Striving For Balance

If the main challenge in my 20s was figuring out who I wanted to be, the main struggle in my 30s, thus far, has been taking all of those pieces of myself that I discovered and molding them together into one balanced whole. In order to live my best life and be the person I want to be, I feel that it's necessary for me to:

• Maintain open, loving, authentic communication with my children; really listen to what they have to say.
• Maintain open, loving, authentic communication with my husband; be a supportive life partner for him.
• Do fun things together as a family.
• Do educational things together as a family.
• Go on fun and/or romantic dates with my husband.
• Spend quality time with my girlfriends; be the best friend I can be.
• Spend quality time with my parents and my sisters; make sure they know how much they mean to me.
• Spend a little bit of time each day meditating, or being still.
• Cook healthy meals for my family.
• Exercise regularly.
• Keep a clean house.
• Help Evan with his homework and volunteer at his school.
• Maintain a vegetable garden year-round.
• Become actively involved in the causes that I care about.
• Explore the outdoors, in my backyard and beyond, with my children, with my husband, by myself.
• Work on my writing.
• Work on my drawing.
• Read, a lot, with my children and by myself.
• Travel.
• Go back to school.
• Strive for eight hours of sleep each night.
• Manage our finances.
• Manage our calendar.
• Watch movies.
• Watch TV, just not too much.
• Learn new things.
• Challenge myself.
• Shower, preferably daily.

I'm sure that most people can relate: when it comes to things I want to accomplish in a day, in a week, in my life, the list is seemingly endless. How do I strike a balance here? How do I fulfill the needs of my children, my husband, and myself? How do I keep the house clean, everybody nourished (physically, emotionally, and intellectually), get in a workout (with a shower afterward!), maintain the garden, correspond with my friends, connect with my husband, and still find time to read, write, and meditate (followed by a full-night's sleep)? Of course, this is the proverbial problem: not enough hours in the day.

Some people deal with this problem by constantly burning the candle at both ends which, while no doubt productive, can have detrimental effects for your health. Every once in a while, I'll find myself in a sort of manic phase where I'm getting a lot done (and feeling really great about it), but simultaneously not taking time to myself (for meditation, stillness, sleep) that I so desperately need to remain productive. And so, eventually I burn out. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I often find myself stuck in a rut, not accomplishing much at all because I'm sitting around thinking about what needs to be done (and getting overwhelmed) instead of actually doing it.

Lately, I've been telling myself to live by the mantra: Think less; do more. And yet, as I write this, it occurs to me that perhaps a more useful mantra would be: Think less; be more. Be in the moment, right here, right now. Because, no matter how much I'm doing, if my mind is off running amuck elsewhere, my life will not be balanced. Perhaps the goal shouldn't be to figure out a way to do everything I want to do. Perhaps the goal should be to realize that I don't have to. All I have to do is be fully present in the moment, wherever that moment finds me. I'm beginning to think that the balance I'm striving for isn't a balancing of actual tasks, but a balancing of my spirit, my inner being. Because the rest, I'm thinking, will follow.

So the next question, of course, is how do I achieve this inner balance? Hmmm...I'll get back to you on that later. There's a ridiculously adorable, incredibly special small child at my side, and she is requesting my presence.