The Misconceptions of Finding Balance

In this episode, we're exploring BALANCE. Is it a Myth? If it isn't, then what does a balanced life look like? It might be different than you think.

I'm sharing my experience of finding balance after Burnout, lessons I learned on my Burnout Recovery journey and how living with balance helps me with daily Burnout Prevention.

Burning Out and need help right now? You can book in for a free 30 minute call with me whenever I have availability, with no obligation to sign up for any of my coaching offerings. Head to my website and book a free consultation call slot today.

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Transcript

Welcome back everyone to Your Supernova Moment. I wasn’t here last week, and I’ll tell you why. I’m going to be very honest about it.

The sun was shining.

Listen, here’s what happens these days. The sun shines for the first time after a loooong winter, and I lose all sense of urgency for work. I head out into the sun, I walk for miles, I eat ice cream, I find jobs that need doing outside just so I can sit out there. I meditate in the sun, I do yoga in the sun, I write my client notes in the sun. I bloody love the sun, guys.

And as a result of the fact that I temporarily lost my mind when the sun came out for the first time this year last week, I may have forgotten to post a podcast. Oops. My bad. And maybe this makes me sound flaky and unreliable but stay with me - it’s actually a good thing. Because I love to coach by example, and to always practice what I preach, and if I made myself stay indoors instead of following my joy - and, admittedly, maybe getting a bit carried away with it - I wouldn’t be doing a great job of demonstrating the benefits of balance.

I spent a lot of time in the sunshine last week. I maybe didn’t do as much marketing as I could have, or send as many emails, or release a podcast. But I served my clients, I supported people with consultation calls, I did all my classes - and I did all the other non-coaching related work that I have to do supporting my family. I did what I had to do, and I let some things slide in favour of sitting in the sun.

Now before you switch off, let me check my privilege. I know that the life I’ve built for myself since my Burnout is not the life everyone out there is living. I work for myself, and beyond my existing calls, classes and commitments, I can decide not to do something if I don’t want to do it.

Not everyone is in that position. In fact, one of the classes I did teach last week was one of my monthly in person Candlelit Yin Yoga classes. I LOVE teaching that class, it’s in a lovely little village in a newly renovated hall, and I set up all my battery powered candles and turn down the lights and set the twinkly music going and people walk into this little oasis of calm. And at the start of the class I’m going around saying hello to people and top of my list of topics is, of course, the sunshine. I’m asking people if they’ve been enjoying the sunshine and a couple of people answered looking kind of deflated and they said, I’ve seen it out of the window. I’ve been in the office all day.

GAHHHHH.

It took me rocketing right back to when that was my life. I didn’t see the sun until the height of summer when I could leave the office at 9PM and it was still light. And when I did see the sun, on weekends, I didn’t even enjoy it because my head was always somewhere else.

When you’re stressed, and working hard, the sun shining in through the window is just another thing that’s piling on top of you. It’s another ‘should’ - I should be out in the sun, I should be enjoying this. Which just makes everything even worse. When you’re Burning Out, a sunny day can actually be another reminder of the things that you feel like you don’t have time to do. It’s another stressor, even though it’s likely EXACTLY what you need.

I was so incredibly deficient in Vitamin D when I Burned Out. I take like a 3000 strength supplement spray and I now do that all through winter as well, because I know that my mood is low when I haven’t seen the sun. Your nervous system NEEDS Vitamin D, so does your immune system. And so when we lock ourselves away in our offices and don’t step outside to soak up that sunshine we’re actually pushing ourselves further and deeper into a situation that’s going to lead us to Burn Out.

If you are in that position that you feel like you can’t justify getting outside of the office for an hour, half an hour or even ten minutes when the sun shines - which is such a RARITY, at least in the UK anyway - then I hear you. I’ve been you. But I can also tell you that actually, you CAN step outside. You can drink your coffee on a bench outside. You can go for a walk. You can take a call on your mobile in the park. Even if your office is in the centre of town or an industrial estate, you can step outside and get the benefits of sunshines on your face. I’m not saying it’s easy to down tools and do that for yourself, but it IS worth it.

