Solstice Coaching Blog

Life Balance… For Those Who Wouldn’t Normally Consider the Concept.

By Emily Osbun Bermes

Let’s face it; the eighties have been over for some time now- for most of us anyway. Along with the obnoxious clothes and big hair, the “I can do it all, have it all, and be everything to everyone” mentality created in the eighties, has been left behind as well. In retrospect, collectively, we’ve noticed that quality of life does matter, and that having, doing, and being everything mostly left us exhausted and depleted anyway. As a culture we’ve started to recognize that a more healthy life balance might be necessary if we are to ever start feeling good about our lives. We’ve started to recognize that the price of “success” might be too high, and that success is sometimes only bitter-sweet. To gain the job or status you thought you wanted, you might have to give up something more important. So as a culture, we’ve been re-evaluating our priorities, wondering what it would take to really fulfill us, and making choices to that end. Doing it all just didn’t do the trick.

Despite the culture shift, there are still a lot of very successful people running around believing that to be “a success” they need to keep sacrificing everything for that aim. It’s the guy who is working 70 hours a week, talking on a cell phone through lunch, and mentally strategizing the next big deal through his daughters’ soccer game. It’s the woman working 15 hour days only to come home and work another 3 or 4. These folks don’t have life balance.

If for the past 15 years, the more touchy-feely reasons for having a reasonable life-balance hasn’t been persuasive to you, have you considered that a lack of balance might actually be inhibiting your work-performance as well? It’s true. If there is no other reason for you to investigate life balance, look at it from a purely performance-driven angle. A person with a life that is out-of-balance, performs similarly to car whose tires are out of balance. You might not notice what isn’t there, performance-wise, until you have your car maintained. The little pull you’d learned to live with, the watery steering you’ve come to ignore… when fixed, make a performance difference that makes driving that car fun (and safe) again. The same is true for your life. When you instill a healthy balance in your life, you’ll find you perform better than you realized you could- in all arenas.

Life balance, or the degree to which all areas of your life are functioning to a degree that pleases you, is important because they are all tied together. Your work, finances, intimate relationships, family relationships, friendships, spirituality or personal growth, health/wellness, your physical environment and fun (yeah that’s right- fun) all come together to create the life that you experience. Notice, the common denominator is you? The spiritual crisis, the floundering marriage, the disconnect from your children, the painfully obvious lack of fun… all impact you, and you are the foundation for performance. It is as simple as that.

An executive who learns to focus energy and attention, not just on what he or she is good at (usually work), but to focus energy on the things that come less naturally (maybe relationships, maybe cutting loose) actually increase their overall balance, become more fulfilled, and are better able to meet the demands of the workplace-everyday. And they learn to do it with more energy, clarity, and focus. It’s like driving a well-maintained car; you are simply more likely to go the distance if your life has balance.

The significance is this:

Imagine the executive, so loved and respected at work, and her home life is a wreck. That’s a wheel out of alignment. Imagine the manager who is really happy at home and at work, but his he is obese, and this impacts his energy level and self-concept- that’s a tire with low air pressure. Or a CEO who is so disconnected from fun, he’s not sure what he would even do for fun if he had the time- these are bald tires. The analogy here is that you can’t have top performance with any instrument that has not been maintained. You wouldn’t drive your child or grandchild around in a car that had been this poorly maintained, would you? Yet many people neglect their own life to the point that they are not fully able, fully present, or fully responsive to the needs and demands of their complicated lives. Showing up for your life without having properly maintained yourself is a little like driving yourself, and everyone/everything you love around in a car that in a state of disrepair.

So, if for no other reason, consider life balance form a purely performance-based perspective and do a little maintenance on the most important machine you own: you.

Give a Little Bit

We went to the Black Pines Animal Park yesterday. They’ve begun their big move/renovation so it’s different and not totally put back together. But the animals are still impressive and the work the place does is still humbling. Over a hundred exotic (and many rather large) animals; big cats, a camel, bears, snakes big enough to eat my youngest … you name it, they’ve got one. All of these animals were rescued from people trying to raise them as pets, circuses or carnivals. And as we wandered around, I was overwhelmed by the immensity of such a facility. I have a heart for animals, but the operation was enormous and, at that, they turn away hundreds of animals a year. The problem, to me, is overwhelming. Feeling that way, it’s not that I don’t want to help, but I notice there is a paralyzing feeling that comes over me in not knowing what to do and in feeling that any action is so small that it is essentially inconsequential. I think sometimes people connect with issues and then do nothing for this same reason. I don’t think so often it’s apathy, but it can look apathetic.

