Want to Have Balance? Here's How to Find Calm and Confidence Now!

Life sometimes feels erratic. This is even more true of starting a business. It often feels like it comes in fits and starts. It can feel that we're constantly adjusting and course-correcting. That we never have enough time or enough money. While this sounds like a problem, it's actually the solution. Allow me to explain and provide a reframe, specifically about the issues of time and money.

Balance is Like a Pendulum

In so many things, we swing like a pendulum from one extreme to another. Shaving off the extremeness with each swing and trying to find that elusive middle ground of perfect balance. When we're in one place that we don't like, knowing the opposite can help move us toward the middle. Once we arrive at the opposite we might realize it's also further on the spectrum than we want to go - that we accidentally overshot the middle. So we have to find a new target, in the direction of where we started, but not as extreme. We rinse and repeat this process trying to hone in on the middle ground - a more centered and balanced way of being. This isn't right or wrong, it just is.

Time vs. Money

In my work, many of my clients are trying to find a balance between time and money. They experience scarcity and want more of one or both. In the spectrum between scarcity and more, there is a happy balance point in the middle called "enough". Having more and more and more of either time or money has diminishing returns. What we need is enough of each.

Another key thing to realize is that time and money aren't actually on the same pendulum. You don't have to choose time over money or vice versa. Our culture and pay structure imply this but it isn't completely true. A salary is technically tied to an outcome not a number of hours. Passive income strategies allow people to make their assets earn income. Even hourly workers can suddenly make more if it happens to be during overtime. Separating these two spectrums can help us get to diagnose and problem-solve.

Balancing Money

When you treat time and money as their own spectrums you start to realize how much variation there is and how many different pendulums make up either one. On the pendulum of money, two extremes could be overspending and underspending. But there's a whole other spectrum for over-earning and under-earning.

All four of these extremes have negative consequences. Our culture highlights overspending as an issue, but underspending is too. Hoarding money is one manifestation of underspending, but underspenders might also be so frugal that they don't use their funds to care for themselves and others.

Similarly, under-earning is easily understood as an issue, but over-earning is also an issue. Sometimes over-earners get an inflated sense of self-worth, that they are better than others. It's likely that they'll lose touch with more average earners in their community, and become ignorant of the complexities of social issues. They may even struggle to figure out what to do with their funds. It takes time and effort to decide how to invest, spend, donate or gift money.

Enough Time

On the pendulum of time, two extremes could be giving your time away and keeping all your time for yourself. The first would likely result in not receiving enough value in exchange, while the other extreme would be robbing your income and relationships of the necessary time. But two other extremes could be spending too much time in a place of challenge and spending too much time in a place of ease, leading to, respectively, overwhelm or boredom.

We can't manufacture more time, and we spend time whether we try to or not. All our time can't be spent investing in relationships or income. It can't all be invested in personal projects. It can't be all leisure, nor all challenge. We're looking to strike the right balance for us in how we do spend our time. There is no right or wrong answer. Instead, the goal is to accept and honor our own needs and values in how we spend our time.

Balance in Enough

Balance is key to success for the vast majority of us. (The exceptions would be Olympic athletes, MENSA geniuses, or some other such extreme, which, I'm pretty sure you, dear reader are not.) Joy comes from reveling in enough. We find what enough is by swinging our pendulums always seeking a centered and balanced way of being. This journey is a part of life and is even more relevant when we're launching a business. As you invent your business and custom tailor it to yourself, seek the answer to the question: So what is "enough"?

Need some help figuring out your enough? Here’s a free worksheet that will give you structure as you identify what enough looks like for you!