The Art of Balance

What I dream of is an art of balance.” ~Henri Matisse

Balance is so elusive, so sought after, and yet so incredibly nurturing! That is why I am so curious about balance – not as a destination but as an art form.

The spring equinox is a wonderful time to explore the art of balance as honors the balance of day and night. The spring equinox invites us to celebrate rebirth in nature and all that is sprouting and beginning to blossom within and outside ourselves. 

I am so grateful for the gift of the seasons as a time to reflect on our lives and better understand ourselves through the Earth’s cycles of life, death, and rebirth.

The equinox – equal day and night is a wonderful time to reflect on balance in our lives, not as some achievable goal, but rather as an art form. 

The wise Albert Einstein said, “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” This inspires me to embrace the idea that balance is not a destination but rather an ongoing process of life. 

So how do we embrace balance when life is ever changing? 

As someone who has practiced yoga for most of my life, I am always amazed by how different my balance is from day to day and between my left and right sides. Recognizing that balance is not stagnant has been so helpful in giving myself grace when I fall over in a balance pose or when I overcommit and fall out of balance in my life.

To know we have fallen out of balance, we need to have experienced balance.

For years I lived out of balance, in crisis management mode, caring for a child with chronic health challenges, feeling responsible for everything, over scheduled, overwhelmed, exhausted and yearning for life to be different. 

Gratefully when I began my journey of self-nurturing, I found balance to be more accessible than I thought. I found that my feelings and my body helped me discern when I was in balance as I felt peaceful, grounded, compassionate, centered, creative, and open hearted.

I learned that balance for me was cultivating the art of observing my giving and receiving, expanding and contracting, and engagement in activities that are active and restful, while being loving and compassionate toward myself as I made intentional choices. 

Each day I experience a different balance of those activities and I am aware when I have struck the right balance, feeling deeply connected to myself and the universe at the same time and when I am out of balance feeling unsettled, ungrounded, and out of alignment with what is important to me.

Striving for balance is not the goal. Instead I see each day as an opportunity to experience balance through my intentional and mindful choices of the activities that nurture me into feeling balanced. 

I hope you will not read my reflection and think you need to add another thing to your overflowing to do list or weigh yourself down with more things you must do or change. Instead, I hope with curiosity that you will begin to identify nurturing activities that feed a sense of balance in your life.

Rumi reminds us beautifully of this, “Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.” 

When we are overwhelmed and exhausted we are out of balance in our lives. When this happens we have often taken on more responsibility than there is time in the day leaving us chronically stressed and over-scheduled. We may find the more we give without filling back up, the more imbalanced we feel. Over time this unsustainable pattern leads to illness, burnout, and a lack of meaning in our lives. 

If we are yearning for work life balance we may not recognize that we actually need to create it. To develop more balance we need to choose to nurture ourselves and cultivate self-compassion, self-awareness, and intentional choices of how we spend our time. Recognizing we have choice is essential to cultivating balance in our lives.

I love Jana Kingsford’s reminder “Balance is not something you find, it’s something you create.”  

I ground myself in self-nurturing to create more balance in my life and I would love to share three empowering practices I find so helpful in cultivating more balance in my life.

1. Embrace a Growth Mindset

One of the most impactful self-nurturing practices to create balance is to release expectations of perfection and embrace a growth mindset. Unrealistic expectations of ourselves feeds a pattern of overworking and causes conflicting priorities at work and home. When we embrace a growth mindset, we allow mistakes to turn into lessons and find self-compassion and self-acceptance. To embody this practice I like to repeat the mantra “progress not perfection” and find the lesson in the challenge.

2. Let Go of What is Not Serving You

When we feel out of balance with our overflowing work and life calendars, it is usually because we need to let something go. This letting go can come in the form of decluttering our home or office, schedule, negative thoughts, responsibilities, and/or expectations. Every time we set a boundary and say no to activities that no longer bring us joy we create more balance in our lives. 

Reflecting regularly on what we need to let go of in order to cultivate more balance can be empowering and clarifying. As Betsy Jacobson wrote, “Balance is not better time management, but better boundary management. Balance means making choices and enjoying those choices.”

3. Acknowledge Yourself

When we are overwhelmed and live from a place of busyness, we often move onto the next item on our overflowing to do list without pausing to celebrate our completion or success. When we don’t acknowledge ourselves, we devalue our efforts, miss our growth, and often feel stuck in the doing without feeling a sense of purpose or meaning. Being intentional about acknowledging ourselves can deepen our gratitude practice, increase our confidence in ourselves, and supports a more balanced life.

Creating a practice of reflecting on balance in our lives empowers us to acknowledge what is working and gives us insight on how we can realign to invite in more balance. Just as self-nurturing is an art form, so is finding balance in our lives.

May you bring a sense of curiosity and non-judgement to the process as you embrace the art of balance in your life and nurture peace, compassion, and hope in the world from the inside out!