Season 1. Episode 15. The Yes...And Podcast. Busting the Myth of Balance

The Myth of Balance (and Why Harmony Is a Better Goal)
We’ve been told balance is the answer — balance your time, your energy, your life. But what if balance is actually the thing keeping you stuck?

In this episode, Claire Darr offers a powerful reframe: harmony over balance. Learn why chasing balance leads to burnout and how choosing harmony brings peace, purpose, and clarity. If you’re tired of holding it all together, this episode will help you breathe again — and begin living in alignment with what truly matters.

✨ Your life isn’t a tightrope. It’s a symphony. Let’s bring it into harmony.

Ready to step out of survival mode and into soul-aligned clarity?
Explore the VIP Breakthrough Experience — a powerful one-day reset designed for high-achieving women who are ready for more.
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Welcome to The Yes… And Podcast, where we explore what happens when you say yes to life, embrace your purpose, and step into your fullest potential.

Hosted by Claire Darr—former corporate lawyer turned executive coach, wife, mom, and passionate believer in intentional living—this podcast is your guide to creating a life you can’t wait to wake up for.

Each week, we’ll dive into inspiring stories and practical lessons, blending soulful conversations with actionable strategies to help you overcome self-imposed limits, find balance, and build a legacy of joy and fulfillment. From courageous entrepreneurs to everyday heroes, our guests share how they’ve said yes… and to faith, family, career, and the adventures of life.

Whether you’re a busy professional, a working mom, or someone feeling stuck or overwhelmed,The Yes… And Podcast is here to empower you with the tools, mindset, and inspiration to dream big and live boldly.

Life is too short to play small. It’s time to say yes to more—and discover the yes..and life you’ve been longing for.

Subscribe now and join the movement toward a life of peace, purpose, and boundless possibilities.

Follow me on Instagram @iamclairedarr

Interested in working with me, all the links here: https://linktr.ee/clairedarr

Transcript

Hi, hi there. Welcome back to the Yes And podcast. So today I am myth busting. I'm gonna be somewhat controversial, I think. Today I'm here for the woman who's done everything right and still feels like something is missing. Does that sound familiar? I know I've been there. I know I have.

And I'm sure many of you have been there, are there. So today I want to talk about a line of BS that has been sold to us for many years. Sold to especially the high achievers, the deeply driven women, the women who are striving to do everything. And that's balance, balance. ⁓ Balance.

Work-life balance, if I could just balance it. ⁓ I'm trying to get this into balance. You've heard it, you've probably said it. I've said it so much. You might've even built it into your schedule or your habits or even set your goals around it. I wanna have balance in my life. I work-life balance. How many articles have you read on work-life balance? How many books have been written? How many podcasts have talked about it?

So I want to challenge it today. I want to offer you a new lens. What if balance isn't the goal at all? What if we're not seeking, striving for, trying to achieve balance? What if what we're really craving is harmony?

Harmony. Okay, so let's talk about it. Starting with the myth. We've been taught, especially in corporate spaces, high performing circles. And then like I said, in the personal development books and podcasts and whatever, we've been taught that we need to balance it all. And if you could see me, I would echo balance, right? Work-life balance, time balance, emotional balance.

Like as if we're all walking on tightropes, know, holding the tension just right between our personal life and our professional life. And if we tip too far in one direction, boom, we fall off the tightrope and we failed. And there's not even a lovely net to catch us underneath, right? We failed. You haven't achieved that perfect balance between your personal life and your professional life.

But here's the truth that I've discovered. Personally, walking through years, myself and with women in my coaching world. Balance is a setup. It's not real. It's not achievable. It assumes that everything in your life deserves equal attention, equal weight, equal time.

And that's just not real life, is it? I don't know about you, it's not real life for me.

Not everything in my life at all times gets to have equal attention, equal time. I don't want it to, yet why are we trying to balance all this stuff and driving ourselves crazy and burning out and feeling like complete failures in the meantime? So.

trying to achieve balance, we'll set the scene. And then what happens when your child gets sick? What happens if you lose someone you love?

What happens when your body starts to whisper to you and then worse yet, shout at you that you need rest?

Does balance work then? No, of course it doesn't because balance doesn't leave room for being a human being, for being human, for living life. It doesn't leave room for seasons, for rhythms, for your heart, for your soul.

It doesn't leave room for anything. And there was a season in my own life when I was doing it all, I was trying to balance it all. I thought I was doing a really good job of it too. That was an illusion, by the way. You know, I had a corporate career, I was raising a family, I was chasing goals. I was leading teams, managing, producing, making a lot of money. Had the house and the title and

all the things. And I kept thinking, if I can just find balance, I'll feel better. I'll feel like myself again, because I did not feel like myself during that season. That quote unquote successful, high flying season of my life. didn't feel like me.

And I thought if I achieve balance, I would feel like me again, I would regain me again, I would regain something. But all striving for balance got me with more pressure, the pressure to hold everything up, never to let anything slip, the pressure to do it all perfectly, keep everyone happy, cram it all in to my day, however I could. And honestly, it left

me feeling more disconnected, disconnected, sorry, than ever, like really truly disconnected from my body, from myself, from my family, from my joy, from God, from my purpose. I wasn't me. I was walking around in this body in this life. striving, trying doing all the things. I wasn't me. And it wasn't until I let go of

balance? Like fully just like no, I don't even want it anymore. Not that I can't hack it. I failed at it. I can't figure that figure this balance thing out. No, I don't want to have balance in my life. That's weird. Like that was actually how I started training myself to think about it. That's weird. Who has balance in their life? And I began to pursue harmony.

in life. Everything shifted.

