In Search of Balance

No clever title, no musical reference, not even a smiley face...just the truth. How on earth does one find balance?

Remember when we were kids and learning to stand on one foot or on your head was so fun? And learning to ride a bike or skate? We didn't even know what we were doing, but ultimately we were looking for a way to balance.

Later, when I started teaching fitness, I talked a lot about balance, and how having it can save your life. Not only does practicing physical balance strengthen your core, but it can keep you on your feet when a fall could be devastating.

But how often to we think about life balance. I think about it all the time lately, and I am quickly learning the answers can be hard to find.

I recently read something very interesting (which I will probably mis-quote, since I am famous for that!). It went something like this...when an eagle loses a feather on it's right wing, it sheds one on it's left wing for the sake of balance. Powerful.

My journey thus far has brought me more joy than I imagined it would when I began. My heart is so full of love, sometimes it feels like it will burst. I feel like there's a ball of light in the centre of my body that never goes out. It's amazing, and I want more.

The difficulty though is balance.

I am currently working my day job which drags me out of bed before 4 every morning. (some days not much before 4, but that's irrelevant!) It's a wonderful job that I share with a group of amazing people. We have so much fun that some days I think it should be illegal. When your co-workers are some of your favourite people in the world, it sure makes it easier not to beat the hell our of your alarm clock every day!

Add to this my new business which I love so much it's almost hard to articulate!

The balance problem is this. I am almost ALWAYS doing one or the other. And even though I love them both, it doesn't leave time for much else. And I am losing my patience for things outside this little workaholic box I live in! (by the way, if I'm a workaholic, does that mean I drink too much workahol? Never mind...) If people aren't on the same wave length as I am, I sometimes tune out. My mind is always working, and I haven't learned how to set it aside long enough to enjoy myself. I can't let my phone go to voice mail long enough to enjoy an evening with my love or my family!!!

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think I have turned into a curmudgeon just yet. But I am actively seeking this balance before that happens! I need to be able to share this happiness I feel with everyone without putting up any walls, and I haven't figured out how to do that yet. I need to learn to relax and enjoy the things that are happening in my life. There are so many roses out there and I want to learn to smell as many of them as I can. Patience is not a virtue I possess, so if this could all just HAPPEN RIGHT NOW that would be great! :)

I am working toward something great. Toward a time when I will have the freedom to smell more roses. When I will have the financial and time balance to really enjoy everything I am learning. But what if I get hit by a bus tomorrow? How do you live like you were dying when you don't make the time? How do you work to improve tomorrow without missing out on today?

I have so much to learn. And I know that's part of the journey, but I don't like learning...I just want to KNOW. Vulcan mind melt anyone?

Usually these stories come with a nice moral and a bow on top. Not this one. I just hope by putting it into words it will help me recognize what I am striving for and learn to focus on what really matters.

Which brings up a brief backtrack to my last entry. Since I wrote about my STICKTUITIVENESS issues, I find they don't have the same power over me! It's very exciting. This blogging thing is even more powerful than I thought!

Dr. Phil says...

OK...so in spite of the title, you would have to hold a gun to my head to watch a whole episode of the Dr. Phil show. Smart guy, but after the Britney Spears incident I was out. But there is something he always says that has been ringing true for me lately..."How's that workin' for ya?" (he also says "all over that like ducks on a June bug", which I think is hilarious, but it doesn't apply here!)

When I embarked on this particular journey to enlightment, inner-peace...the life I always thought was meant for others, it was like every other journey I have ever started. I was gung-ho! Rarin' to go! Make a few adjustments and TA-DA! I'm a new woman. Well, anyone with a clue knows nothing is ever that simple...certainly not changing your life. So, here's where I am now. The TA-DA is over, and I have made some adjustments, but guess what, I'm the same girl in so many ways. I have a different attitude about many things, but doubt still exists. Imagine!

One of my biggest character flaws (according to me, at least!) has always been my lack something I like to call "STICKTUITIVENESS". I love it because it's not a real word, but it's fun to say. It's not necessarily a good way to live one's live though. I have started a million and one things with world-class gusto and quit them with world-class laziness over the years. When the going gets tough, I get excited about something completely different! I'm talking everything from Girl Guides to flute lessons to business and even to marriage. When I took up figure skating at the tender age of 21 I thought it was a dream come true! I wasn't going to become an athlete, but I would learn the basics and skate forever! That lasted about 8 months! When I took up painting at 35, I painted hundreds of sheets of the same stroke, over and over just to learn how the brushes and colours worked. I painted for hours and hours just to produce splashes of paint that I could recognize as something! That actually lasted a few years...I haven't touched a paint brush in over a year. Acting was going to be HUGE! I haven't done that in two years...I won't go on...you probably get the picture.

