Self Improvement

The Balancing Beam

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Do you ever feel like everything in your life, or almost everything is out of balance? Things are inconsistent and it feels like you are always falling on your ass?

Maybe I am the only one. I would like to say I have been only feeling like this for the past few months but I would be lying. Reflecting back on the years in my life it has ALWAYS been a problem. Does that mean it has to be? I do not think so. We just need to be mindful and intentional about life and learn how to get into a place where we feel like somewhat balanced.

Life is a little bit like a balancing beam. A balancing beam is a narrow wooden beam supported by a horizontal position approximately 1.2m off the ground.

While doing some research on balance beams which are generally used in gymnastics, I came to the conclusion that like life, using a balance beam correctly is a discipline, it requires work but if you are consistent, it will become second nature.

I found an article titled ‘4 Tips to Better Balance on the Beam’ on www.thevegagym.com. In this article, the writer notes that in order for a gymnast to successfully balance they need to be able to focus on staying centred. It requires dedication, precision and discipline to master this difficult beam. Do any of those words ring a bell?

In life we have two choices, we either live intentionally and succeed or live on autopilot and fail. Sounds harsh but think about it, it’s true.

Balancing life has always been difficult for me, but if I really think about it, it is because I have been on autopilot. So how can we change this?

As usual and probably a little cliché I think the first step is to admit you have a problem. This usually does not happen in a kind way, it usually smacks you in your face whether it is because of something someone said, something you read or watched or listened to. But there comes a point in everyone’s lives, whether that be in their 20s, 30s or older where they sit and think “WTF”. I am at that point.

So according to the article mentioned earlier in order to better balance on the beam we need to do four things:

  • Have proper form
  • Start on the ground
  • Look ahead
  • Breathe deeply

Let us unpack these 4 things in relation to how we can better balance this thing called life.

“It is important to make sure that you have the right form to maintain balance”.

The right form is vital in order to succeed and it is one of the first things that need to be adjusted. How is your form? Obviously, I am speaking metaphorically here. Do you slouch around all day negative and unhappy? When you lift ‘heavy’ (emotional/mental) things are you doing it in a way that will hurt you?

We need to start off by looking inwards and understanding where we are at in terms of the right form. If we cannot do that, then the rest of the steps aren’t going to help.

I recently downloaded an app called ‘Daylio’, it is a cool app that allows you to track your emotions, activities (or lack thereof) write entries for the day, multiple times a day and even add photos and voice memos. This is a great way to start identifying whether your form is good or not. Plus, it is on the phone so you can use it whenever you want and it doesn’t have to take more than a few minutes to sit and reflect.

“Master your balancing exercises on the floor before moving up to the beam”.

This one can be difficult because we rarely have opportunities to handle one thing at a time, which is why we have a problem balancing it all but hear me out. Sometimes in life, when something good or bad happens we tend to just charge at the situation, and sometimes that works but most of the time we are the ones that get charged and end up where? On our ass.

So how do we go about doing this the correct way? We need to understand our strengths and weaknesses so that we are more in tune to understand WHAT we can handle and HOW MUCH we can handle at the same time. This step might take a little long but the most important thing to remember is to take it one day at a time, it is a journey, not a race. Tune in to your thoughts, emotions and body so that you feel more comfortable in situations that do not require you to balance everything at the same time. The Daylio app or anything similar can help you do this too.

In therapy it is suggested you do this: it is almost practising things in small doses to see what you can handle. Do you have anxiety? Once you understand why you have anxiety and you have in theory learnt certain ways in which to get through it, you need to do it practically without expectations. So going to a public place for example where you would experience that kind of anxiety and testing if your methods of getting through it work is a simple yet meaningful way to understand where you’re at. Once you are able to master your balancing on the ground, you will most likely know how to do it on the beam.

“Focusing on a single point across the room will help you stay upright”.

Keep your chin up and look straight ahead. This can only happen when we have set goals for ourselves, and not just goals like ‘Where do you see yourself in 5 years’ but smaller more manageable goals. This will help you navigate through each day for perhaps a month or so and that way you will be able to stay focused. I would say the best way to do this is to split your goals up according to the areas in your life, one goal per area and limit it to a month or two, remember this is a journey so we will come back and reflect often.

