It's all about balance : when generic advice is unhelpful.

So often generic wellness phrases become popular because they sound intelligent and sensible.

But their meaning is lost when they are oversimplified and incomplete due to lack of context. Here we explore how oversimplified advice becomes widely accepted and why understanding circumstances matters more than following generic rules.

© 2026 Shift the Field by AMDtherapie. All rights reserved. 

amdtherapie.com

Transcript

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Hi, I'm AMD and welcome to Shift the Field. Today I want to talk about one of the most common pieces of advice you'll ever hear. It's all about balance. On the surface, that sounds sensible. In fact, it sounds so sensible that very few people ever question it. The problem is that nobody ever explains what balance actually means. Balance between what? Work and rest? Fear and courage? Pressure and recovery? Control and trust? Because the moment we start looking more closely, the advice begins to fall apart. Imagine someone wants to become stronger. Should they balance training and recovery? Of course. But if they spend all of their time recovering and none of their time training, nothing changes. Now imagine the opposite. They train relentlessly and never recover. Eventually something breaks down. The answer isn't found in either extreme, but neither is it found in the middle, because progress rarely comes from standing perfectly still between two opposing forces. Progress happens when we deliberately tip the scale towards the outcome we want, whilst maintaining enough of the opposite side to support it. This is where balance becomes misleading. Most people hear balance and imagine equal amounts. Life doesn't work like that. When you start a business, balance completely disappears. When a child is born, balance disappears. When you're recovering from an injury, balance also disappears. And for periods of time, one must side more weight to one than the other. The scale has to move. The mistake people make is assuming discomfort means something is wrong. It doesn't. Sometimes discomfort is simply evidence that a different force is being introduced into the system. A muscle becomes stronger because load exceeded what it was previously capable of handling. Confidence develops because uncertainty was present. Resilience develops because pressure existed. Choice develops because automatic responses were challenged. The very thing we are often trying to eliminate is frequently part of the process that creates the outcome we want. This doesn't mean more is always better. In fact, I would argue that less is more. But this is where context matters. The internet loves universal answers. Everything is balanced, everything is mindset, or it's stress or inflammation or high cortisol. Simple explanations spread quickly because they're easy to remember. But reality is usually far more nuanced than that. These are way too simplistic. And the question is rarely whether something is good or bad. The question is how much, under what circumstances, for how long, and in relation to what. That is where real understanding begins. And when we look at pain, behavior, and performance, the same principle applies. People often spend years trying to eliminate discomfort before they move, trying to remove uncertainty before they decide, or trying to feel confident before they act. But waiting for one side of the scale to disappear is often the very thing preventing movement. The goal isn't perfect balance. The goal is understanding which way the scale needs to lean. Because change is not created by standing motionless between two opposing forces. Change happens when enough weight accumulates on one side that something finally begins to move. And once it starts moving, everything feels different. If this resonated with you or you found it interesting, please find more at amdtherapy.com on ShiftThefield. See you next week.