Why Balance Is So Elusive

We spend so much of our time trying to find balance, equilibrium, and center. As someone who has dedicated myself to a process of growth and self-compassion, being in balance has always been a target. This episode is all about the epiphany that has changed the balance game!

*This track contains explicit language that may be offensive to some listeners. My hope in remaining authentic to myself with my speech is to be inclusive of people who may feel shamed or isolated by the meditation and mindfulness resources that currently exist. As well, I do see our journey as welcoming ALL parts of ourselves, not shaming our humanness or that of others. This is my intention, but I recognize the language may not be in service of all.*

Transcript

Wake the Fuck Up,

The podcast that mingles mindfulness,

Buddhism,

Brain science,

Evolutionary biology and real authentic human experience.

Welcome to Wake the Fuck Up.

Hello,

Hello,

Amazing humans,

And welcome to this episode of the Wake the Fuck Up podcast.

My name is Tiffany Andres,

And I'm your host,

Curiosity explorer,

Human traveler,

All the fun weird things,

Definitely weird.

Today's episode is all about balance,

And I think this is a really interesting word that carries a lot of meaning and connotation,

And especially for those of us that are on any sort of track of personal growth or transformation or trying to be our best selves and live our best lives,

Balance can be a word that carries a lot of weight,

And my own personal experience with balance has greatly shifted in recent years,

And so I want to share it with you today.

And really what spurred the reminder of this is a conversation that I had with my amazing mother a few days ago,

And I want to just shout out to my mom,

Who has been absolutely an inspiration and a role model and a confidant and so much to me in my life.

I mean,

My mom,

I used to describe her kind of as a child of the wind when it came to religion and religious sentiment,

That she really,

For me growing up,

Felt like a child of the earth.

She was the first person that showed me yoga,

And I totally wasn't into it because I was a teenager,

And we did hard yoga,

And I was sweating,

And it was complicated,

And I didn't like it because it was hard,

And now I'm a registered yoga teacher.

And,

You know,

Growing up,

My mom and I would have really long conversations about meaningful things,

And I grew up having a place to be open and honest about who I was and what I was struggling with,

And,

You know,

My mom has always really been my best friend and a safe place for me to be me,

And we've said some hard things to each other and some beautiful things to each other,

And it's the kind of relationship that I just feel so grateful for,

And one of the conversations we had recently was about balance.

This amazing woman that is my mother is now,

I believe,

Over 130 days sober from alcohol,

And this is really a powerful and huge accomplishment.

I hope that it is safe and comfortable and fair for her for me to share just a little bit of this,

That,

You know,

Balance,

As we talked about it,

Has been something that's been on the forefront of her mind as well for probably the last 10 years when it came to drinking and exercise and just how she exists in her life,

And this is so true for me too,

And what I think is really beautiful and amazing is that for right now,

My mom's expression of balance when it comes to consumption is for it to be zero,

Right?

And I think there's a lot of people that might argue that that's imbalance,

Because it's all the way to one extreme,

And I think this is such a beautiful and perfect opportunity to have the conversation of what balance really means,

And I really want to start with what I think is the most important point,

And that is balance is a moving target,

Y'all,

And I think for a long time,

In my mind at least,

The idea of balance was like figuring out the perfect recipe,

And I think thinking about it in terms of bread is probably the best analogy,

Because bread is really hard to make for anybody that's ever made bread,

Y'all.

I can bake all day long,

And I can make just entrees and appetizers and baked goods and all the fucking things,

But bread is so finicky.

If you don't have the right ratio of yeast to sugar,

And if you don't let it rise long enough and activate the yeast and all the things,

And how do you get the outside of the bread crispy and let the inside still be soft?

It's like a really tender process,

But in that way,

There really is a particular recipe for bread that is the right thing,

And I'm not even going to call it the balanced one,

Because that would totally defeat the purpose.

