A New Way to Look at – and Create! – Balance
Over the last several years, I have had at least one conversation every day where either a colleague, friend or a family member brings up the topic of balance. It seems to me that the quest to find/create balance is a constant theme in our lives. I wondered why. Perhaps we believe that balance will help us create more joyful, meaningful lives?
The more people I spoke to or coached around ‘balance’, the more I realised that the definition of balance varied from person to person. This realization was personally quite liberating because it enabled me to create my own approach towards discovering balance and joy in my life. In the process, I had insights that I’m excited to share with you, and believe can add value to your quest for balance.
My inspiration for this is the image above – Circular Forms by Robert Delaunay, 1930
Disproportionate AND balanced
I would often think of balance in life as it is conventionally defined – equal or proportionate distribution of time to various aspects of life. But does spending pre-allocated amounts of time really bring joy? And what are we spending this time towards? The answers led to a more fundamental question – What does a joyful life look like, to me?
Being a visual thinker, the answer came to me in the form of a vivid piece of art by French artist Robert Delaunay titled ‘Circular Forms’. Created in 1930, the artwork is strangely harmonious even when, upon closer look, the shapes and colours that make it aren’t. I looked at that painting as representing my whole life – all the areas of my life. And that shifted my idea of balance. In contrast to my earlier paradigm of “equal allocation of time and space to every area of life”, I now looked at achieving balance by allocating more resources to parts of my life that are important to me and bring me greater joy, and fewer to those that don’t.
Even in the absence of equal proportions of colours, there was an underlying sense of harmony in that painting. I believe that’s how it is in life. Life can imitate art and be better for it.
Harmony – a big picture thing
Harmony in art is an overall sense that we feel when we experience it – be it music, a painting, or a performance. It rarely comes from every aspect of the work of art being given equal focus, but instead from a myriad of colours, strokes, notes, symphonies, characters and moves. So it is in life, too. We could live in alignment with our core values to create a sense of harmony even when we may not necessarily be spending equal amounts of time towards each area of our life. This too is balance.
Another way of creating harmony is to find ways to integrate different areas of our life. A particular year in the past when I had three travel assignments – the thought of which made me nervous because my daughter was still very young and I didn’t have help at home to take care of her – turned out to be a year of mini vacations for us as a family because we decided to travel together! I would work during the day while my husband took care of our daughter. After work, we would make sure we had a lot of fun with each other. This year, with no travels anywhere, we found ourselves fondly reminiscing about those mini vacations, and expressing how glad we are that we turned those work travels into also family time.
Depth and quality of attention
For a long time I believed that it was the quantity/proportion of time spent on a particular area of our life that determined the effectiveness and impact in that area. But in art, I realised, it’s not the proportion but the depth and intensity of colour that determines the impact. And so I concluded that it’s not the time but the quality of our attention, how deeply and intensely present we are in any moment, that matters.
One way of cultivating the habit of being fully present in a moment is to weave mindfulness practices into our life. Over time, practices like meditation equip us to immerse ourselves fully in whatever we are doing.
Changing focal points
Different phases of our life have different priorities, and require us to shift focus accordingly. The dynamic nature of what demands our attention in a particular stage of our life makes it imperative to look at balance in context of the fluidity of our lives – and as a dynamic entity itself. What it means and how we achieve it changing and evolving as we go through life.
Mindfully turning our awareness towards what is priority for us at a given stage of life creates balance. It anchors us in the knowing that we are allocating our time and energy to that which is most important to us at the moment.
The ever changing nature of life will present us with several instances where we feel off-balance. In light of that, perhaps a more worthy aspiration than achieving ‘balance’ would be to consider how soon we come back on track when thrown it. And how well we manage to reassess what balance means to us in that particular phase.
I’m leaving you with a few questions that have helped me in the process of figuring what balance, and in its context joy, means for me.
- What does balance mean to me?
- What makes me feel in harmony with myself and with the world around me?
- What is most important to me right now (in life)?
- What am I being called upon to do right now and who do I want to be in this moment?
- What do I need to do most to restore my internal balance and harmony in this moment?
I hope these questions will enable you to find what balance means for you, and give you ways to re-balance and re-harmonise in the future, if you so need.