Anyway, I’m getting side tracked by sunshine - again. What I actually wanted to talk to you about this week, is the concept of BALANCE.

This is a word I use a lot. And actually, what I’ve just been talking about is a prime example. I’ll explain.

A lot of the time, I think there’s a misconception that ‘balance’ means just sitting at this one perfect point in the middle. There’s no stress, there’s no drama, everything’s perfect. That is NOT balanced. Not even a little bit.

Balance means that we have the stress, AND we have the release. We have the drama, and we have the celebration and the applause. We have the highs and the lows. We have the ups and the downs. It’s not a fixed point.

When I talk about balance, I’m really thinking about a spectrum. There’s this sort of nice wide road in the middle where we want to aim to spend most of our time. Sometimes we veer over to the challenging side of the road, but then we veer back to the calm side of the road, and eventually we come back to the middle.

Sometimes, we’ll go off the road. Life happens. Things HAPPEN. Living a balanced life doesn’t mean that nothing ever gets hard. Just like it doesn’t mean that nothing is ever wildly exciting and joyful. We’re going to veer off the road. Sometimes, we’re going to have weeks where work is horrible or our hours get out of control. We’re going to get sick, or people we love are going to get sick, and we’re going to find ourselves under strain. We’re going to have periods where we don’t have as much time as we’d like. But, as with everything in life, as I’ve learned through meditation and practical application of this theory, it’s not about never straying off the road. It’s about always being able to bring yourself back. It’s about knowing what action you need to take to bring yourself back, and ALLOWING yourself to do that. Over and over again. And letting that be enough.

It’s also handy to think about this in terms of Yin and Yang. I love thinking about it like this. There’s Yin and Yang in everything. Yin and Yang cannot exist without the other, that’s why they are the perfect example of balance. So, the day might be Yang and the night can be Yin. Fire is Yang and Water is Yin. Heat is Yang and Cold is Yin. Dancing is Yang and sitting down to catch your breath is Yin. Yang doesn’t mean bad, but it isn’t sustainable on its own. Fight or flight is Yang, Rest and Digest is Yin. Burnout is Yang. Recovery is Yin. And life after Burnout is about balance.

The way I like to look at it is like this. When we’re Burned Out, it’s because we’ve been stuck in a chronic state of Yang for a very long time. Pushing and pushing and pushing, and burning and burning and burning. We have depleted EVERYTHING. There’s no Yang left to be had. And as I said, Yin and Yang can’t actually exist without the other so by being ALL YANG ALL THE TIME we’re just screwing ourselves.

We can’t just bring ourselves back to the middle, to balance that out. We actually have to bring ourselves down to this Yin place for a good long while, in order to balance out the fact that we’ve been pushing ourselves so hard for so long. If we don’t recognise that, the fact that we’ve been OUT of balance for ages and that’s ultimately why we’ve Burned Out, we can often find ourselves getting frustrated that we’re ‘doing all the right things’ but somehow we’re still not getting better. It’s because it’s not enough to come back to the middle, to that place where we’re getting ‘enough sleep’ or leaving work ‘on time’. We need to spend some time getting MORE sleep than we might have needed before. We might need to take some time off work, or reduce our hours, or at least get more support with the work that we have.

It doesn’t mean it’ll be like that forever, but there’s so much value in taking that time in the REST place, so that we can build our reserves up again, and when we feel ready to come back in the middle, the maintenance of that balance is really about continuing to recognise that we need to balance out high energy, high stress, negative or challenging experiences with their opposite counterparts. We do that with boundaries, routine, AWARENESS, reflection, mindfulness - etc etc etc.

If you think of yourself as a rechargeable battery. For ages, you’ve been just plugging the charger in for half an hour and topping yourself up. As a result, now, you’ve drained yourself all the way down to empty. So plugging in for half an hour is only going to give you a couple of bars of power. Once upon a time, this was enough to get by. Now, it isn’t. You’re recharging, slowly, but you’re recharging a few bars at a time. And because you were living that ‘quick top up’ life for so long, now your battery drains faster AND takes longer to charge up too!

