a tricky thing to find equity between.
Common knowledge and everyday sayings will often encourage contradicting information, and would have one believing that both of these opposing options are simultaneously correct for different reasons.
In situations like this, attempting to average out one’s experience and be able to balance these two opposite forces, despite being a potentially difficult ask, can provide one with a much more informed course of action.
It’s not an uncommon occurrence for needs and wants, or habits and circumstance, or any other set of opposing forces to be pulling us in opposite directions, and it’s left to an individual to find the appropriate balance of the two for themselves.
A final note on balance
It's important to note that balance is often not a matter of following a rule of 50/50.
Balance, in my mind, is more a game of equity than equality. Following intuition half the time and relying on others to guide you the other half is not a sustainable approach and will likely not work out very well in practice.
Discovering what sort of balance works for you on a case-by-case basis is the only way to build real, lasting habits. And those balances are almost certain to change over time, requiring one to be open to adapting and shifting with the needs of the tide.
As Jana Kingsford said, “Balance is not something you find, it’s something you create.”
I’ll leave you here with a few journaling prompts for those who want to do a bit of guided thinking around this topic:
Reflect on a time when you felt out of balance in your life. What factors contributed to this imbalance, and how did it affect your well-being?
Reflect on the notion of balance as equity rather than equality. How do you determine the right balance for yourself in different aspects of your life? How has this balance evolved over time?
Think about Jana Kingsford's quote, "Balance is not something you find, it's something you create." How can you apply this mindset to your own life? What steps can you take to create more balance and harmony in your daily routine?
Thanks for reading. I appreciate all the support so far.
For now, have a good week, and I’ll see you at 100.