Remember the good ol’ days of teeter-totters?
Those days at the park were the best. Especially if you had a friend that could launch you out of the teeter-totter saddle…..although, I’m sure a few injuries may have come from that.
It would be rare to have that one friend who weighed exactly as much as you did to equalize that teeter-totter and bring you both into perfect horizontal alignment, gently bobbing within centimeters of movement…but then you just sat there, unable to do much of anything with your friend except maybe laugh for a few moments thinking it was super cool.
However, at some point, one of you would feel the urge to get that teeter-totter “out of balance” again so you could continue along with some momentum.
It’s quite the metaphor for life, isn’t it? You actually have to get out of balance a bit to keep things moving along.
This got me thinking. Does being in balance all the time really help us in the long run?
I venture to say that being “out of balance” to some degree (or maybe even to an extreme) during any phase of our life either steers us back to center – (kinda like bumpers in a bowling lane), or….
it’s the catalyst for major transformational change.
Perhaps “being out of balance” can actually be very helpful in developing new dimensions of ourselves, cause us to “snap out of it”….or decide enough is enough and take back control of whatever it is that tipped the scale solely in one direction.
In other words, being out of balance (stress, career, nutrition, sleep, exercise, family, etc.) may end up playing to your advantage.
But none of this really matters unless you actually care to change. Or maybe the scale isn’t tipped far enough in one direction (yet) to provide the catalyst.
The thing is, we can’t avoid being out of balance at all. Even our own bodies are constantly adjusting via homeostasis to make tiny corrections to every biological mechanism to keep us alive. There is constant motion in one direction or the other.
That’s pretty granular, but no matter how micro this gets, it’s just as equally macro. Just think about taking one step. To do so, you have to temporarily get out of balance. It is inevitable to create forward motion.
The macro imbalances of life stare us right in the face (and often affect not only ourselves but others around us).
Those macro-imbalances can be just the ticket for transformational change.
Chronic lack of sleep? That means slow weight gain, adrenal fatigue, irritability toward everyone around you, poor job performance, no motivation to workout, sugar cravings, shortened life-span…the list goes on.
How far will you take chronic lack of sleep before you HAVE to do something about it?
To your advantage, it’s pretty cool to be forced to make major changes and all they do is benefit you.
Classic examples of macro-imbalances that force great change:
- Taking care of everyone else but yourself.
- Eating junk food and having no energy and feeling like crap.
- Not exercising or lifting weights and now you can’t get up off the floor or out of a chair.
- Hanging out with toxic people that don’t align with who you want to be.
- Filling your head with depressing news, commercials, tv, inconsequential pop-culture BS that has no significance to the world.
So, I guess what I’m getting at is that the idea of “finding balance” is certainly beneficial for the short-term, but perhaps if it goes too long, we actually stop being challenged.
Balanced is comfortable and effortless. And comfortable and effortless also means that you can get stuck in inertia that really doesn’t move in any direction at all, and when you think back to the teeter-totter days, standing still really isn’t all that exciting.
If you care to take a closer look at yourself; what imbalances are you dealing with yourself?
Do you care enough to change them? Are they bad enough that something absolutely has to change? Do you want to come out from hitting rock bottom with that teeter-totter?
What benefits through major changes would happen if you faced your imbalances?
It might mean a transition that is uncomfortable and unfamiliar, because it is just that little bit outside of your comfortable balance. Yet, in the end, the pull toward the positive far outweighs the negative – and before you know it, you’ll reverse directions.
Google Dictionary’s definition of “balance”, (used as a verb) is:
Offset or compare the value of (one thing) with another.
What value does your imbalance have to you compared to its alternative?