Maintaining a resilient approach to the helping professions requires balance, not only in our work but in our personal lives as well. When we experience our work life intruding too much into the personal sphere, we know we are out of balance. When we feel stressed making routine decisions or because our family members need something from us, we are out of balance. When our dreams too often become an extension of our work , think “need for balance”. But finding balance among all the elements of our lives is a real brain teaser! Where, how?
Last year I was working with a woman whose elderly mother had suffered a series of health crises. Her mother’s status precipitated moving cross country from her familiar home to assisted living here. Both the mother and the daughter were experiencing tremendous stress as a result. My client lamented the lack of balance in her life. I mentioned my dislike of pie graphs in which we sort the areas of our lives into “pie-shaped” segments. We agreed that the pie itself would bulge as we tried to squeeze in all the competing slices. What could serve as a better model?
My client suddenly recalled a long ago biology lesson about homeostasis: organisms maintain overall stability as their systems respond continually to environmental changes.
“Dancing in the moment!” I exclaimed. “The ability to respond to what is asked of us right here, right now”. Not a limited space into which we cram everyone’s demands and needs along with our own, we decided, but a flexible, open, variable capability to respond as each moment develops. We threw out the pie chart and started dancing.
I once saw the word responsible defined by a clever re-spelling: “response-able”. Balancing is a “response-able” act. It never occurs with rigid posturing, but happens best when we can flexibly dance in the moment, just this moment, of our lives.
