Inner Balance Over Work-Life Balance

In this, I explore what it really means to find balance in our lives.

We often think of balance as something external - how we divide our time between work, family, rest, and the things we enjoy, and while this has its place, many people still feel stressed, overwhelmed, or disconnected, even when their lives appear balanced on the surface.

So what is missing?

This episode looks at the deeper truth that real balance is not created through time management, but through inner balance.

Through reflection and personal experience, I explore:

• Why external balance doesn’t always lead to inner ease
• How stress often arises from disconnection from the present moment
• The impact of pressure, comparison, and expectation
• The importance of being fully present in whatever we are doing
• How life’s challenges can become a practice of returning to awareness
• Why communication and honesty support inner balance

Even in full, busy lives, with work, relationships, responsibilities, and peronal goals it is possible to remain connected to ourselves.

Balance is not about doing less or perfectly organising our time.

It is about how we are within the life we are already living.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to Bodhisattva Conversations. My name is Julia Carly, and this podcast explores the practice of being so that we can live with greater presence, awareness, and freedom, and experience the truth of who we are. Today I'm going to be talking about finding balance within yourself because there's so much written and spoken about the work-life balance, and it's something that people are often really, really investigating. There are a lot of charts and things drawn, and kind of pie charts and things, just to kind of segment up how much of our life we want to be doing various things. So kind of one of the very simplistic ideas is the 888 model, which you might be familiar with, which basically says eight hours sleep, eight hours work, and then you've got eight hours to do the other things, spending time with family or doing your hobbies and all of all of that. So essentially the work-life balance generally is seen as something where you're dividing your time. You're dividing your time between work, between family, between having time to rest and having hobbies, leisure time, all of those things. And of course, of course, this matters, and to an extent, this is a very kind of obvious and healthy kind of model where you clearly we need sleep. And if we have goals, um if we if we're aiming for things outside work and family, and we're committed to whether that's being in amateur dramatics or art or sport or any of these things, everything needs time, and of course, work needs attention, and we need nourishment through all of these things. We need, you know, we need to be nourished by enough sleep, by the time to engage in all these things. But often people can appear to have a balance, they can appear to have a balance on the outside. Everything, you know, they've got a work which is only contained in a certain amount of time, and they have time to spend with their family and they have their weekends free, all of these things. They can look as if there's a balance, but something can also still feel out of balance on the inside because they can have all the allocated time, as I said, in each aspect of their life, but ultimately they can be feeling under pressure, um, a lot of self-doubt, not feeling good enough, not feeling able to communicate well with people, not feeling well, not feeling healthy. So their inner state isn't balanced, and of course, ultimately, our inner state affects absolutely everything. So, however much we've tried to organize everything externally, the inside is what counts. The inner journey, the inner state affects everything, essentially affects our health. It's said that stress is the biggest thing that causes this ease in our body, that it causes tension in our muscles, um, discomfort in our whole being. So, really and truly, our health is affected by our inner state, and of course, our inner state affects how well we look after ourselves. So, when we're unhappy and we're not at ease in ourselves, we don't feel good about ourselves, that's often when we don't care enough about the amount of sleep we get or what we're eating or whether we take exercise or not. So the it's all a kind of can be a negative cycle that spirals downwards. And our inner state, of course, affects our relationships. If you know, if we're unhappy, our vibration's different, our vibration is lower, we aren't able to be in the same way connected to the people around us. We're not as as fun to be quite honest, when our vibe is low. Our energy field is said to extend kind of a long way out from us, 12 feet or something. It's a big, a big expanse of us that is beyond our physical being, and that is impacting. And people, we can pick up people's energy, we can tell immediately whether somebody's feeling low or they're off. So obviously, our inner state affects all our relationships, it affects our personal relationships at home, it affects our work relationships, it affects the relationships in the street, just with our fellow people that we meet in um and in shops, coffee shops, all