Perfectly Imbalanced

You've been trying to get the balance right for a long time.

And every time it slips, every time work takes too much, or family needs more than you planned, or your own needs get quietly pushed aside again, there's a verdict.

I failed at this again.

I want to push back on that.

Most of us have a standard that is built from layers of expectation. What we watched growing up, what our workplaces reward, what we believe a good parent, partner, or leader looks like. Put enough of those together, and you get a picture of balance that real life cannot match. We built in that feeling of failure from the start.

And yet the desire for balance is real and worth honoring. The resilience it takes to keep reaching for it, to keep trying even when it slips away, says something true about who you are.

I know this because I've lived it. For years, whenever a season felt like it had gotten away from me, I'd catch myself thinking (and saying out loud): it's going to be a good fall. It's going to be a good new year. It's going to be a good summer. A lighthearted acknowledgment that things hadn't gone quite as planned and a quiet promise to myself that the next season would be different.

It was my way of practicing without calling it that.

Because that's what I've actually been doing for years. Practicing. Imperfectly. Repeatedly.

I have put off the doctor's appointment because I had a meeting. I have traveled for business on a child's birthday. I have left work in the middle of the day because a family member needed me. I have worked late so the next day would be easier. I have gotten a haircut on a Tuesday afternoon.

I have been perfectly imbalanced.

And you probably have been too.

What I ask of myself and those I work with is not to achieve balance, but to practice it. To notice when things tip. To make small corrections. To recognize the moments when something actually feels right and pause long enough to let that land before moving on to the next thing.

Practicing also means failing. Regularly. Without it meaning something has gone permanently wrong.

And it means making peace with something that took me a long time to accept: imbalance is important. Sometimes one part of your life deserves more attention. Sometimes it will demand it: your health, a child, a season of work that asks everything of you. That's not failure. That's life moving the way life moves.

Balance isn't measured in a season, a month, a week, or even a day.

It's moment to moment.

And in this moment, whatever it looks like, you're still practicing. That's enough.