Usually in our resources, we direct you to something to read, watch, or listen to. For this one, we’ll suggest you do something.
Stand up. Place your feet hip-width apart and keep your arms loose by your sides. Shift your balance to one foot. Slowly lift the other foot. Stand on one leg.
If this is easy for you, tuck the lifted foot against the opposite leg. It might be by your calf, just above your knee, or against your inner thigh. Keep your arms by your sides, or put them in prayer position in front of your heart, or, if you’ve done this before, lift them up to the sky. This is tree pose.
What do you notice while you stand this way? Is your body perfectly still, rigid, fixed? Or are you making constant, minute adjustments: a bit more pressure here, a bit less there, a wobble, a recovery? Are you stationary, or are you in continual, subtle motion?
You’ll probably recognize that the kind of balance tree pose requires is dynamic, not static.
Very often, as we organise our lives and projects, we think of balance as a fixed point — the perfect formula, just the right mix. We try to get there and stay there, and we beat ourselves up when the inevitable happens (a grant application, a negative review, a surprise set of paperwork, an overlong meeting, a late night, an uncooperative code) and we don’t. We think, if I can’t find the perfect formula — just the right cocktail of all my responsibilities of commitments — I’ll never get it done. Sometimes, this leads on to, why even try?
What if you took a dynamic approach to finding balance in your writing life? What if a wobble was not a problem? As you experiment with finding the combination of preparing, writing, and revising that works best for you, following our method and working with timed work periods, what would it be like to adapt and adjust, to allow yourself to make changes as you go?
It’s hard to balance on a bike that’ s not moving. Indeed, the only things that are really still are dead. What if, instead of feeling you are getting things wrong whenever the balance isn’t quite right, you decide that, with each wobble and readjustment, you are becoming more aware? That you are learning more about what is possible for you in creating a dynamic approach to balancing your life?
NEXT: The Unschedule