Right after Burnout, slow and steady, looooong charges is the way to go. And that’s going to give you a few bars, then something is going to drain you back down to zero. It’s okay, this is what happens. You just recharge again. And every time you get a little more power, your reserves last a little bit longer. Eventually, after time - and this can be a LOT of time. Months, years. You’ll get to a point where you can maybe consider yourself to be at that magical middle. Charged up, able to do stuff without being completely drained, knowing the things you need to do to recharge regularly, not skipping charges or running on quick top ups. 

This metaphor is getting a little out of hand but I hope it makes some sense.

I’m now a couple of years after my Burnout. This year, my focus for myself is ENERGY. I’ve spent the last couple of years slowly recharging my batteries. Learning what is pushing myself too far, and always showing myself the MOST compassion as I figure it all out and spend the time recharging. This year, I feel like I’m finally able to step out of that Yin place. I’ve been in the Yin place for 2 years! And that doesn’t mean that I just lay in bed for 2 years, but my focus was rest, and taking things slowly. My energy levels were LOW and they took time to slowly fill back up.

Now, I’m working out what balance looks like to me. It looks like good sleep, and plenty of time outdoors. It looks like good food, exercise like walking, cycling and pilates, as well as my fave Yin Yoga - which does not go away just because I’m not focussing on ALL YIN ALL THE TIME like I have been for the last few years to balance all those years of Yang.

It looks like exploring my creative energy - doing pottery classes and painting. It looks like getting outdoors and making a GARDEN. I know, I can barely believe it myself, but that’s what I’m doing.

I’ve well and truly left my old life behind. 16 hour days at a desk, hopping on and off planes, taking the weight of the work world’s problems on my shoulders - that’s not for me any more.

For a little while, I found myself slipping back into old habits. December, January and February were BUSY. I had a LOT of clients and was working a lot, and trying to fit life around it. And I was being a little bit consumed by it all again - though not anywhere near the way I used to be. So as some clients have finished their programmes and skipped off into the sunset, I’ve not rushed to replace them. I’m working with a lovely little bunch at the moment and taking my time. I’ve actually got a lot of other LIFE stuff going on. I’m doing a lot of work at the B&B while my Dad is out of action, literally unable to move waiting a gazillion years for the new hips he desperately needs. I still look after my Nan, something I do every day. And I’m trying to make sure I’m PRESENT, here supporting my family as they have supported me.

Balance for me, looks like this. 

Balance for you, will look different. And that’s okay.

I will never tell you what your balance has to be. I will just encourage you to find it. Because once you find it - you won’t want to lose it again. And the awesome thing is, you CAN’T lose it. You can veer off the path, sure. But you can always come back.

That’s what Balance is. Knowing where your middle is, and just keeping coming back.

Aaaaand if you need help finding balance, let me help you! So often, it just takes an outside eye to perhaps shine a bit of a spotlight on allll that Yang and help you to find the pockets of Yin.

While I’ve cut down on 1:1 coaching slots at the moment - because it’s all about finding that balance! - I do have available slots coming up. I also have my weekly online Yin Yoga classes at 8PM UK time on Wednesdays, and free Monday Meditation classes every week at 7.30PM. 

AND regardless of whether you want to go as far as signing up for coaching or not, I have my free 30 minute session slots available, where we can chat about your situation, your stress and burnout, and help you to find a way forward.

You can book in for all this stuff on my website, MaggieSupernova.com - I’ll leave all the relevant links in the show notes.

The forecast is dismal for the next week, so you can rest assured I’ll be back with you next week for another episode of Your Supernova Moment, a podcast about Burnout. In the meantime, find me on Instagram @MaggieSupernovaCoach and on Facebook, where this week I’ll be sharing more tips for finding that all important balance, which is NOT a myth - it just maybe looks a little different to the way you expect it to.

Until next time, get good rest, get outdoors, and keep breathing.

Bye!