00:00 

This is Intentional Living with Tanya Hale and this is episode number 44, "How to Find Balance." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:20 

Alright, hello there, my friends. Thank you so much for being here. I just appreciate the fact that I'm not always just talking to myself. You know, before I started doing my podcast, I just thought, "you know what, what if I do 100 podcasts and nobody ever listens?" That would be okay because the growth that I'm going through in preparing these podcasts and getting them to the point where I can talk about them and feel confident about all of these different topics that I'm bringing up, I decided that that would be good enough. And yet I'm finding that I'm getting more and more people listening. I found that somebody in New Jersey has totally been listening and picking up the numbers there and that's like totally fun because I'm from the west and so the western states are a little bit more heavy for me as far as the listening goes. But somebody in New Jersey, thank you. I appreciate you being here and I hope you continue to stay here and thanks for sharing. I appreciate that a lot. 

01:16 

Today we are talking about how to find balance. Alright, finding our balance is something that just always seems so elusive. It seems like we're always talking to people about how our lives are just out of balance. We just can't figure out how to get there, get to this place of balance. About four years ago when I was in Orlando, Florida getting my life coach certification from the John Maxwell team, he had a question and answer time and somebody asked John Maxwell how he kept things in balance. And if you're not familiar with who John Maxwell is, he's a huge name in the leadership world. He's written over 80 leadership books and has been named the world's foremost leadership guru probably, I don't know, six or seven times. He travels the world training businesses and even governments on leadership. He goes down to South America quite often and trains governments there. He's just a really great man. He was a preacher for over 25 years before he decided to move into the leadership world, the corporate world. And I loved, loved my training with him. And those were some three really spiritual days actually in the process of the training and what he did. It was just really great. 

02:24 

But when asked how he kept things in balance, I loved his answer because it made me look at balance completely differently. He said he doesn't. He said that he doesn't believe balance really kind of exists, but rather he chooses to recognize that things in our lives come in seasons and that when we focus on the seasons, realizing that things will never quite be in balance, we can find a better place. And I've thought so much about this in the four years since I heard that. Seasons, right? To me that means that certain things will take precedence just because of where we are in our lives, the time on our life that we're in. 

03:05 

For example, when I was a young stay-at-home mom, I had four little kids. My season was being up to my eyeballs in little people. From the minute they got up to the minute they went down at night, all I did was little kids bathing and dressing and feeding and playing and cooking and feeding and reading and consoling and teaching and reading some more and snuggling and yeah, if you've been there, you get this. If you haven't, you've probably watched it. It's just constant. These were the days that I decided to start getting up early to exercise because exercise was important to me and without that time, I didn't have any time to myself. I would try and read scriptures before bed, but usually only got in a verse or two before I would fall asleep. I would also try to pray and would find myself waking up on my knees 30 minutes later and my feet were asleep, right? It was constant physical exhaustion. You remember this, right? Those were not days of great spiritual growth for me because I was so out of balance, if we're going to use that term, right? I was just, the season of my life was physical exhaustion from little kids. 

04:19 

And although I love to read, I went many years without really reading anything. A few parenting books here and there, but I just didn't have the time or the energy. I didn't go to the temple very often. My husband at the time and I didn't really go out on very many dates. It was just completely unbalanced and I think that was okay because that was the season of my life to be a young mom when it's all about that physical exhaustion. I think God would probably see me falling asleep while trying to pray and he just like pat me on the shoulder and say "it's okay. I know you're really trying hard to pray. I know you're just exhausted." I think He was okay with that. 

04:59 

So finding balance, I don't think that was ever a part of my life as a young mother. But I was really happy with the opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom. I loved getting to hang out with my kids every day and just getting to know them and cook them good food and have clean clothes for them. I was one of those moms who really loved staying at home. A lot of people feel very differently, have at it, but this was me. I loved it, right? In fact, I thought I would always be a stay-at home mom and eventually would become like a stay-at-home grandma, right? Where I could just do things, but no balance. It wasn't balance, but it was a season of contentment, and I loved this time in my life. 

05:38 

As my kids got older, again, the balance was elusive between piano lessons and soccer practice and getting kids to get their chores done and play dates. My life was still way out of balance. No time for me. In fact, I don't think I had more than a handful of Saturdays for me, just for me, for probably over 15 years. And then we bought our first home, and I had all the upkeep, both inside the house and outside the house. I had a lawn to mow, and to edge, and weeds to pull, and a garden to plant, and fruit and vegetables to pick and process, and trees to prune. Still running kids around most days of the week. No balance, but a season of joy, that's for sure. 

06:20 

I loved that time of my life, right? And then kids get in high school, and again, it's helping them get ready for dates. Boy, if there's a prom date, it takes me all day long to help my girls figure that out. And having kids over, and by now I'd started teaching, and so I was gone all day, every day during the school year. I had high school and soccer games I had to travel to. Daughters in school plays, I mean, you get it, right? If you've been there with kids, you get how completely crazy it is. And at no time, I think in our lives, do we really find balance. 