Yet ultimately doing a little is enough. And when people focus on looking for little things to do, the possibilities become apparent. The perspective that a little is enough (and a far cry better than nothing) leads to more action and a sense of empowerment rather than apathy or immobility.

That night, after we visited Black Pine, my son noticed a kitten by the side of our country road as we drove home. We got out and investigated and he and his two siblings appeared to have been a dumped litter. You’d be surprised how many dumped litters we get … kittens much too young to survive on their own and abandoned by their owners.

So we took them home and, after a sinking gut feeling, I went back and found two more in the litter. In total, five little kittens, gorgeous, being smothered with love from my kids until we can find them homes. It felt so good, so empowering, to do something … even though I know it’s not even a dent in the scheme of things.

Whatever your cause is, I encourage you to look for ways, even little ways, to do something. Deciding to do something leads to action, action is empowering, and empowerment feels good and does make a difference.

Consider the man who combed the beach tossing stranded starfish after starfish of the thousands that lay dying on the beach back into the ocean. When questioned what difference he thought he could possibly make because his actions seemed so futile, he threw a starfish back into the ocean and simply stated, “I made a difference to that one, didn’t I?”

Memorial Day

A man and his 14 year old daughter came to pick up my dad’s horse from our farm today. My dad had long since lost his desire to ride, and longed to rekindle his lost love-affair with sailing. So we had boarded his mare for nearly a year until a better situation could be found for her. Today, she went with her new family. A perfect 4-H horse project for a young girl with a soul for horses and the calming effect that a guarded horse like this would need.

Hope was the name my father had given her. A 9-year old Quarter Horse with a sketchy background and the given name of Athena for the Goddess of War. One look at her stunning, fiery trot and you’d understand her given name. She had a tendency to snort and huff and trot like she was floating on air when agitated … which was often. She was beautiful and made of fire. But Hope, time would tell, would ultimately be a better name and seemed to define so much of what sustained her and those who loved her.

A bright bay with black mane and tail and a white mark, the shape of Africa, on her forehead, she was no fighter… more of a watcher … the anxious observer of her own life. Her odd history with my family too long to repeat, she found herself with my father again a few years ago, only to experience two very life-threatening episodes of something that even the best research veterinarians at Purdue could not identify. Long nights my father had spent with the mare, literally willing her back to health for days. I watched my father prepare himself to euthanize her with both incidents, holding off on instinct, only to see her turn around in the night and recover from this mysterious illness twice. I watched him lay vigil to his mare, laying hands on her, giving her the only thing the vets could not … his intense, compassionate love.

Now, two years later, she goes … not by death, as all bets would have assumed, but in an attempt to keep a young horse working, having a job, having a human who needs her. This fourteen year old seemed a fit better than anyone had really hoped for. A good match. A good decision.

But even in parting on good terms, there is something to grieve. My 5-year old daughter, though she’d never really ridden her, had developed an affinity for her in the time that she’d been here. She wasn’t a child’s horse by nature but, just the same, my daughter had grown to love her presence on our little farm and she grieved with an intensity I’d not expected the day the mare left.

Her immediate instinct, her way of making sense of what she could not control or understand, was to draw. She immediately asked for her art supplies and paper and drew and authored a memorial book for Hope. She drew her over and over and wrote the small phrases her limited spelling vocabulary would allow. “I love you, Hope”. “I miss you, Hope”. “Hopie Girl” as my father had always called her. Sheets upon sheets of paper nearly covered with hearts, X’s and O’s all speaking what she could not articulate in her spoken words. It was, for her, cathartic.

