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Should We Get Rid of the Word Balance?
13 January 2015
Allison watched best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert’s 90-second video about how the word balance has become a weapon we use against ourselves and others. Perhaps seeking balance is making it even harder to achieve the healthy satisfaction we crave in all aspects of our lives.
Tags: allison read, allison watched, balance
I’m teaching our Choosing Balance and Leadership course this week at the Federal Executive Institute so you might find the subject of today’s blog post to be a little strange. Why would someone who teaches a class on this topic, coaches individual clients and organizations struggling with this issue, and who blogs about it so often it’s worthy of a tag, ask the question, “Should we get rid of the word balance?”
Watch Elizabeth Gilbert’s 90-second video from Oprah’s The Life You Want Weekend Tour and I think you’ll agree with her that the word has become pretty loaded. In trying to achieve balance, a lot of us are feeling like being out of balance is just one more way we let ourselves and others down. As I told the participants in my class yesterday, “Be careful and make just a few changes at a time. Many of you are so goal-oriented and high-achieving that you’ll likely try to dig yourself out of the imbalanced state you’re in with the same intensity that got you into trouble in the first place.”
So while I’m not sure we need to get rid of the word all together since it does have meaning for people right now, I do think it’s important to carefully consider Gilbert’s advice that we embrace the messiness of our lives as part of the journey and the joy. I especially like the point Matthew Kelly makes in his book, Off Balance: Getting Beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction. “Over the past three years I have asked more than ten thousand respondents, ‘If you had to choose between balance and satisfaction, which would you choose?’ Not a single responded chose balance over satisfaction.”
I’m sharing the video with participants in my class tomorrow. I look forward to hearing their reactions and figuring out with them what we should do about this word balance.
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