#125 - Balance is BULLSHIT: Myths, Misconceptions & What Balance Actually Is...
Summary
Today on the podcast, we’re talking about how conventional perspectives on balance are bullshit and a new analogy/perspective for thinking about balance in your life.
For show notes, head to coachellyn.com/podcast and, of course, if you have any questions or want to connect, head on over to @coachellyn on Instagram.
ACTION STEPS:
Balance is not having all the parts of your life in equal proportions. It’s not dedicating the same amount of time to everything.
Balance is like a single teeter-totter.
One end has all the time, energy, and bandwidth you’re able to dedicate to your tasks, to-dos, and responsibilities
The other end has all the tasks and responsibilities you need to get done.
Balance is adjusting your tasks and responsibilities to accomodate your resources (time, energy, bandwidth)
RESOURCES IN THIS EPISODE:
Transcript for this episode
(00:08):
Hey there, friend. And welcome back to the take back your life podcast. Ellyn here, and I'm so excited to have you back once more. I've got some great content lined up for you over the next couple months. I'm actually doing double recording this morning, cause I was so inspired by some of the ideas that I had, admittedly, as I was going to sleep last night. So I've got my coffee. I'm caffeinating this morning. Um that's kind of the difficulty sometimes of having a day job and having a side hustle that you're working at the same time. Um, if I've got to get this work in early in the morning, so caffeinating right now. Um, you've gotta love podcasts though, because I'm literally like just got out of the shower, wet hair in the baggiest sweatshirt in the world, and I'm recording this for you and delivering you this content.
(01:32):
So this morning I'm really excited because what we're going to be tackling today is why balance is bullshit. Some of the myths, the misconceptions, and really a new analogy for you for what balance actually is and what balance actually looks like. Cause I think one of the big things that leads to burnout particularly in high achievers is this misconception that they have to have their life quote unquote in balance. And it's bullshit. It's not true. Balance is a myth, especially the way that most of us conventionally think about balance. So I'm going to be presenting you with a new way to think about it. Kind of just a little mindset shift for you around thinking about balance.
(02:08):
But before I get into that, I want to make a couple announcements. Firstly, if you haven't heard about this already, I have a book club it's called the achievers book club. It's $15 a month and I would love to invite you into it. We had been reading some amazing books lately this month in the month of June, we are reading the book: The body is not an apology, which feels particularly apt because so many people in the community had mentioned, you know, not feeling great in their bodies and we're heading into summer and there's all sorts of pressure right now to have your body look a certain way. So it felt really appropriate to be reading this book. So we're reading that in the achievers book club right now. Again, $15 a month and you get a community, you get accountability and you really get support making reading a habit, which I know so many high achieving women that I talk to, that's a goal of theirs. So I'd love to have you in that you can head to Coach Ellyn again, that's E L L Y N, coachellyn.com/book club and check out some of the details.
(03:04):
Additionally, you could also join the take back your life premium membership, which is a $97 a month membership, but you get the book club as well as group coaching, mentorship, monthly themes, quarterly guest speakers. There's a lot of shit in that premium membership. Um, and those are great options to get involved. Especially if you find yourself needing some support and some accountability with your burnout, with, you know, making some changes in your life. You know, we actually have some people in the community that are considering some career changes right now. So if that's something that is inspiring to you or that you feel like you need support with definitely head to coachellyn.com/bookclub for the book club or coachellyn.com/membership for the membership, or you can always connect with me on Instagram @coachellyn. And let me know if you've got any questions.
(03:49):
But with that let's head into today's content all about my balance is bullshit and really addressing some of the myths, the misconceptions, and giving you a new mindset shift and a new analogy really for what balance actually is. So let's dive into it.
(04:04):
Firstly, we're just going to come out and say it it's in the name of this podcast episode. And I love having to do astericks when I put a swear word and to the name of a podcast episode episode, but balance is bullshit. The way that the majority of us think about balance is complete bullshit. It's completely not sustainable and not realistic for the vast majority of us. How most of us think about balance is kind of just to paint a picture in your head, kind of like it's some multi-pronged teeter-totter if you will. So not a teeter-totter that has two ends, but a teeter-totter that has all of these different ends for all of the different facets of our life. That's how a lot of us think about it is like we've got this multi-pronged teeter-totter where as soon as one part of your life goes out of whack where you're investing too much time, suddenly your entire teeter-totter is off balance.
