Is being out of balance wrong?
While volunteering for the Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Utah, my girlfriend and I were assigned to man who oversaw a room of cats. We thought he was a little odd. However, once he saw that we were serious about caring for the cats, he opened up to us.
He had been a drifter before he found Best Friends. He roamed from city to city on his motorcycle. When he couldn’t find a relative to take him in, he slept in parks or in jails.
He passed the Best Friend sign on his way to the Grand Canyon. He stopped to check it out. After volunteering for a while, they give him a job. When we met him, it had been three years since he started.
He never went out with the others. On his days off, all he could do was to think about his cats. They were his family. They gave him a purpose in life.
Is he clinically anti-social or just passionate? Is it wrong to obsess and overwork if you are in love with what you do? I believe that being overly focused on our passion isn’t bad as long as we maintain healthy eating and exercise habits, we are present in our relationships since they are the emotional support we need to be happy (yes, some human connection might have been a good thing for “cat man”), and make sure we reconnect with nature in some way on a regular basis.
Carl Jung said that if we DO NOT dis
Do you think, as high achieving women, we should seek balance in our lives? How do you know when you are overdoing it? What do you do to maintain a sense of balance and peace, or is it possible?
Thank you! I agree that it’s OK to be passionate about something.
As for “when you’ve got the balance wrong”: it’s when taking time off from your passion leaves you depressed rather than re-energised, because the emotional support isn’t there.
I just watched Becoming Jane last night (a bit behind, aren’t I!?). Jane Austin pursued her passion and held tight to her grip on what she knew to be true and just in a time when women of intelligence were cautioned to be “especially quiet.” And think of what she did to maintain balance…everything Marcia just suggested! She sought anonymity much of the time, spent time connecting with nature and to the empathy and love in her family.
So, how do we know when we put down our pens–or tools of our passion–to seek balance? I would offer one of my favorite quotes that we use in my workshops and seminars–”You are like a warehouse, you can’t ship out what you don’t have in stock.” When our inner supplies and resources become depleted, some of the early warning signs include waning creativity and self-doubt. Further down the imbalance trail we can actually “hear” the warning in our own voices–in our shrill or short response; in the chatter to justify further depletion of our “stock”. When what we’re left with on our warehouse shelves is fatigue, frustration, or worse, bitterness, then that’s what we begin to ship out. It’s our selves holding up a great sign to say “stop!” Maybe even for a quiet hour.
Here’s to the passions we pursue that make the world a better place, the talents with which we’re blessed for that pursuit and the wisdom to know when to rest along the path to restock our shelves with the goodness we’re meant to offer!
As a mother of two teenagers, I struggle daily with the question, ‘what is balance?’ I love to work. I love my family. I love my hobbies. I love my friends.
For me, being healthy is my barometer of balance. I learned to notice the onslaught of burning eyes, stomach ache, achy legs.
The great thing about being busy and being passionate about everything I do is that I can switch gears quickly. Work dragging me down…go home and play with the kids. Sunburn from golf bothering me…go sit in the air conditioned office and read or write.
So the bottom line for me is that balance means I am doing what I choose to do at the time.
Pam, I love that you used the word “choice.” Choice is dependent on awareness. When we are aware of what we are doing, we can choose to continue, to take a break, to be with a loved one, or just go do something else. Awareness and choice are keys to managing our passionate energy.
I think we all get out of balance sometimes, the key is to not get so far off balance that we fall…I can tell I am overdoing it when my memory starts faltering more than usual and my sleeping is disrupted (waking up with too many thoughts to go back to sleep). Recently I went to Miraval Spa Resort in Tucson and it was an exceptional experience for rejuvinating and reclaiming balance. There was a great mix of nature (hikes into the beautiful catalina mountains), meditation, yoga, excercise & mindfulness classes, amazing gourmet healthy food, and of course luxuriouse spa treatments. I highly recommend it for a rejuvinating vacation; the biggest challenge is the expense. My girlfriend and I have agreed that we are going to make this an annual event (more often if the expense were not so high!).