these places, it of course affects our enjoyment of life. If our inner state is low and yeah, discontented and stressed and feeling under pressure, then however much we've got things seemingly good on the outside, however much we've got a good job and good money and good everything seemingly, if we're not okay inside, then it affects that enjoyment, it really does. The other thing, of course, is we can be absolutely loving what we do, um, building a business and you know, engaged in a goal and feeling really energized and driven and excited by the whole thing, but that also isn't necessarily a balance because the excitement is the other side of feeling a bit, you know, a bit low vibe. But in that space, in that going for something, sometimes people neglect their health, they don't rest, they're not present in relationships because they're so super excited about the thing they're doing that they neglect the people around them, and you know, they're elsewhere mentally, um, even when physically present, and they're thinking about the thing they're doing and they're calculating what's needed to be done, and it can feel super exciting to them, but not so super exciting to everybody else. They may be they're building a business distracted, having conversations with people in their head, rerunning a thing that happened in the day, looking at their phone for emails and stuff coming in, or researching things, and and of course, that can be feeling good, but it can be impacting negatively on their health and their relationships, and that's you know, that can be quite a chimera, pulls them away. Um, and ironically, it's feeling positive, but there's still a big imbalance there. Um, so what is the answer? Well, really and truly, it's the same answer to all of our life, it's the inner balance, it's the inner state, it's the state of ease within us. Because without that inner balance, without that presence, without returning to the stillness, the awareness that is witnessing everything that's going on in the outer realms without being in touch with that, no external structure can ever can ever really feel truly enough or even okay. I mean, of course, I do recognise that people will create all sorts of incredible things, and can of course stay distracted by that for a lifetime and and and feel that it's okay. But I I would still say that real, real ease and inner balance and comes from presence, it comes from being exactly where you are, completely and utterly where you are, and actually doing what you're doing at the time. And again, this has been spoken about a lot in mindfulness. Like if you're washing your hands, just be there, absolutely present, washing your hands, and if you are making a coffee, it's a meditation, just to watch everything and be exactly where you are and watch your hands doing whatever however you make your coffee, whether it's uh you know a machine or whether it's a um cafeteria or however it is, just really be with the process or cleaning your teeth or anything, anything we're doing, actually be there so that we're being in the doing, and then you're not constantly being pulled into your your thought stream, and the thought stream is very, very beguiling. It can be running round in circles over past conversations, past events, feeling wronged or or even celebratory, but just going over and over and over something, or it can be thinking about the future or ahead of what you've got to do, what you're going to say to somebody, and or you know, just running a narrative that you're not even necessarily aware of. So it's very, very important being where you are here now. So it isn't actually about how you divide your time, really and truly. Um, I do recognise that there's a degree of that in needed, that if we overdo anything, it doesn't necessarily feel good, even sleep. If we sleep too much, we can feel sluggish, if we overdo eating, we don't feel great. If we overdo work, we can feel, you know, kind of um burned out by it, tired by it, even if we're loving it. So even though I say it's not about how you divide your time, obviously there is a degree of that going on, but that will come more naturally when you're present, because essentially it's how you are within the time you have. So it's about, as I said, being completely present, completely there. And it might be that there are things that take more time, you know. People, if they're out training for a marathon, they're going to be out running longer, and that's going to take them away more from family life, or yeah, or make them get up earlier to fit it in. But again, it's being absolutely in the step with that, and then very present with the people you're with, even if you've gone for a two-hour run before breakfast, to be there. Um, I used to witness that with my friends Rob and Jim, who I did lots and lots. Oh, I still run with them when I go down to Sussex, but um I ran with them loads and loads and loads. We trained for ultras together, trained for marathons, trained for all sorts of things through the um when did I meet them, for goodness sake? I met them in the early 2000s. We trained for an ultra together, we ran from London to Brighton in 2008. So, as you can imagine, there was a lot of running done, and there were marathons we trained for. But