I’m never not taken aback at what my kids do naturally to heal and honor themselves and their experiences. I am also struck at how difficult it can be for adults to see and acknowledge what is needed on the emotional level in times of stress, loss or crisis in order to grieve when something is lost or endured. A death, a divorce, a business venture gone awry. To survive the perfect business storm, or your own personal 40 days in the dessert … these experiences are so common that some of them seem nearly universal. Yet, as adults, our learned tendency is to muddle through, bury the grief and fear, ignore the tax these things take on us and march on as best we can, wounded or weary perhaps … but still walking.

Without processing the deep emotions that quietly rule our personal and professional lives, we cannot ever completely move on from loss, crisis or demise. When all is said and done, and grieving is allowed to take place (whatever that looks like), you will inevitably be left with hope … the only thing I’ve ever known to universally follow grief and the one thing within us that is impossible to destroy … no matter what the loss.

I’m almost ashamed to admit but, before this year, I had never in my life mowed a lawn. Ever. I’d never started a mower or pushed a mower. Actually, I’m not even sure I have actually touched a mower. Though my parents were adamant that I should be able to change my own oil (no, that doesn’t mean the Quick Lube place), maintain my own car, and be completely independent at no older than 19, somehow the lawnmower thing went under the radar.

But now, I have a horse. And the horse has a pasture. My horse, my pasture, my chore to mow. Truth be told, I’d have happily mowed the four-acre lawn itself, but my husband said something about “over his dead body”. But the pasture … it’s mine. So I’ve learned to run the large, commercial mower and, along the way, I’ve noticed that not only do I like it (seriously), but there is great metaphor for life in running that mower.

There is a way in which, if you mow at a slower speed, the mower glides smoothly over even the bumpiest, ill-maintained chunk of hay field. Bumps smooth out, become relaxing to ride, even become soothing with the rhythmic up-and-down of the landscape. It’s hypnotic, really. Many dreams have been sculpted on that pasture. But there is a faster speed at which the mower is in constant conflict with the landscape. Every bump jars both mower and rider with all of the force of a battering ram. One can feel, after an acre or so of this constant jarring and bashing, like you’ve been beaten with a baseball bat.

So I, being the type A that I am, always begin at the high speed, bashing myself to death, being tossed around like a little bean-stuffed doll on the mower, resisting, tensing, gritting my teeth. Rather unpleasant, though undoubtedly funny to watch.

And then I remember to simply relax, slow down, and go with the flow. Like on the mower, life also seems to work better when you are going with the natural flow of events. Riding the waves, not resisting them, taking each movement with ease, and not resisting, bracing, or forcing.

If quantum physicists are right, and the universe is at least somewhat random in its functioning, one never really knows what challenges, opportunities, obstacles, or assistance is right around the bend. You never, ever know what’s coming. And yet there are people who fight present circumstances with resistance and blunt force trauma to make their life go the way they think it “should”. Watching them live is a little like watching me try to mow the lawn before I figured out the trick … go with the flow: painful, stressful. And yet there are others who seem to have learned that fighting the flow is futile. They somehow know that slowing down, yielding to the random nature of things, and simply doing the best you can, when you can, and where you can is enough. It’s a more peaceful thing to behold.

I see no difference in the levels of success possible for those who go with the flow and those who force success through sheer grit and determination. Both can be “successful”. But those who meet opportunity with preparation and ride the natural evolutionary process of their own life seem much more pleasant to be around. Those who force it out by sheer will and determination tend to be stressed, taxed, and less easy to be with. Doesn’t make them wrong, it’s just a different way to handle life. Same end, different means.

For me, as far as lawn mowing, business, and most of the other stuff as well, I prefer to take a little longer, ride the waves of what random circumstances show up with, feel at ease, and, at moments, feel completely at peace. It seems better than forcing the flow, exhaustings myself, and bringing tension and grit to everyone I meet.

With the exception of the grasshopper guts and horse dung the wind blows back toward the mower, I’ve seen worse ways to spend a sunny Saturday afternoon … and far worse ways to live a life.

New habits are hard to sustain. Ask anyone who’s tried to create one! They are hard to sustain because much of what we do is unconscious. The moods we have, the ways we respond to stimuli, the things we do and don’t do are largely automatic or habitual. So how do we move our behaviors from the unconscious to the conscious so that we are more mindful of the choices we make? Structure.

