Balance? Let’s try equilibrium instead.

I’m a chemistry geek, always and forever. While the lab is not my happy place, the concepts of chemistry still delight me. One of the trickier concepts is that of equilibrium - students often mistake this for “all things equal”, which is most certainly NOT true. Equilibrium is a balancing point, where the rate of change in one direction is equal to the rate of change in the opposite direction - so the total quantities appear to be standing still. 

Equilibrium does NOT mean ‘equal’

Balance is another term that we often mistake for meaning “equal”. Work/life balance is not about spending equal amounts of time and energy on work and “life”. It’s finding an equilibrium, a still point that allows for a sense of stability, even though things are still in flux around us. Likewise, equilibrium does not mean “equal” - where the equilibrium point is could be 80% of A and 20% of B or any other combination. It simply means that there is a stable quantity of each. 

Advertising has put us in a frame of mind that shows “work-life balance” as something that matches Pinterest proportions of hiking Insta-worthy vistas or crafting elaborate art projects with the kids. The pursuit of this “balance” is the cause of stress when it should be seen as an antidote to stress.

I don’t know about you, but my energy for arts and crafts or scenic jaunts is pretty spent these days. 

Equilibrium can be shifted - with intention

Recently I had an epiphany about a type of balance that I hadn’t realized before, even with the work part of the work-life equilibrium equation. So much of my work is emotional labor- holding space for people’s stress and allowing intuition and compassion to guide the action plans of others that I was feeling a bit overwhelmed at the end of the day. When an executive client remarked guiltily, “I kind of enjoy doing the spreadsheets and accounting” when sharing stress about the people managing aspects of their work, I thought “oh, me too!”. Does that mean we should give up our people-leading roles for administrative paper-pushing ones? Of course not! We’d be utterly bored within a week. BUT it does mean that an important part of this balancing act has to do with mental stimulation and finding the “right for you, right now” equilibrium point between left-brain and right-brain activities.

For myself, it was realizing that I needed to spread my people time out a bit more and to indulge in my love of a really well-organized spreadsheet, or calendaring system, something low-stakes and logic-oriented to stimulate that piece of my brain so that the emotional intelligence side is able to catch its breath. The most incredible thing was that asking people to meet 20 min later or earlier to create more breathing room between sessions was incredibly easy. No one complained or threw a fit. The only one who had been expecting me to keep an intense pace of back-to-back meetings was me. I learned then that you can take the girl out of the toxic work environment, but taking the toxic work environment out of the girl requires diligent awareness and reflection. 

Reflection Questions

Here are some questions to reflect upon to create your own equilibrium:

1. What have you been doing “temporarily” since March? Knowing now that this quarantine could go on for another year, does that make sense as a long term plan?

2. If you were to declare inbox/schedule/obligations bankruptcy and look at the next month as a blank slate, what would you do differently? Create a mock schedule for yourself and imagine what a sustainable plan could be.

3. What’s the worst that could happen if you adopted your new plan? What’s the best that could happen?

4. How will you choose to create equilibrium for yourself?

Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, or email me anytime at devon.grilly@rockthepivot.com