what I noticed with them is in those days their children were little, and we used to meet at 7am on a Sunday, and we were done. We used to run for about three hours, we were done by 10, and then they were with their family the rest of the day, but they're properly engaged, they weren't all sitting about and tired, they were properly there, properly with their little children, properly there with their wives. Also, they'd used to do relays sometimes because the wives, the wives, Miriam and Carol also like to run. So I can remember a relay once where we ran 10 miles. I think it was, yes, it was, I think I'm just trying to remember exactly what happened, but we did a swap over at a 10 mile point, and then Carol and Miriam been looking after the children, and then there was a swap over, and then Rob stopped running and then Miriam started running. I don't think Carol was then training for a marathon, but there was a lot of you know ways of organizing it that meant that everybody was very present with each other, and it all worked, and it worked because of um the inner state, not necessarily um trying to get an exact divide of time. And also, I'm married to an entrepreneur, um Anardi, and he works super long hours, he's worked super long hours for all the time I've known him really 14 years, and um a huge amount of intensity of work too, but he is always fully present when he's with me, absolutely unequivocably fully present. And if there are things that need doing, um, because he's got connections all over the world and he keeps his phone in his pocket, and if it buzzes a lot, he knows there's something needed, and he will say to me, Do you mind? I need to just go and check my phone. So he's present with me, but then he's present with sorting things out sometimes that he needs to. Um, but it's because there's presence, and it could look sometimes. There's been a brunch interrupted. I remember we, you know, because he had to go and sort something out that was going wrong in South Africa or before a wedding, all sorts of things. But because he's present, it all it's all um there's a balance somehow. Well, there is, um, and also I'm I'm I practice the same, whatever's been going on, even if I'm I've got, I know I've got messages to answer, I've got things that I need to do. If I'm with him, I'm I'm fully there, and it it is just a practice. It's a practice, it's a practice, it's a practice, and obviously different situations and different life, you know, kind of processes where we're with families, or we've got young children, or there are there's responsibilities, there's social life, there's other goals and hobbies. This can make presence more challenging, of course it can, because sometimes life can be super super busy. The external things that are making up that the life that we're we're leading can be super busy. It can be work, as I said, work, families, hobbies, and then when there's children, they've got things to go to. Super, super busy. That is the life, you know, the life going on, as it were, but still, whatever the life our life looks like, the the challenges themselves, or the events themselves, or the busyness itself becomes the practice. That is the practice to the balance that's inside us, the inner center point, the place of stillness that is always there. Whatever's going on, whatever is going on in our life situation, there is this stillness, there is the awareness, and that's the balance. It's finding that and finding that um sort of spirit level. Listen to it. That's that's um I remember my dad had a spirit level thing um in the olden days, where he was, I don't know, making something straight with a plane. Is that what they use? And he used to put the spirit level there to check it was straight, and that's really what it's actually a good word, spirit level, because it's a recognition of the spirit, our spirit within us. So that even when there are really, really, really busy schedules, even when there is pressure. I was exploring with a client um this week the difference between pressure and stress because lots lots of us can be under pressure, there can be lots of things, lots of things we've taken on, they can be very busy to fit everything in. So there is a degree of pressure. Um, being human, there's a degree of pressure often. Um, but that's different to stress because the stress is when we think, you know, stress originally was the fight and flight when we were going to have to flee or fight or or you know, kind of survive somehow. Whereas actually, that's what the stress response is, it it's over overdone and prolonged with the fight and flight reflex, so that there's that there's a red alert going on the whole time within us, and of course, that's the bit that needs the clearing, that's the bit of coming back to the easeful presence, and actually, even within a busy schedule and the pressure of everything and competing demands, we really can bring the mind back, we actually must bring the mind back to be here and now because it's it's often really the mind that's creating the distress and the stress. By um, we create the pain in our brain by overthinking and worrying and and you know, making kind of feeling things matter hugely. And of course, of course, things matter, but they don't