Finding The Balance

By Christine Jayakaran

May 22^nd, 2022

Life is almost always a balancing act.

We have to balance our work with family or our social life with our professional life. We have to balance fun with serious pursuits (something my family thinks I suck at!) Then there’s balancing the healthy meal with the sporadic unhealthy one (or not so sporadic). Sometimes the balance is unseen to anyone but you. This includes the balance between the need for relationships and the need for boundaries. There's also the balance that needs to be maintained between the call to care for people while also taking time to care for one's self.

Sometimes when the balance tips too much in one direction the effects are felt. I'm personally finding that when the balance shifts precariously, I start to feel disoriented and chaotic internally. One of the practices I have been inculcating which has personally helped me tremendously has been journaling. The past two months or so have found me hunkering down in my writing nook with my journal and putting down those random, seemingly disjoint thoughts and ramblings onto paper. Pouring my heart out onto that page begins the process of sorting through the myriad of emotions I'm facing and helps to detangle some of the knotty ends.

While I wholeheartedly advocate getting help from a professional, I also believe that finding the balance is something each of us can try personally if we are committed and creative with the process.

Journaling has brought me sanity and comfort when people have let me down big time. It helped me regroup and ground myself when I felt like circumstances could wash me down a sinkhole. It has helped me view people and situations in a whole new light once I had actually worked through putting down all of what I had gone through and was feeling at the time.

I saw myself in a clearer light ( it was not always a pretty picture) and it brought me to a place of realising I needed more work done on the inside.

The balancing act for me is no longer one of a social, professional or familial kind. It's more of an internal and external one. I find that when my inner self is in congruence with my outer self I am at peace. I'm able to tackle setbacks and situations that arise out of nowhere with greater clarity and less freaking out. When I journal, my inner and outer beings collide and stay knit as one. I'm a better human when that integrity is maintained.