My significant other left, my mother died, my adoption stalled, my job is not going well, my kids are acting out, my finances are all over the place. I could continue to go on and on, but I will stop here. Everything that I have mentioned above can and will happen at the same time. When things like this happen and we begin to feel overwhelmed; what do we do? BALANCE! We have to find balance with everything in our life. We have to find the one thing that holds everything together and find the balance in Life, Love, Career, and Misc things. We were always taught to be strong. To “never let them see you sweat”. Don’t cry, just do whatever you have to do to make things be ok. A lot of us have been taught to always be OK, not to be vulnerable, not to show emotion, not to discuss our problems. Another famous and greatly lived by saying: “What happens in this house, stays in this house” which also means that after or during the time that something is happening, it is never to be spoke of or talked about.
Well, I am here to debunk those myths and to tell you that to not talk about things is a crock of bull. The longer that things happen, the longer that we allow things to go on and we don’t discuss them, the worse things can become. I am not a chemistry major, but I do know that if you continue to pour a lot of different chemicals into a container it is bound to explode, and possibly hurt you in the long run. How do I know this if I am not a chemistry major? Well let’s see I remember one day I was cleaning my house and I had got to the upstairs bathroom inside of my room. It was the bathroom, so of course I wanted it clean and sanitized. I got to the toilet and so I poured some bleach in, some comet, some extra strength bathroom cleaner and I think some pine sol. I poured all of this stuff in, and I let it sit there, and after some time when I went back in to actually clean and brush and scrub, my toilet was foaming over, and the smell was so bad that it started to cause me to choke. I could not breathe. I was gagging for air. I flushed and ran out of the bathroom, but the smell got worse. I went down stairs thinking that would be enough. Guess what? It was not, the smell started to fill the entire house. I had to open all of the windows, doors, and get out of the house. The smell was so bad, I had to leave the house altogether. I was still choking, and having a hard time breathing, that I had to call 911 (Poison Control). Yeah, mixing all of the different chemicals was not the greatest idea. The point of this all is that all of those different chemicals (all this stuff) that we deal with on a regular basis, if we don’t handle it, but allow it all to mix together and just keep mixing, eventually there will be an explosion. During that explosion someone or yourself could get hurt.
We cannot let the explosion of our lives destroy us. We have to find the balance and if we can’t find it, then we have to create the balance that we need in our lives. Balance looks different for everyone. My balance may be to set aside some personal time daily and meditate. It may be to talk to a professional, it may be to float, or do another activity that would allow for some release, it may be spending time with a higher power. Your balance may look totally different.
Whatever your peace is, I suggest that you find it and use it whenever you need to, to avoid the mishap or becoming some overwhelmed, or so far gone, that you either can’t come back or it takes years to get back to an actual normal life. I challenge each one of you to identify 3 things that helps you balance out your work, love, children, life, and whatever else that you have to deal with on a regular basis.