06:58 

If I were to think about my perfectly balanced day, I would get to sleep until six or seven in the morning, instead of four or five. I would pray and read the scriptures, then I would go exercise at a real gym with somebody else in charge. I would come home, I would shower, I would listen to some podcasts, I would work on my business for several hours, spend some time with my kiddos, read a good fiction book for an hour or two, have some time to cook a yummy dinner, share it with my kiddos, have time to chat with family or friends, do some coaching calls. Okay, wait, I am so out of time in my perfect day, right? My perfectly balanced day. And that didn't include me still teaching school during the school year, and my floors haven't been mopped for at least three weeks. And if it's summer, I have loads of yard work to do. The point is, I don't believe it will ever be balanced. I think the balanced life is a myth, and learning to see our lives in seasons that are unbalanced just because that's what life demands, I think that's a great thing. 

08:02 

But I recently clued into another idea that really makes it all come together for me, and that is having a centered life rather than a balanced life. When I have my life centered on the core values that I most connect with, then even when things are out of balance or in different seasons, I can still keep my feet on the ground beneath me. I can still be in a good place emotionally. I can still come through it feeling like a rock star. 

08:35 

Okay, let me give you an example of being centered. So several years ago I started doing yoga. Now I'm by no means a yoga aficionado, but I do enjoy it a lot. I love the stretching, I love the strength training. To me, it's great. When I first started, I took a one-on-one yoga class with an amazing yoga instructor, and it really helped me to ground me in the basics of yoga and what makes it work and what makes it to be effective. So what I learned was that it was all about the core. If I could keep my core, so all the muscles between my shoulders and my hips, tight and engaged, if I could be aware of what they were doing, I could do almost any move that my flexibility would allow. If I can keep the center of my body where it needs to be, always aware of where it is, how tight and how engaged it is, I can do some pretty amazing poses. 

09:28 

So there's this one where you start in a deep lunge. So if I'm in a right lunge, my right knee is bent, my left leg is behind me, then my right arm is gonna go under my bent leg, and the other arm is gonna go around my back and it's gonna hold my hands so that I'm wrapped around that bent leg, okay? So then you bring the left leg up so that your feet are standing by each other. You're no longer in a lunge and you shift the weight to that left leg and then you stand up with the right leg in the air supported by your arms. And then you're supposed to straighten that leg, right? Think about the balance issues, okay? So it's taken me a few years to get to the point that I can straighten that leg and some days I still can't, depending on the day. 

10:10 

But the key to being able to do this is all in the core strength, right? When I'm just starting to lift that second leg foot off the ground and balance on that left foot, it all comes down to my core strength. What's going on there that's going to allow me to stand up? And the key to not falling over is all about the core strength. If I'm strong in my center, the rest becomes a possibility. And that is the beauty of being centered in our lives. I know that that was a yoga thing, but in that strange yoga position, I can actually find balance because I'm centered in my core. 

10:53 

So let's take a look at this in life, shall we, because it's very much the same. Okay, we're very often put in circumstances where we are asked to do some difficult things. We're asked to stretch outside of our comfort zone. We may be asked to expend energy and time in something we hadn't planned on. This may be a responsibility that we take on or an illness in the family or choosing to start working or changing jobs or building a business all of these can throw us off of our regularly scheduled routine and make us feel off balance. But is that off-balance really a bad thing? It's important to remember that we won't grow if we aren't moving outside of our regular routine. Will it feel uncomfortable? Of course, it's supposed to. Discomfort is the catalyst for all growth. It is supposed to feel uncomfortable, but this uncomfortable place and how we respond to it is the key to not falling over. Alright, we've got to be uncomfortable, but we've got to slowly and surely move into it. 

12:04 

So if we can learn to live our lives in a centered manner, we will find that although these situations may be difficult, they're not going to throw us completely out of whack. And that's where we want to be. Being centered means we are clear on our self-worth, who we are and what our value is. Being centered means that we are clear on the things that are most important to us. What are the things that we value the most? Being centered means that we know where we are ultimately going, and we're making small incremental changes to get there. Being centered means respecting ourselves enough to engage in self care. That's the same kind of self-care we talked about in episode 37. If you haven't listened to that, bam, you need to get there. That's a good one, okay? Even when we have to engage in these self-care things, even when it's really difficult and it doesn't sound fun at all. In fact, it's crazy boring. Being centered means we set clear boundary around those things that are most important to us, and we say no without guilt or shame. 

13:12 

I love the thought that says, "decide the kind of life you really want, and then say 'no' to everything that isn't that." This is what being centered is all about, being clear on who we are, where we want to go, what it is going to take for us to get there, and then sticking to the plan. The things that get us totally off-center are the things we choose to engage in that don't take us where we want to go. 

