Balance

BALANCE

What is BALANCE for some of us is chaos or boring for another.

I personally don’t subscribe to a one-size fits all approach to a BALANCED way of life.

Our emotional BALANCE is the area I specialise in. I work with elite athletes that have mastered the art of physical excellence and have amazing BALANCE and mastery with their bodies. I also work with academics and intellectuals with impressive educational resumes and sharp minds that they have fine-tuned like a samurai sword cutting through life’s bullshit with one swift movement.

Emotional BALANCE, however, requires as much discipline and study as does intellectual and physical excellence. But we have to find our own way to the beautiful inner waterfall of tranquil emotional BALANCE. In healthy, constructive relationships (including the one we have with ourselves) we will need to master robust boundaries that preserve our sense of freedom and our sense of security in all areas of our lives. Without emotional, physical, intellectual, sexual, financial and spiritual freedom and security our lives are thrown out of BALANCE. We feel trapped and unsafe.

To master physical BALANCE the universal laws that transcend age, culture and gender are diet, exercise and rest. However, what a ballerina does to master physical exercise and master perfect BALANCE for her craft is very different to the workout and diet that a rugby player follows.

To master emotional BALANCE throughout our lifetime I believe there are also three universal laws that transcend age, culture and gender. Tribal support, eldership and habitual self-nurturing. Let me just unpack these to explain further …

By tribal support I refer to our innate need to belong and be loved for who we are, not what we have, how we look and what we do. This can be a biological tribe or a selected heart tribe. A safe tribe is a no bullshit zone where your heart is valued especially when you’re angry and sad, and we learn the beautiful art of how to compromise without losing our self-respect and honouring our heart’s truth.

Eldership involves trusted wiser voices that care more about our wellbeing than our approval. These elders may be parents, grand or godparents, therapists or healers. They demonstrate the art of disagreeing with us from time to time without disrespecting us. Trusted elders are safe people we desire to listen to and learn from because they walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

Habitual self-nurturing is all about emotional self-care and investing in our emotive superannuation. In simpler terms, I just mean deliberately investing in genuine joy, not just when we are burnt out or on holidays, but as a non-negotiable lifestyle ritual. Habitual self-nurturing time requires treating and retreating ourselves with kind and gentle time away from duty and others needs that builds our self-respect. It might be reading, writing, surfing, gardening, meditating or anything that feeds our heart and fills up our happy tank.

So as we consider the word BALANCE in relation to our emotive wellbeing, let’s review the three elements vital in a healthy emotional diet.

1. Tribal support. Our heart’s requirement to belong, be respected and valued so don’t become neither co-dependent nor anti-dependent but learn about and enjoy the art of interdependent relationships.

2. Safe eldership. So we don’t disappear up our own arse as “know-it-alls” as we age.

3. Habitual self-care, so we invest in building and then maintaining a wonderfully healthy and sacred marriage between our head, heart and body based on our personal morality and integrity, as long as we all shall live.

These are in my view humanitarian necessities for us all if we seek robust Emotional Fitness, or in other words, heartfelt BALANCE as we mature. And we get our whole lifetime to keep reviewing and perfecting what feels like healthy BALANCE to our head, heart and body. Mark Udall puts it beautifully …

“The BALANCE between freedom and security is a delicate one.”

Lotsa love Cynthia xxx