So, here I am in the midst of all of this change. It's a change that I have initiated and one that I started with all the gusto I used in all of those other challenges. This was it! The very thing! I'd been looking for this all my life! So off I go, tell the world I am a new woman and my life is really beginning at 40 just as I suspected! And then the ghosts of non-STICKTUITIVENESS come to haunt. Following through is just not the way I do things. STOP! ENOUGH ALREADY!

As Dr. Phil would say, "How's that workin' for ya?" Well, the first 40 years of my life have been pretty good, but I haven't stayed with anything in all that time...except maybe for breathing. I've heard it said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Well I am living proof that it doesn't work. If I expect to change, I have to change the way I think. If I can't stick to anything, how can I change my life. If I give up on this too, how am I going to make my life any better, learn to love more, grow spiritually and intellectually and earn the lifestyle I know I am worth??? I can't, right? It took 40 years to prove it, what more evidence do I need.

So I am sticking to it! Oddly enough, it's not as easy as it seemed at first, but anything worth having is worth working for, right?! And what could be more worth it than a full life that I love instead of one that is just o.k.? So I'm sticking to it. I am surrounding myself with the glue I need: supportive friends, prosperity-minded, positive people and the inspirational books that have become so important to keeping me on track. Change isn't easy. If it were, people would do it all the time. Maybe I would have done it years ago. But I am doing it now. And I have to remind myself how hard I have worked to get this far, and how much higher the quality of my life is. Turning back now seems a lot like quitting. It took 40 years (o.k. ALMOST 41) for me to develop my STICKTUITIVENESS gene, I'm not stopping now!

Shave and a Hair Cut...two bits!

O.K...so we don't actually have to talk about the shave. A girl has to have SOME secrets! But I did get a hair cut today. I make a conscious effort not to use the word hate, but I HATE getting my hair cut. I have an unhealthy love for my hair. I think of it as a bit of a Sampson complex...you know the biblical character who got his strength from his hair! Actually it's probably just vanity. When I was young I had very boyish features, and I was always the tallest kid around, so when I had short hair I was mistaken for a boy...Of course in those days I thought that meant I looked like I had cooties! Ew!

So anyway. I have found a wonderful stylist who gets that I am not one of those lucky women who loves to spend lots of money to be pampered. Wash, condition, treat, lovingly cut and style and look like you just walked off a movie screen when you walk out the door. Yuck! Just cut my damn hair and let me go. Too expensive, time-consuming, and there is the whole thing about cutting my precious hair! True story...I used to go to a new stylist, get in the chair and say, "Do you have children?" If the stylist said yes, I would say "Well you should know that I love my hair more than you love your children. Now go ahead!" I only had to say that to my current stylist once, and now she apologizes every time she has to cut off more than a millimetre. She cuts my hair dry, and sends me on my way.

Did I mention I got my hair cut today? I mean really cut! No REALLY! At least four inches of my prized hair! My fault, and here comes the relevance...

I have been colouring my own hair for years...there's that vanity thing again...I will be blonde 'til I die! I always had great success, and I've had many stylists tell me that my hair is very healthy (maybe they were just afraid of me...can't say I blame them!). Well, a couple of weeks ago I fried my poor tortured locks. Deep fried, charbroiled, burned to a crisp. What a mess. When it's wet, it feels like mud, and when it's dry, it looks a little like mud...is there blonde mud? Well, anyway. I confessed to my stylist and made an appointment for a cut.

As I reflect on my life on my new journey, I look at things so much differently than before, and try to relate to things in a new way. So I looked at all that dry crinkled hair on the floor, and thought about the last 13 years or so of my life. It compares beautifully and puts things into perspective in a way I had never considered before.

There was this hair, no longer any good to me, removed from my head to make way for beautiful hair underneath to grow and develop. I had done things to ruin it, I take responsibility for that. But none of it matters now. That hair is under another pile of hair in a garbage can at the salon by now. It's of no use to me, except that I have learned a lesson about playing computer games while I have colour on my hair! It's gone, no sense crying over it. I walked away from it in the salon, and while I may think about it every time I run a brush through my hair for the next few days, I know it has shaped my new style which is going to be so much better in the end.

So goes the events of my life in the past years. I have been the cause of many of the things that led me on the wrong path. I take responsibility. And I have mourned for far too long. And why? It's no good to me any more, and what's underneath is becoming so much more beautiful. I am learning not to shove my life into a ponytail to hide the split ends anymore. I made a mess, I cleaned it up, and now I am moving on.

Besides...I have a bag on my dresser with beautiful 20 inch hair extensions as my plan "B". Just like I have a heart inside that's learning to make my life more beautiful than even the finest hair could ever be!