Balance

The art of balance. [Awesome picture huh? I found it on Photobucket under 'balance']. The reason I looked up balance was because I was just over at Romance Divas in a thread about the difficulties of balancing all the things we have to do in our lives.

The general consensus was that something has to give. When you feel overwhelmed, it's not because you are a failure and aren't managing to do everything in the right way, it's because you've taken on more than is humanly and sanely possible to do.

As I said on the thread, women especially have this problem because we tend to believe we have to be all things to all people. We must be good mothers and wives to start with, and beyond that we have to be great students, excellent employees, dedicated writers, expert promotional gurus, advocates for our own careers, partners in our health care, matriarchs of our extended families, BFFs to fistfuls of people, active PTA members and class moms, charter members of professional organizations, chapter presidents, contest judges, critique partners, captains of the neighborhood watch, concerned citizens, conscientious voters and healthy eaters.

It's nice work if you can get it, but it's also totally unrealistic and [imho] the fault of our do more, be more society.

The bottom line is we need to learn to say when enough is enough and we need to learn to be content not only with having less, but with doing less because less IS actually MORE.

Think about it. Would you rather be really good at one or two things that you love, or adequate at ten things that you hate?

Practice saying no. Practice slowing down. Balance will follow.

So says me.