(04:58):
That's really how a lot of us think about balance is if one part of our life is out of whack. Our whole life is out of whack and that is not sustainable. It is not a sustainable way to live. And it's a, not a sustainable way to think about balance because you really can't achieve that without help. You know, if you have a busy season at work, you might not have as much time to dedicate to your family or your environment might just not be as clean as it typically is. Or, you know, if you have personal commitments or whatever, or you're going through a rough patch at work, maybe your finances will be a little bit out of whack. There are going to be seasons where the aspects of our lives fluctuate. And if our quote unquote balance is thrown out of whack by one of those fluctuations, that's a problem.
(05:43):
That's why this way of thinking about mindset or balance is just not feasible. It's not sustainable, but that's not to say that balance doesn't exist. We just have to reframe and shift our perspective on what the hell balance actually is. So I want to give you a new analogy, a new way to think about this. It is, think of balance as one teeter-totter. So as opposed to some multi-pronged Teeter totter with, you know, a prong or an end that's for your career and end that serve your family and end that's for your friends. So on and so forth. Let's just say we've got one Teeter totter. The typical teeter-totter you think of at any children's playground and this teeter-totter has time on one end. So all the time that you have in your day, your 24 hours, and then on the other hand, it's got a bucket that represents all the things you're pouring your time into.
(06:34):
So two ends to our teeter-totter time on one end, all of our commitments obligations and to do's on the other end, they all, all those things go into this same bucket. Now this is the problem with how many of us approach our time and our tasks. Most of us, yes. Only add to dos to the one side. If we have more commitments, we have more things we're taking on. We just keep adding and adding and adding to the bucket on that one side of our teeter-totter and that bucket starts overflowing. And that bucket it's becoming out of balance with the amount of time that we actually have available to us. That's it! That's the problem is that most of us only add to the one side without giving those to dues and tasks and commitments any more time.
(07:23):
So like, say for example, you have in your typical day, okay, I'm going to give myself an hour in the morning to get ready, eight hours over the course of the day to work an hour in the evening to work out and focus on my health and my self care, and then I don't know, three or four hours after that to spend time with my family. Okay. Maybe that's your standard day. And then maybe suddenly you're stuck in a longer commute than you usually are. Now your hour in the morning to get ready, starts to cut into your work time, and then maybe you get to work and you have a whole bunch more fires to put out than you typically do. So your workday, that would typically last those eight hours, like say from nine to five - though, I don't really know any high achieving woman who only works from nine to five - but that nine to five suddenly turns into 9:30 because you got there late 9:30 to 6 or 6:30. Now you are eating into that evening time. And yet you probably the typical high achiever that I talk to doesn't make any concessions for the change in their day. They don't say, okay, well, I'm just going to work out a little less this evening, maybe a half an hour instead of an hour or 90 minutes or whatever you typically do. The typical high achiever that I talked to is like, "all right, well, I didn't get my workout in for my typical, you know, five to 6:00 PM" or whatever. So now they're getting it in from 6:30 to 7:30 at the end of their Workday. And now they always spend time with their family in the evening doing X, Y, Z, which is great. Don't get me wrong. I love that. You know, when I hear that high achievers are blocking that into their life, I love that. That's great. But in days like this, maybe we should shave that down. And we typically don't. Instead of that three, four hours, maybe it's just two or one. One hour of really, really present, mindful time with our families.
(09:12):
We don't cut those hours down and now we're going to bed later. We are, you know, cutting down on the sleep. The very thing that powers the energy and the responsibilities that we have. We're cutting down on that really important thing, because so many of us have it in our heads that we don't need to sleep, sleep when you're dead. Right? That's what so many of us say, but that is a problem. That is where the problem arises. That is how our teeter-totter becomes unbalanced.