matter, if that makes sense, because the more the more we're present, the more we find we can do things and we can um be more joyous and playful, and the things that matter is that is the presence with ourselves and the presence with others, the relating is is the most important thing. And ironically, thing that every human I think really loves is feeling connected and loved and appreciated and accepted, and that comes through loving and appreciating and accepting ourselves and being present, and therefore, then we're we're present with others, and that's that's what matters, and that's the balance, the ease of connecting to one another. But of course, to to work with the mind to bring it to the here and now, we can always use the breath, always, always, always, and and in the breath, we can practice kind of moments of thoughtlessness where we we're not following a thought stream where we take a big deep breath in, we breathe out, and then there's that space, and in that space, there's there's no thing, there's nothing, and there's no thought, and so it is dropping into that space, in the space between the thoughts, the space between the breath, so that even if we're planning, because of course we do live in a a world where we have this um imagined future that obviously isn't there because ultimately there's only now, and even when we get into that future, it's now so but but even when we're planning, we can plan in the present moment and not live ahead of ourselves, not do that thing of looking forward so much that we think that thing ahead is going to be the thing that makes us happy. Planning about you know things we might be doing and going to and all that's great fun, but actually then projecting forward that that's going to make us happy is the bit that creates a lot of distress and and doesn't necessarily live up to expectations. So we need to bring our attention back, back and back, and just know we only have now, just be here now, and then the more we practice returning to it, the more we practice throughout the day, bringing ourselves back to presence, bring ourselves back to the breath, bring ourselves back to a space of ease, thoughtlessness. Um when I say thoughtlessness, I mean no thought, just have a space where we experience just stillness, but then the inner balance is there. We just feel there's an ease, uh uh balance, as I say, the spirit level. And of course, part of inner balance is also honest communication. If we're realistic about our time, if we're clear with others, we then reduce unspoken expectations. So then we don't create those um things that keep us in the place of uh of stress and therefore trying to create um, right, I'm going to spend this much time doing this, I'll do this, you know, dividing it all up, and then realizing we've overcommitted, and then it all goes wrong anyway. Whereas the more we're present, the more we can, you know, even if we are working long hours, be clear with the people who we might be going to meet and say, I'm actually not going to be able to get there till such and such a time, not saying an earlier time on a wing and a prayer, hoping that that's what they want to hear, and then it doesn't work out. And that's I that causes a lot of problems. I've worked with that with people where they they'll they'll give the time they hope they might get somewhere, and they give the time they think the other people want them to be there, and actually it's completely unrealistic, therefore, that creates a totally doesn't work great. It looks like the work balance is completely out of it, out of balance because they're working late, but actually it's the inner balance because they're not communicating and not being clear with the people. Um, yeah, of course, also if there is that kind of turbulence, if there's that all too much to do, can't get it done, red lines that feel impossible. Um, it is actually a turbulence within. Any turbulence in the outer realms is an arrow to an inner turbulence, which is why it's so important to come back, always, always come back to presence, always come back to the breath. Because when the inner lake is still, I was kind of that's just a metaphor. I like to have a still calm lake within us, then we completely experience the outer world differently, and you will start to see that the more you are still within, things are still outside, or even if they're not you're you stay still, you stay, and you really. See that the work-life balance isn't really about time, it's about presence, it's about inner balance. And of course, from this place, we can make wiser choices. We can make wiser choices when we're more balanced within, we're still within. We make the choices from that place of kind of comes through us rather than it being a projection from outside. We can make the choices from within about how we live, how we work, how we relate, what hobbies we choose, whether there genuinely is time for something. Because that often again, when there's a stillness inside, we're going to be able to see more clearly. And then when we do find the balance within ourselves, life begins to feel balanced all around us. Thank you for listening to Bodysat for Conversations. I hope you enjoyed this episode and I look forward to being with you again next time.