So what is hominy? Hominy doesn't demand everything to be equal.

It doesn't require you to be the same person every day, doing the same things, walking through the same steps, checking the same things off a list every single day. Harmony honors your humanity, you as a human being, you as a person walking through life. It's fluid, it listens, it adjusts.

Get that visual. It adjusts. It's fluid.

How many says things to you like, where is my energy needed most right now?

What matters most in this season?

How can I bring alignment instead of obligation? How many says those things to you? Because you're not a machine to optimize. There's no algorithm in your body, right? You are a whole person. You are a mind, body, spirit, living a human existence. And all of those parts of you want to live in connection.

not competition.

That's what harmony is.

So maybe in this season.

Your career is demanding more of you. And your family is getting some quiet support in the background. That's what harmony looks like.

Maybe your soul is needing a little bit more space to breathe and your back ambition and your drive and your career gets a moment to pause a little bit and regroup. That's what harmony looks like. ⁓ Maybe your body is asking for some restoration and reset and your calendar has to adjust to honor that.

And I want to put something in your head. Harmony, striving for these things, right? It's not imbalance. It's not the opposite of balance. It's wisdom. It's wisdom. It's listening to that voice inside you. It's adjusting. Like I said, it's being fluid.

And when you start living in harmony, rather than chasing balance, you'll notice something really powerful. You'll start to feel whole.

You'll start to feel connected. You'll start to feel aligned.

You might not feel perfect. You might not always be polished and have every single thing checked off your to-do list perfectly.

but you will feel grounded, you'll feel peaceful, you'll feel present. That's the shift. That's the shift in how you feel, act, see every day. Shifts like those, by the way, are miracles in our lives. They really are. It's a huge shift in your perception and how you think it feels like a miracle.

And so.

Bringing it back to what do you want? What do you want? Do you want to keep believing all of that, know, when was it even from the 2000s, the 2010s, how do we say that? That work-life balance is the goal. That work-life balance is something you should strive for. You picture this, right? You're on one of those, you know when you see the,

the ⁓ performers like kind of circus performers or jugglers or what have you. And there's like a barrel and they've got like a plank on top of the barrel and they're constantly trying to balance, right? And then balls are being thrown at them. They're trying to catch the balls while they balance on this thing. Okay, you can be that person.

You might be able to keep it up for a little bit, right? Are those profound, like we go to Cirque du Soleil all the time, right? We see these people balancing on these amazing things and catching things and doing all kinds of things. Can they keep that up 24 seven? For the rest of their lives? No, no. Eventually, they drop things, they jump off, they stop trying to balance, right? Same as a view, you cannot stay on that plank.

balancing, catching everything for the rest of your life. Do you want to? ⁓ I don't want to, sounds exhausting, right? I've been there, I've tried to do that. I was terrible at it. Or...

You can live a life of harmony. Picture harmony. Picture a beautiful piece of music.

with the rise and fall of the notes, with the melody. There's times when it's loud, there's times when it's quiet, there's times when it's high, there's times when it's fast, when it's slow. Picture an orchestra even, with all of the different instruments and everything that they bring to the piece of music.

It's fluid. It's beautiful. It feels amazing. There's the difference. There's the difference. So if you've been trying to juggle it all or striving for that elusive balance, I've been there, been there. And if you're wondering why you still feel tired and scattered or like you're missing something, then think of this like a permission slip. I'm going to give you a permission slip.

My children have to ask for permission slips to leave the classroom, right? I'm going to give you a permission slip today. You can let it all go. You can stop striving for balance. You can stop wobbling on that plank. You can trade all of it for harmony.

Give it a shot. I'm giving you permission today. This is exactly the work I do with my clients every day.

I help them identify where they want to feel aligned, where they want to feel more alive, where they can add things that bring harmony into their life, where they can let go. I give them permission to let go of the striving for the elusive balance. We do this inner work. ⁓

We do it in breakthrough sessions together. We do it over the phone. We do it in person. We do it in Zoom. There are lots of ways you can tackle this work. But this work is amazing. And it's where high achieving women get to lay it all down for a moment and reconnect with who they are, who they were, who they want to be, remember who they are. And

then you get to realign your life around what actually matters to you.

I'm not saying give up the career. I'm not saying give up the house. I'm not saying give up the life. The opposite. I'm saying have all of it. Have it all.

but give up the need to balance it. And guess what? When you live in harmony, your power, your peace, your purpose, get louder. It's like this crescendo of the orchestra and it's beautiful. It sounds amazing.

So I want to leave you with this. Maybe today is your invitation to stop performing, stop balancing on that plank and start listening for the harmony. Start tuning in. Because your life isn't a tightrope. It's not a tightrope. It's a symphony. And when you get to live in harmony, everything changes. Everything changes.

and I want that for you. I hope you have a beautiful, beautiful day. My love and light to you all.