Balancing Act

“Are you tired, run down, listless?” A quote from one of my all-time favorite I Love Lucy episodes is very appropriate for today’s post. Thankfully, the answer to all your problems is not in that little bottle of Vitameatavegamin.

Balance. (**insert heavy sigh here**) We all crave it in our personal and professional lives, don’t we? Most of us don’t have it, though. I know I didn’t for a long time. I wanted it, sure. But I didn’t want to do the things necessary to get it. To do so would mean discipline and disappointing people, and well… I definitely didn’t want to do that. It might crush the image I’ve worked so hard to maintain over all these years. You know the one, don’t you? Sure you do… because you’re likely trying to keep it up as well. The one where everyone thinks you’re Superwoman. We can do 50 things at once while maintaining patience, happiness, poise, and sanity. 

I had typed out for a friend the process I went through to finally get my life in order…in the proper order. Nothing in this list will shock you if you have gone down this route before. It will probably even look predictable and cliché. I know everyone’s specific plan will not be the same, and different things motivate people, but I can only share what worked for me in hopes that some ideas might inspire you or be tweaked to work for you to help you find your balance. I had a lot of start/stop/fails during this process, and it has definitely become a season as it was not something I could change overnight after years of neglect in this area.

Step 1: Soul searching/Discovery

I made a list of what I thought were the most important things in my life or that I claimed were the most important. My list looked something like this:

1. God
2. Family
3. Being healthy (mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically)
4. Being involved in the anti-human trafficking sphere

Then I asked myself, where do I spend my time? My list then looked like this:

1. Work
2. Family
3. God

Well, that’s not right, is it? First of all, work isn’t even on my list of what I say is most important yet it is taking up most of my time. Being healthy and being involved in my community aren’t taking up a minute of my time even though it’s on my most important list. Ouch. Soul searching is sometimes painful when we’re honest with ourselves. Becoming self-aware is so important because until you come out of denial about who you really are versus who you want to be, you’ll never move forward.

Step 2: Planning

I started to put together a “If I had all the time in the world and no bills, what would I want my day to look like” plan.  I know this is a little unrealistic because both of those things are factors, but I needed to vet my soul searching once I was ready to put together a plan. Does my “perfect day” align with what I think the most important things are in my life?

My “perfect” schedule looked like this in order of daily tasks:

• Coffee/time with God
• Non-hectic get the family ready for the day time
• Workout
• Go to work (yes, I would still want to work just not full time)
• Leave work to pick up the kids from school instead of having after school care
• Volunteer/help with eradicating human trafficking
• Cook/eat dinner with family
• Family time after dinner until bedtime

Next, I analyzed this “perfect day” to see if there were any easy things I could change to make it a reality. This is a work in progress, and I have not accomplished my “perfect day” yet. Some days get pretty close, though. Others, I miss the mark completely, and I’m thankful for God’s grace and mercy to start a new day.

Once you have your list, instead of saying you’re going to change all things at once and make the perfect day a reality tomorrow – start with one item on the list. Plan out/schedule what it would take to make that one thing a reality. Then start doing it one day at a time.

Step 3: Action!

Mindset change: I completed Priscilla Shirer’s Breathe devotional. This was life changing for me. It validated a lot of what I had known in the soul searching phase, but didn’t know how to change. Cliff notes of the devotional: boundaries. You must set them. No one else will set them for you. JUST SAY NO! Oh, so simply stated but so hard to put into practice. I could probably write an entire post on just saying no, but I’ll leave that for you to figure out what that means for you. Chances are, you already know the things that should give in your life – those things that are unnecessary but you keep doing because of either guilt, pride, affirmation or some other unhealthy validation. You just have to be brave enough to say no to them.

God: Straight out of the gate, I got my quiet time with God sorted. For me, this was just a discipline thing. I was sporadic in my prayer time and Bible-reading time. Some people prefer to do this at night, and that’s fine if that’s what works for you. Starting out my day with God typically drives my mood for the day, and I found if I saved it for the end of my day… well, I’m just too tired to do it. Some mornings are amazing. I feel like I’m connecting with God, and I’m moving mountains. Other days, the feeling is not there, and I just have to have faith that He’s hearing me regardless. But I do it whether I’m feeling it or not. All that this required was for me to wake up a little earlier than usual. I guess that means sometimes I go to bed a little earlier, too. This change, though? This change started in 2012. Do you know how long I have been a Christian? Since 1992. Yup. I had been consistently sporadic in the Word for almost 20 years as a believing Christian. You may be there yourself. A faithful church goer but no depth beyond your Sunday service. It’s okay. We all start somewhere. Start today and take the next right step. Get in the Word. Pray. Every day. One day at a time.

Health: This was next on my list that I knew I could make small changes and see a huge difference.