A structure is simply something we set up, physically, to remind us of what we are choosing to do, or who we are choosing to be. Structures keep us conscious of our behaviors. A good structure is anything that marries the intended goal, habit, or behavior with the person who’d like to engage it. Structures can be simple, but should also be fun and fail-safe, so an ounce of creativity is helpful in creating them. Here are some examples I’ve seen … use them as a springboard for creatively implementing your own structures to help remind you to meet your goals.

• For the person who forgets to pack (and therefore eat) their lunch: Make it the night before and place your car keys on top of the lunch (yes … keys in the fridge) so that there is no way to leave without the lunch.

• For the person working at being calm throughout the day: An inspirational quote or expression taped to your computer (or dashboard, palm pilot, partners forehead) to remind you.

• For the person who forgets to run first thing in the morning: Place your running shoes and sweat suit out on the dresser to remind you that this is what you put on first, and why.

• For someone working on feeling good (hey, even that takes work sometimes): Send a championing email to yourself at night so that it is the first thing you read when you get to work.

As you can see, these simple ideas can go a long way in getting a person on track with their goals and habits, simply by raising their level of consciousness. The key here is keeping your structures simple, fun, and easy. So do what you can to avoid these pitfalls:

• Over-structured environments: If you have 87 structures in place at any given time, you’ll learn to ignore them all. The mind simply can’t process all of it, and will shut itself off as a result. Keep it simple.

• Change it up: If the same sticky note sits on your computer for more than a week, you’ll not notice it anymore. It just starts to blend into your normal environment. Novelty is key for visual stimuli, so keep it novel.

• Structure or abuse: I went into a woman’s house shortly after she had given birth, and she had pictures of anorexic supermodels all over her cupboard and refrigerator. I’ve had two kids … so part of me gets it. Still, abusive is the word that came to my mind. Since it was not possible for her body to ever be that thin (let alone right after giving birth!), it was setting her up for failure and probably guilt, depression, and negative self-worth issues as well. Use structures to support, not self-sabotage.

Something to ponder: What habits or awareness of behavior would you like to incorporate into your life? What structure could support you in this process?

Support systems are a sum total of the important people you surround yourself with and the unique gifts they bring into your life. Your friends, family, colleagues (to some extent), and intimate partners all weave together to create the ever-changing support system that is uniquely yours. The support they provide will have a huge impact on what you are able to accomplish, how fully you will be able to develop your potential, and how happy the journey is along the way. The types of support they provide can include tactical, emotional, financial, advice/counsel, physical, and more. People with a strong support system tend to fly high … like an acrobat bouncing off of a trampoline. People with a weak support system have less to help propel them up; thus, they struggle to get any altitude, some even falling through the cracks.

While fixed (and dependent on luck) at birth, our support systems do grow, shift, and change. By adulthood they are largely self-created. We are no longer at the mercy of biology to determine the strength and quality of our support system. We have choice in determining who we surround ourselves with, and this choice is often overlooked as a means to foster and support personal and professional development.

You choose your spouse, you choose your friends, and, while you don’t choose your colleagues, you do choose who you hang out with at the water cooler. You likely are still affected by your family of origin, but you determine the depth and breadth of that relationship. Choosing wisely on all of these fronts can make a huge difference in who you continue to become, the standards you hold yourself to, and how able you are to reach a higher level of achievement and personal satisfaction (whatever that looks like for you).

This month, we will focus on the choice of spouse. Your spouse, most often, is the person who will have the single biggest influence on who you will become throughout your adult life. Our morals and values will inevitably blend with those of our spouse, and their beliefs about who we are and who we should be will shape us beyond measure. If you are looking for a mate, or looking for a mate again, consider this:

• Through time you will likely live up to, or down to, your partner’s expectations of you. Pay close attention to your partner’s perceptions of you. If your partner views you as something you do not aspire to be, take note. If they see in you things you wish to be true about yourself, then hang around a bit. It’s likely to rub off. If your partner doubts your potential or your dreams and fails to see the “real you” deep inside, consider moving on. Read this one again.

