I don’t believe in balance.
I’ve said this to myself for years. And yet, almost every day, there I am, trying to balance anyway. Trying to hold work and rest and relationships and everyone’s needs in two hands like they’re supposed to stay level.
They never do.
The Push Beneath the Practice
This morning in my journal, I caught myself in it again. Still pushing. Still trying to get it all done, get it all right, get everyone taken care of. And underneath the pushing, something quieter and more familiar: people-pleasing.
Here’s what I’m learning to name clearly. Balance and people-pleasing often live in the same room. When I’m chasing balance, I’m usually trying to give everyone their share of me. My time, my energy, my yes. And somewhere in that math, I disappear a little.
I can only do what I can do.
That sentence stopped me this morning. Not as a limitation, but as a truth I don’t say to myself nearly enough.
Are you fully living, or are you managing?
What I Believe Instead
I don’t believe in balance. I believe in flow. In rhythm. In moving the way I actually move, not the way I think I’m supposed to.
A river doesn’t try to balance itself. It doesn’t apologize for moving fast through the rapids or slow through the wide, quiet bends. It doesn’t feel guilty when it’s stagnant, pooled up behind something it hasn’t moved past yet. And it doesn’t panic at the falls, that sudden drop where everything changes.
A river just moves the way the season and the land ask it to move.
I visualized this in my journal today. My own river. The pooled, still parts. The steady flowing parts. The white-water rapids. The falls that feel like everything is being asked of me at once.
None of those states are wrong. They’re just where the water is right now.
Reading Your Own River
Here’s what I’m practicing, and what I’ll invite you to try too.
Instead of asking “am I balanced,” ask where am I in my river today. Are you stagnant, needing something to shift before you can move again? Are you flowing, steady and unhurried? Are you in the rapids, moving faster than feels comfortable? Are you at the falls, where the ground drops out and you’re being asked to trust the drop?
Each of those has something to teach you, if you stop trying to smooth it into “balanced” and just let it be what it is.
A few reflections I’m sitting with this week:
Where in your life are you still trying to balance instead of trusting your own rhythm? What would shift if you stopped calling it balance and started calling it flow? And when you notice yourself pushing, whose expectations are you actually trying to meet?
You Are Allowed to Move Like a River
I don’t believe in balance. I believe in presence. In trusting the current I’m actually in, not the one I think I should be in.
Some days that means slow. Some days that means rapids. Some days it means a fall I didn’t see coming, and trusting I’ll find the river again on the other side.
You are always becoming; you are always creating. Today you are more than you were yesterday, and tomorrow you are more than you are today.