Instead,

I'm going to say balance is basically the opposite of that,

Where it's not about finding the perfect recipe that gets it right every single time,

Because life is different every single time.

Oh my God,

I'm having an aha moment as I'm recording this for you all,

So I'm going to share it,

That the perfect bread recipe in New York City is not the same as the perfect bread recipe in San Francisco,

Because the humidity and the salt in the air in San Francisco is different,

Such that I've actually talked to somebody about this.

Your bread recipe has to change based on where you are physically on the earth,

And so maybe it is actually a perfect description of balance,

That the same thing is true of our lived experience,

Except we can be in the same physical place,

Right?

I can be living in the same physical place,

But the way that my body shows up one day versus the next is going to be different,

And really,

When we're talking about balance,

This likely is shifting maybe on a scale of months,

Like from one month to another month,

Certainly from one year to another year,

And it might shift even from week to week or day to day,

Right?

But for a long time,

I deeply believed as someone that is on my own path of self-awareness and growth and transformation and the process of undoing so much of my conditioning and opening my heart to the truth of who I am and the beauty and the goodness in every single human being on this earth and awakening to the natural sense of love and joy that is pervasive in every moment,

That to be in balance would mean that I would find the right mix of meditation,

Yoga,

Reading,

Listening to wisdom,

Writing,

Whether it's poetry or novels,

Mantras and music,

Alone time with time with friends,

Consumption,

Absolutely,

Just all of it,

Right,

That there would be some right ratio,

Like the bread recipe,

That would leave me feeling blissful every single day,

And that is just not it.

I have learned,

And the incredible conversation that I had with my mom recently,

I feel like she expressed that she has learned as well,

That balance is a moving target,

And it's all about being so in tune with ourselves and our hearts and our energy and the world around us that we're able to shift and pivot,

And I think the best example of this is those balance boards,

Like you never really watch somebody on a balance board,

And they're just standing fucking still,

Like they're constantly swaying from side to side,

And the goal is to keep both sides of the board off the ground,

Right,

But you're never really standing still in the center,

And let's be real,

Y'all,

If a balance board meant standing still,

And the board was not moving from side to side,

And you got real good at a balance board,

And you just fucking stood there,

You would get so bored so quickly that you would never play with a balance board again,

Which who knows,

Maybe that's why a lot of adults don't do it,

So the same for me is true in our day-to-day living experience,

If we found the perfect recipe for being human,

And we experienced perfect balance every single day,

Ultimately what I'm gonna argue is that that would lead us to a feeling of being imbalanced,

Because there would be no contrast,

And the experience of joy comes inherently from the contrast of the experience of being without it,

I don't even think it has to be contrasted with suffering,

It can be contrasted with monotony,

Or the mundane of being unfeeling or disconnected,

Which is,

In a way,

Suffering,

Right,

Maybe suffering by contrast,

But the beauty in so much of our human experience comes from this experience of contrast,

It's the both-and,

It's the joy with the pain,

It's the love with the sadness,

Or the missing,

Or the loneliness,

And so in this way,

Balance cannot be a state of equilibrium where we're unmoving,

Because then we're not alive,

The reality of our life,

The constancy of living is change,

The sun rises and sets every single day,

We breathe thousands of times every single day,

We blink thousands of times,

We're in light and dark over and over again in one single moment,

And this is the natural process of living,

We go through the seasons just like everything around us,

From summer to fall to winter to spring,

And in every single one of those experiences,

What we need to feel balanced,

Settled,

Joyous,

Expansive,

Connected,

Present,

Alive,

And in love is going to look different.

This episode is so important and meaningful to me because for so long,

I beat myself up for not doing all the things all the time,

For not constantly being reading a book,

For not constantly meditating every single day,

Or even when I was meditating every single day,

For not constantly meditating at least 40 minutes a day,

I would beat myself up for not having a regular yoga practice,

I would beat myself up for not having regular coaching clients,

I would beat myself up for making human mistakes and getting angry or frustrated,

Whether it's beating yourself up for not finding the perfect self-care,

Quote-unquote,

Routine,

Which if we're beating ourselves up for it,

Is it really self-care?