• Consider whether your partner makes you feel whole in your own right, or dependent on them to be complete (they make up for your deficiencies). Either can and will be true with time. If they imply or tell you outright that you cannot exist, succeed, or be happy without them, you’ll likely not be happy with them. Partners who see you as complete and whole will treat you that way. They will have more respect for you, and you will have more respect for yourself.

• If your partner had to gamble big, would they bet on you? Knowing you have a partner who believes in you, enough to risk with you, will give you added courage to face the challenges required for all big ventures (which are often required for big rewards).

• Is your partner supportive of your path, even when it diverges slightly from their path? Building a life with a partner who is inclined to criticize, doubt, and complain about things that are important to you is like taking a bath with someone who keeps pulling the drain plug. Energy, motivation, determination, courage … all are drained from your pool. Few people have enough strength on reserve to keep their life moving while loosing massive amounts of energy down the drain at the same time. Partners who encourage, support, make possible, provide, help, accept, believe in, and stay brave with you will allow you to accomplish more … period.

There are ways to compensate for insufficient support at home. But if you are in a position to choose, remember this: support systems start and end at home. Choose well.

I was asked recently what my parting words of wisdom would be for my children if I knew I was dying. I’m not sure it counts as wisdom, but here was my answer: “Row, row, row your boat; gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily; life is but a dream.” Here is why …

“Row, row, row your boat.” It is true. In the river of life, it helps to row. It is a river filled with turns and rocks, eddies and rapids. If we intend to run the river path with any say in where we end up, indeed we must do some rowing. Some people like to ride in the safety of the middle track, some steer straight into the rapids. Some people end up spinning around in an eddy for most, if not all, of their life. Others crash from rock to rock without ever even attempting to paddle.

We have choices, and our paddling does make a difference. But notice, though we paddle, the river itself is doing most of the work. “Gently down the stream.” There is no need to toil, struggle, or otherwise needlessly exhaust ourselves. Paddling can be simple. Because the river will carry us one way or another, we really don’t need to kill ourselves with the paddling. The journey can be easy if you are going with the flow of the river. If you’ve ever white-water rafted, you’ll know from experience that paddling against the flow is futile. Life, too, has a flow. Use it. If your life feels like a constant struggle, you may be paddling against the natural flow of your life. You may have chosen a work ill-suited to you. You may be trying to control too much. These are signs that the journey may not be clicking for you as well as it could.

“Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.” Have you noticed how easy it is for children to be merry? They eat merrily, they cook merrily, they play merrily. It just comes naturally. For many, the natural merriness of life they had as children gives way to worry, regret, and struggle as they grow into adults. We can get a measure of that merriness back, and the key is to simply trust the path of the river. Trust life itself to carry us forward safely. When we can trust life, we can shift our focus from the future and the past to the present and all it has to offer. Stop, look, and listen and you’ll truly find so much to be merry about.

“Life is but a dream.” Have you ever noticed how real dreams feel? They feel so real, our bodies are even fooled. We may wake up sweaty, tired, and scared over something as silly as dreaming we ended up at work naked and late for a meeting. Life, and our perception of it, is very much dictated by our unique perceptual process. And yet it feels as real as our dreams at the moment we are having them. 100% of our experience of life is our interpretation of it, not the experience itself. So how could you look at the world so that this dream would be a good one? How could you perceive your life in a way that had it be more meaningful, more powerful, more positive … and not the kind that leaves you in a cold sweat?

I encourage you, today, and this month, to live life by the wise words of this nursery rhyme. Maybe it’s true that everything we need to know … we learn in Kindergarten.

Success in all forms is ultimately bound to our own personal development, and our development includes having a fulfilling existence. It is important, therefore, to cultivate our own fulfillment; both for its own sake, and for the ripple effect it has on the rest of our life. One of the most overlooked resources for ideas about what could bring us fulfillment is to reminisce our childhood, looking for clues of forgotten dreams and repressed interests. Even if you are not particularly nostalgic about your childhood, chances are you have unfulfilled childhood dreams that are worth exploring.