• Working out: I started with just a few days a week and then it grew as I found my balance a little more and said no to things that weren’t on my list above. The thing about working out is you have to find what you love to do. Do you want workout by yourself or in a group? (Accountability is usually a key factor in success!) Do you like to walk, run, swim, yoga, dance, Crossfit? Find what type of exercise you enjoy most, and you’ll be more likely to stick with it.
• Eating healthy: Ugh. No one wants to hear this. It’s so much more fun to eat trash all the time, right? This is not an area I have mastered yet, but here’s what I can tell you. I feel so much better when I feed my body real food. You just take it one meal at a time. Meal planning and prepping ahead are crucial to the success of this.
• Mental health: This will absolutely be a future post, but mental health is SO important. It’s so often joked about, and with Christians – so often hidden because of the fear of judgement that we just aren’t trusting God enough or have enough faith to get us through our depression, anxiety, or both. If you suffer from any emotional or mental issues, don’t keep it in. Talk with someone you trust. People care about you. You are not alone.

Work: This was my biggest boundary that I had to set, and had been a work in progress since October 2014 when I was doing the Breathe study. My work/life balance was so far out of whack, I couldn’t just wake up the next morning and say – I’m only going to work 40 hours this week. I had trained my stakeholders for a decade that I was willing to work almost double that. I had to retrain the people that expected more out of me. That meant saying no to projects or things that people asked me to do that may further my career or to maybe say yes but with an expectation of turnaround time to not require me to work through the night to obtain it. One of the problems I had was not realizing that the formula for the ability to do something looks like this: time + skill. I knew I could help the people or do their tasks if I had more time. The problem was… I didn’t have more time. Know what that means? It means I can’t do it. Admitting defeat or hanging up the Superwoman cape has been hard for me. But the people that are upset that I was not working an extra shift to get their stuff done in record time… those people I was serving through this route… they don’t care about me. They don’t care if I neglect my health or my family to complete work for them. Why would I continue to look for their affirmation? This process took about 8 months to finally conquer, as I had to cut back slowly weeks at a time. And now? Now I’m finally working 40 hours a week, and I’m not walking around like a zombie from lack of sleep.

If work is not where you struggle, that last bit was probably hard to relate to or boring to read. But my guess is that by now – you know where your “work” equivalent is in your life. What is taking up too much of your time that is not aligned with what God has planned for your life?

Through this process, God has shown me so much about myself…

1. How entitled I felt towards “my” time.
2. How much I needed people to affirm me even though I would have told you 100 times: I’m strong. // I don’t care what people think. // I can do it all on my own.
3. How I left out a major component that I’m not serving others outside my family and church.
4. How I’m not taking care of the body God has given me by: not being active; eating junk food all the time; and not getting enough sleep because I wanted to work when everyone was sleeping.

The list goes on and on and on because I’m still learning and growing and making changes as I discover those things about myself that aren’t aligned with who God called me to be.

Now it’s your turn!

Are you overwhelmed at the thought of tackling something like this? Don’t be. Remember that this post is about 4 years in the making. It is a process and a season. Just take the next right step. Make those first three lists and pray about where to go from there:

1. What are the most important things in my life?
2. Where do I spend most of my time? (Don’t forget about all your time on social media – those “quick check minutes” add up!)
3. What would my perfect day look like?

Are you still reading? Did you make it to the end of this? Are you wondering, “Where is the green highlighter moment?” Well, if you made it this far – this is your green highlighter moment. Is He trying to get your attention through this post? If you’ve read all the way to the end, my guess is yes. Because if this didn’t resonate with you in some way – you would have stopped reading a long time ago. So, don’t be afraid. Take the next right step towards finding your balance… and hang up the cape! It is liberating!

Some of my favorite quotes that motivate me during this time:

1. Discipline isn’t fun. It’s not popular. But you’ll never reach your destiny without it. (Christine Caine)
2. I do what I can do… it’s all I can do. (Julie Agee Gillaspy)
3. Starting strong is easy. Finishing strong is hard. Finish strong anyways.

Books that have helped me in my journey:

1. God Never Blinks by Regina Brett
2. Grace for the Good Girl: Letting Go of the Try-Hard Life by Emily Freeman
3. Breathe: Making Room for Sabbath by Priscilla Shirer
4. Do You Have the Courage to be You by Jenny Williamson

P.S. And since this is a journey…If I was going to re-write my “perfect day” today, there’d be an additional component. It would be what I like to call #FEELINGS time with a close friend. Those that know me well, know that I’ve never really been a super feely-kinda girl. “Suck it up” is kind of my motto. After the first time that I started truly opening up to a close friend in 2013 about some of my struggles – that I couldn’t do it all anymore – I kept apologizing for having all these feelings. That usually I’m more controlled over my feelings. Feelings, feeling, feelings. But you know what? Once you start to let that faucet drip just a little to people that you trust, these #FEELINGS moments can be used as such powerful things… and usually turn into green highlighter moments themselves.