That's a whole different episode.

Or we're beating ourselves up for not being what we see is the best,

Most ideal version of ourselves.

The reality is that balance does not mean to be still.

Balance does not mean every single day looking exactly the same because we figured out the right bread recipe.

Balance is the willingness,

Truly,

To be so in tune with our own hearts that we can shift and change just like the balance board,

Moving from right to left,

Changing our self-care routines from 40 minutes of meditation with a 10-minute Alan Watts talk to 30 minutes of meditation with a 10-minute Alan Watts talk and 10 minutes of writing in my journal,

Or 20 minutes of reading followed by 20 minutes of meditation and 20 minutes of writing,

Or whatever it might be for you.

I think there's an important caveat here of not lying to ourselves,

That it can be easy to take the easy way out,

And there's a difference between not encouraging ourselves to move in the direction of our own health and wellness and goodness versus allowing ourselves the grace to offer the practices that truly feel good and that let us feel in balance and connected and present and alive.

If what we're doing is no longer serving us in that way,

Resilience means being willing to shift and change.

It means seeking out what now feels like balance.

One of my favorite examples of this is that a couple of years ago,

I read a book by Osho called Love,

Freedom,

And Aloneness,

And at the end of the book,

He really synthesizes everything together to say that when we experience moments of discomfort,

And I've talked about this in a previous episode,

But when we experience moments of discomfort,

What it really is is an opportunity to turn towards ourselves and go,

Hey,

Baby,

I'm here.

What is it that you need?

Sometimes it's as simple as our own presence.

I currently have my hand on my heart,

Feeling the pressure and the warmth of my hand,

And I can't tell you how many times you guys just saying those words to myself,

Hey,

Baby,

I'm here,

Putting my hand on my heart,

What is it you need,

I got you,

Is actually all that I need.

It might be that I've been moving too quickly through my day from one task to another,

Whatever it might be,

That my body is just saying,

Tiffany,

Slow the fuck down,

And just coming back and being present with myself is all I really need.

And sometimes there's a deeper need.

Maybe I actually need to sit,

Take a moment to be still.

Maybe I need to put headphones on my head and listen to some music.

Maybe I need to write or to read.

Maybe I need to step outside and feel the sun on my skin or the earth beneath my feet.

Maybe I need to go for a walk.

Maybe I need to close my computer.

Maybe I need to call a friend.

Whatever it might be,

Discomfort is the invitation to reconnect to balance.

So I'm actually going to backtrack on myself a little bit here.

Balance,

Really,

This adjusting on the board of balance exists moment by moment.

We probably do this many,

Many times a day.

Whether we're cognizant of it or not is a different question.

And so the real invitation for this episode is get curious about how you're beating yourself up for being out of balance.

What are the ways that you can give yourself more grace to recognize that being in balance is a moving target?

And there are 25 different things in any given moment that could be in or out of balance.

So to be out of balance on one of them is not a failure.

It's an opportunity to come home to ourselves and to discover what we really need.

The greater invitation is to invite yourself into a place of lifting yourself up for even trying,

For knowing that your purpose in this moment is not to be perfect,

But to be beautifully and painfully in process to get balance right and to get balance wrong.

Because to be in balance fundamentally means that we also have to go through moments of being out of balance because the world around us and inside of us is going to change whether we like it or not.

And when it changes,

We can either resist it,

Sticking to our bread recipe from the wrong location,

Or we can change it and adjust to the new humidity and salt content in the air and again,

Get to taste the perfect bread.

Thank you so much for being here with me for this episode.

I hope that it sparked something in you,

At least maybe playful and creative,

And that you give yourself a little more space to recognize how right you're getting balance and that it's not about the perfect recipe.

I appreciate every single one of you for being here with me and I look forward to next time.

Happy travels.