The Secret to Living a Balanced Life
Balance, balance, balance. “It’s all about balance.” It’s so cliche that I roll my eyes at myself when I say it to my clients.
But it’s cliche because it’s true. Psychological health and relieving stress, anxiety, and depression are all about balance.
Balancing action with acceptance, balancing growth with safety, balancing work with play, balancing socialization with solitude, balancing activity with relaxation.
Balance.
Today, I’ve got the mindset shift you need to finally find balance.
Stress and Anxiety are Cues that Our Life is Out of Balance
When we’re stressed, overwhelmed, or anxious, that’s an emotional cue that something is out of balance in our lives. So we respond by shifting things around.
For example, when we’ve been logging extra hours at work on an important project and are feeling stressed, we’ll respond by allowing ourselves to watch a movie on the weekend to de-stress.
Or when we’re feeling overwhelmed by a load of recent social activities, we’ll respond by staying in for a weekend to catch up on “me time.” We try to rebalance.
Mental health problems arise (in part) from things being too far out of balance for too long. We’ll rebalance but we too quickly go back to the old patterns that got us out of balance in the first place.
For example, after watching a movie on the weekend to de-stress, we go right back to logging extra hours at work. Or we stay in for a weekend only to overload our social calendars the following month just like before.
The Secret to Living a Balanced Life
We convince ourselves that we’re balancing, and it’s definitely an “A for effort” situation. We try to balance. We know it’s important to take time to relax, so we do.
But here’s where we go wrong: Living a balanced life is a skill.
Other skills in life: hard-boiling eggs, hemming pants, unclogging toilets, reading a map, budgeting, assertiveness, communication, handling criticism.
Things that aren’t skills: being hungry, sleeping, watching grass grow, getting upset, watching television.
The difference is that skills by definition require practice.
Let’s look at an example: playing the piano. Successfully playing the piano isn’t necessarily about winning the genetic talent lottery or even how often you sit at the piano and practice. It’s not even really about learning to hit the keys; any toddler can do that. It’s about learning how music works and how the piano works and then practicing repeatedly and effortfully with the specific intention of improving how well you play.
In other words, it’s about learning how to play the piano rather than learning how to play the piano. Make sense?
Let’s take another example: Budgeting. Being good with money isn’t about how often you balance your bank account. It’s about learning about how money works and making deliberate efforts to improve saving and spending habits (e.g., budget meetings, financial counseling, automated savings plans). It’s about how to spend and save rather than how to spend and save.
Overcoming Stress & Anxiety and Living a Balanced Life Require Practice
Back to balance. Living a balanced life isn’t about how often you exercise, how many movies you watch, how much “me time” you schedule, how good you look naked, or how many emails you answer on the weekend.
Living a balanced life is about learning the techniques that keep your life balanced and then practicing those techniques deliberately so you get better at keeping the balance.
Balance is a skill. It takes practice. It takes dedicated education about how balance works.
It’s obviously not as easy as it seems; otherwise, you would have figured it out by now and I wouldn’t be writing so many articles about it.
It also takes repeated and effortful practice that is specifically dedicated to improving how balanced your life is. It’s not something you just squeeze in once you’re anxious or stressed. It’s something you do on purpose, something you plan ahead, something you schedule in.
How to Get Your Life Balanced
What small change can you take today that will help you practice life balance?
What would be the equivalent of studying music theory or scheduling a budget meeting?
Maybe it’s blocking off time in your schedule for living a more balanced life (e.g., time for each of the important components we need to create purpose in life).
Maybe it’s scheduling a therapy appointment to finally work through the mindset blocks that are keeping you stuck.
Maybe it’s scheduling a weekly check-in with yourself to review how you’re doing on balance and make adjustments for the upcoming week.
Remember that practice is repetitive, so choose a change you can make that you can do repeatedly so you can consistently work toward improving this skill.
You can do this. You’ve perfected many, many skills in your life with this same approach of learning how the skill works and then practicing deliberately and repeatedly. You can now walk, talk, write, read, drive, and do numerous other skills simply because you’ve practiced them thousands of times in your life. Soon, you’ll be able to add “balance my life” to that list because now you know how.
Dr. Finch
P.S. Here’s the summary: The secret to getting your life balanced is recognizing that it’s a skill that requires dedicated practice like any other skill. If you were learning to play the piano, you’d practice by studying a piece of music. How can you practice learning to balance your life? Consider the ideas I outlined above, like starting with my free 5-part course.
P.P.S. Remember, this is education, not treatment. Always consult with a psychologist or therapist about your mental health to determine what information and interventions are best for you. See the disclaimer for more details.
Hayden C. Finch, PhD, is a practicing psychologist in Des Moines, Iowa, dedicated to helping you master your mental health.