(09:40):
So instead of thinking about balance as if you're spending an equivalent amount of time on everything in your life, -which is that, you know, multi-prong, teeter-totter analogy - change the way you're thinking about it. Change the way you're thinking about balance. And instead say, okay, I have 24 hours in my day and balance is not over committing those 24 hours. Balance is making concessions and adjustments when there are parts of my life that are demanding more of me.
(10:09):
If business is demanding more of you or your career is demanding more of you, balance is cutting back the time you're investing in maybe your social life. Not for an extended period of time, because I don't think that's healthy, but maybe for a week or two, you just have to take on less social commitments. Maybe when your social commitments or your family and friends side of your life is really ramping up. Maybe it is making adjustments and concessions at work. Now I know we all have work responsibilities and I know me saying, "make adjustments and concessions at work" might sound like that's something that's out of your control, but I would argue that it isn't. I would argue that the ways in which we can make some of these adjustments when we're at work is by setting more realistic deadlines that accommodate for the bandwidth and the extra commitments that we have going on in our lives.
(10:59):
I have found, and maybe I have just worked for some really good people, that for the most part, when I share with my manager or my boss, "Hey, I have this extenuating circumstance happening in my personal life. And I'm going to be here. I'm going to show up, I'm going to do my work, but I may not be able to get this thing done in the original timeline I set out". They allow me to make adjustments. I find that when you set expectations with people, they expect you - naturally - to meet those expectations. But when you come back and say, Hey, that might've been a little ambitious or that might've been a little bit too optimistic, you have now reset the expectation for them. That's it.
(11:38):
And really, it's also maybe about setting that expectation for yourself. It's acknowledging the fact that you do only have 24 hours in a day. It's acknowledging the fact that even if you have 24 hours in a day, you only have so much bandwidth. You only have so much energy. Balance is about, you know, whether we think about the other side of the teeter-totter as being our time, maybe for you, it's thinking about it from the perspective of the other side of the teeter-totter is your bandwidth or your energy or your focus. Maybe that's how you think about balance. But the takeaway here today - and this is going to be a nice, short and sweet episode - the takeaway here today is this. We have to make adjustments. We have to accommodate when we have more tasks and to do's in our bucket. In our other side of the teeter-totter, we have to make adjustments for the time, the energy and the bandwidth that we have. That's true balance. For people that cannot afford to bring in help to help them meal prep and take care of their kids and keep their environment and their home clean. For people who don't have the ability to do that, you have that finite resource, you have that finite amount of time, that finite amount of bandwidth and that finite amount of energy that you can dedicate to the things that you have to do in your life. And when you spread yourself too thin, when you over-commit yourself, that is when you get out of balance.
(13:02):
If you know your resources though, and you know what you have to work with and you dedicate and delegate those resources accordingly to what you have on your plate, that's how you stay in balance. So that is the shift in perspective that I want you to adopt that balance. Isn't about having everything in your life, you know, evenly dedicated the same amount of time, dedicated to everything. It's not a multi-pronged teeter-totter, you have one teeter-totter in your life. You have one teeter-totter with a finite amount of time, bandwidth and energy on one side, and then all of the commitments and obligations that you are using that time and energy for on the other side. And those two things have to be in balance. You can't over commit yourself, or you're going to run out of energy and bandwidth and time. That's the big takeaway for today.
(13:57):
So it's going to take some experimentation. It's going to take some modification to figure out what adjustments you do need to make. I feel like every time I talk about something like this, these little mindset shifts that we need to adopt, I just need to add in that little caveat that you probably won't get it right the first time. And that's okay. Just put on your scientist hat, figure out what's gonna work best for you and course correct as needed. But if you adopt this mentality, that notion of balance is suddenly going to become so much more achievable and attainable for you. And ultimately that is what we're after.
(14:35):
So I hope this resonated with you. I hope that you like that analogy and that you really took something from that analogy for how you can apply it to your own life with that. That's all I got for you today. Thank you so much for joining my friend. And I will talk to you next time. Bye.