13:40 

Another example is a young mom. I realized that for me personally to stay centered. I had to be up and showered before my kids got up. If they were the ones to come and wake me up, I spent the whole day playing catch-up and feeling behind and frustrated. So these were the days when I got up after my kids did that I was not the kind of mom I wanted to be. I was short tempered. I was all frustrated all day long. I never got showered and cleaned up for the day and I was ready to walk out the door by the time their dad came home from work and when he was gone with the military assignments even that wasn't happening. He wasn't going to be coming home, right, and I had to take care of it. There were days I felt these were the days that I felt completely out of balance. I felt like I couldn't get my feet underneath me. I felt like I was always two or three steps behind. 

14:35 

For me to go where I wanted to go, to be the kind of mom I really wanted to be, I realized that I needed to be up and showered and dressed before my kids were awake. Was that hard? Of course, it was. But it was a sacrifice I needed to make for my own self-care. Right? To be where I wanted to be. Something I highly valued was treating my children with kindness and patience and having a home that was as stress-free stress-free for the children as possible. Now, I did not always do that. Let me just put that out there. But I wanted that. That was what I was aiming for. So acting on those things that I valued, which was having the temperament to treat my children the way that I wanted to and creating an atmosphere that I was happy with, I found that getting up and getting ready before my children were awake helped to keep me centered. After that, you could bring on almost any emergency or blip in my schedule and I could stay centered. Was my life balanced? Absolutely not. But I was centered. And being centered kept me from breaking down when things were really rough. 

15:49 

Does every mom need to get up early to be centered? No. That was something I felt I needed to do to keep myself centered. That worked for me. But if each of us just needs to learn to be acutely aware of what keeps us personally centered. What are the things that matter most to you in your life? And what do you need to do in order to make sure that those things happen? Rather than getting up early, I could have decided that showering and doing hair and makeup wasn't important to me. I could have showered the night before, before I went to bed. My answer was not the only answer, but it was the answer for me. And each one of us needs to find our own center and then figure out what it's going to take to make it a priority. 

16:31 

Only when we identify, tighten, and engage our core centers will we be able to find ourselves able to work through some pretty stuff, tough stuff that life throws at us without getting completely out of whack, remember, without losing our balance, as we are prone to say. I think we can still talk about a balanced life, but realizing that the balance comes from a strong center core is the huge key, because things will often be very unseasonable for us, right? 

17:08 

So there's another pose in yoga, and this one I do know the name for, is called Warrior III. So in this pose you stand on one leg and you bend your body over to a 90 degree angle with your other leg out behind you, also at a 90 degree angle. So your body and your one leg are all straight and you're standing on one leg. Then you extend your arms, both of them, straight out over your head and you hold this pose. So this would seem like you shouldn't really be able to stay balanced, because the bulk of your body weight is toward the front with just one leg balancing behind you. But you do stay balanced, and it's because you your core is tight, your center is strong, and it pulls things where they need to be to keep it so that even though the bulk of my body is one direction and just a leg is the other way, I can still stay balanced because my center is strong. 

17:58 

When our center is strong, we can have things happen that seem completely out of balance, and yet we can still be standing when it's over. We can be looking and feeling really good, both during and after, and it's all about looking good, right? The thing is we can step into a place where we feel like we have it together and where we feel like we're doing good, okay? It is an option. Balance, probably not so much, but staying centered, understanding who I am, what I value, and making choices that move me into strengthening those two things, that is where my center is. And when I have that center, the whole rest of my life runs better. 

18:52 

So let's identify, let's tighten, let's engage. We got this, right? We can do this centering thing, centered in myself and my values, and doing what it takes to keep that center in place, okay? Isn't growing up awesome? I just think it's just amazing to get to this place where we just...we get it. We get it more, but I don't think we're ever gonna really get it all, but we get it so much more than I did, even 10 or 20 years ago, for sure. 

19:23 

Alright, if you would love some personal help from me to learn how to be more centered or just navigate some really tough situations with a lot more clarity, go on my website, tanyahale.com. You can go under the "coaching" tab or the "contact me" tab, and you can book a free 20 minute coaching session to get you started. I would love to help you figure out how to be more centered in your life. When you're on my website, you can also sign up for my "weekend win" email, which is just a really quick email that comes on Fridays. It's meant to be read in a minute or less, just something to give you to think about. And just check it out. If you have a question for me, if you would like to talk to me about coaching options, you can, there's a place on the contact me where you can send me a note to my email as well. 

20:09 

So again, I would love it if you would subscribe to this if you haven't yet, so you never miss an issue. Go ahead and leave me a review. I'm trying to get 100 reviews on there. I know that I'm brand new at all of this, but I appreciate it if you leave me a review. That helps me to move this forward. And share it with somebody that you think this would help. I think there's some great information here and I would love to have you share it with those around you. 

20:33 

So that being said, we are done, my friends. Let's figure out how to be a little bit more centered this week. and I think it'll be a better week than it's ever been before if we can do that. Have a terrific one and I'll talk to you next time. See ya. 

20:51 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.