We know that the world doesn’t always make it easy to fulfill dreams. Take for example the dream of being a professional athlete. Fulfilling this dream depends on many things: parental support, financial resources, mental and emotional toughness, intelligence, build, and a genetic predisposition to be athletically inclined. Lots of variable, lots of potential to not fulfill the dream.

We learn, through the school of hard knocks, that many dreams will not come true. Few of us will be professional athletes, movie stars, or Pulitzer Prize winning authors. Life’s like that. But by exploring our past dreams and interests, we can gain clues into what we let go of for the sake of “practicality”, and look for new ways of incorporating the lost dream into our lives. Rekindling the love of something long forgotten is the most energizing, exciting, rewarding, and sometimes thrilling thing imaginable. As we reclaim these passions, we reclaim lost aspects of ourselves and this allows us to become more complete, resilient, and capable.

Step One: Discovery
Discovery can take many forms. The point is to simply look for clues about what you really longed for in your youth. Talk to family members who are still living, pour through photo albums, review childhood journals (if you have them) and storage containers of old memorabilia. Look for clues about what activities you enjoyed, what things you collected, who you aspired to be. For my good friend, it was a love of horses. She lost her first horse at 16 years of age, and never rode again. She is now in her mid thirties.

Step Two: Brainstorm
For many people, the actual dream would not be practical to fulfill as an adult. You won’t become a movie star, perhaps you really cannot afford to buy a horse, and you can’t be a professional soccer player. So what can you do? Play soccer on a league. Audition for a community theater production. My horse-loving friend joined a local horse club. While she cannot afford her own horse, she did find a half a dozen people who invited her to ride their own horses. She has received multiple offers to borrow horses for weekend trail trips, and open invitations to ride, groom, and take care of stables full of horses whenever she wants. I’ve never heard her sound so fulfilled!

Step Three: Do it!
Finally, make space for the new activity. It is hard to make time for the simple things like eating and sleeping. It can be a challenge to fit one more thing into the already crammed routine. Make a list of the things you are willing to say “no” to so that you have time for the new activity. There will only ever be 24 hours in the day. What can you not do so that you can make time for your passion?

I was reminded of my honeymoon this week, a white-water rafting trip punctuated by a horse back trip through the mountains with our gear. An awesome experience that I highly recommend. One of the lessons I have tried to hold on to from the experience was the simple mantra “go with the flow”. If you’ve never white-water rafted, it is a unique experience. You spend 15 minutes with a guide who goes into great detail on the proper rowing technique, synchronized paddling, how to survive if you flip. He would, at each rapid, point out where we did not want to go, and strategies for navigating the rapid. What I noticed, after having been though it, and having gone solo in a white-water kayak three years before that, is that it is all an illusion. That we were having much (if any) impact on the trajectory of our over sized dingy was a façade … the river was in charge. We could work with the river or against it, but there was no undoing what the river was up to. We could go with the flow, or exhaust ourselves trying to fight it. When you paddle this way, it’s a blast. If you struggle against it, most often you end up swimming.

Life is a lot like that river. We have an obligation to paddle. There is something about trying to make the life we want that requires a certain amount of effort. We go to school, we plan, we try to make good choices. Yet, so much of what occurs in our lives is unexpected, and often not associated with our paddling. Sometimes that’s nice, we float along enjoying the scenery. But sometimes it is whitewater … turbulence. Our inclination seems to be to resist, to fight it. But life is easier when we work with the flow of whatever shows up than when we struggle against it. It is developing a synergy between the flow of life and our actions that makes the difference. Life has its own flow. “Resistance is futile.”

• Do you put mental, physical, or emotional energy into resisting the existence of bad drivers, people who let you down, dwelling on the future or past?

• If your energy were only spent on paddling gently with the flow of your life, how would your experience of life be different emotionally, mentally, physically?

• How much more effective would your decisions, leadership, relationships be if you worked with what was in front of you rather than resisting your present circumstances?

The paddling required for a really rich, successful, meaningful life is much gentler than most people realize. The synergy of working with the flow of life (present circumstances) has every ounce of energy you put into your life be more powerful. That’s why you hear really successful people say, “The easier it gets, the easier it gets.” Learning to take it easy, and let go of resistance, is an important step toward allowing life to become easier and, ultimately, more meaningful and effective.