So, if we split it up according to the areas of our lives it would probably look a little like this:

  • Health
  • Finances
  • Spirituality
  • Personal growth (mentally, emotionally, physically)
  • Relationships (spouse, friends, family)
  • Career
  • Recreation

It seems like a lot when you list it out but it does not need to be if you break it up into manageable goals like this:

  • Health – a ‘snack’ after dinner only on a Wednesday and Saturday night instead of every night.
  • Finances – Write down the things I want to buy or put it on a wish list and leave it for 30 days and if I still want it after 30 days and have the money, I can buy it.
  • Spirituality – say a little prayer and thank God every time I hear a bird chirping.
  • Personal growth (mentally, emotionally, physically) – allocate 30 minutes in total in the morning or evening and spend some time reflecting, engaging with my emotions and doing some stretching or light exercise.
  • Relationships (spouse, friends, family) – message 1 person a day to check in, organise to spend time with my husband and or friends and family and commit to it.
  • Career – get to work on time, come in with the right attitude and just remember that I am working for God and not man.
  • Recreation – read a chapter of my non-fictional book every morning and a chapter of my fictional book every evening.

When we break it down like this you will notice that some of these things you already do and others just need a little more intention to make it work, you just need to be willing to put in the work to create the system, eventually, it will become second nature. Revisit these goals weekly or monthly to see if you have achieved them, need to extend them or even if you realise it is not something you want to focus on anymore. Again, a great app to help you do this and feel accountable is Daylio.

“Clearing your mind and breathing can help narrow your focus on balancing”.

Life is messy. I think everyone knows that. But if we are better prepared then we can handle more and sometimes the things that used to put us in a blind panic will not anymore. Once we have looked at what issues we have focused on methods of how to overcome them, put them into practice and made little goals for ourselves we will become better prepared to balance life.

But as a disclaimer, this is not going to fix your life instantly. As mentioned before, this is a journey. Sometimes, you will fall off the beam and that is okay because if you have learned the steps from above you are able to get back on and try again.

When you’re at a point where you think you just cannot take anymore, stop, breathe and just clear your mind. This will help you realign your focus on what you are trying to do. We need to remember to stop and not quit. Do not jump off the beam or go back because things are hard. Things will be harder if you keep going back to your old ways. You need to learn to trust yourself and what you have learned and just keep going.

I do not have all the answers, in fact, I am desperately trying to find them so I can change my life, BUT I do know one thing. One step forward is better than nothing at all.

You’ve got this!

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Self Improvement

Uninspired

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Have you ever felt like nothing or no one can ever get you out of this hole that you have dug for yourself?

You listen to people talk about what they are currently doing to achieve their goals, you watch YouTube videos and read blogs, and you even WANT TO WANT to do something but you cannot. Have you or are you currently feeling this?

Life is busy, I get it. No argument here. I have almost every part of my day scheduled and there always seems to be a long list of to-do’s that need to be ticked off before you even think of doing anything for yourself. Therefore, you are so uninspired that you just go through the motions of every day, wake up with just enough time to get ready and perhaps not even that, go to work which is also not as enjoyable anymore, and when that is all done you get back home and you cook, clean, and so on and so on. You autopilot your life and before you realise it, it’s been one month, two months, or even more since you did anything for yourself.

Let me tell you, I GET IT! I would not have written this post a few months ago because guess where I was? My self-sabotage couch (if you have no idea what I am talking about, see this post)

Now you might be thinking it is easy for me to sit and write about this topic and how to overcome it but I do not know you, I do not know what is going on in your life, and you are probably right. But I can tell you this much, I have experienced enough in my life, gone through the motions (physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually) to tell you there is a way out. You just need to be active in your own life.

I have so much to say on this topic that it could go on forever, but I won’t because you will probably get bored and leave. My aim in every post I do is to give you two or three simple tangible steps to get you going, you will find after that, things will just start moving.

Do not think I forgot that if you are reading this you are probably sitting on your self-sabotage couch, so the steps you need to get moving need to be minimal. I know everyone is different and not everything works the same for everyone but I hope that my steps help, even a little bit.

The first thing we need to do to get out of the “I WANT TO WANT TO” do something to the actual doing is to:

REFLECT

This needs to be intentional, so you need to get a piece of paper and a pen and sit at a table, no not sit on the couch or in your bed, at a table. Remember we are trying to be intentional. Yes, you can use your phone but there is just something about physically writing that just makes things more ‘real’.

When you have a piece of paper and pen I want you to set a timer for 10 minutes and I want you to really think about and answer the following questions:

  1. What is making me feel uninspired?
  2. What is being uninspired doing to me?
  3. What do I want to change?

If you finish before 10 minutes that is fine, as long as you intentionally and honestly thought about and answered the questions above. If you go over 10 minutes, that is perfectly fine too!

Once you have answered all the questions spend a few minutes reading and reflecting on them. Ideally, this should be done out loud but if you can only do it in your head then that’s fine too.

Read out the question and then your answer, as you are doing this think if there is anything else that comes to mind that you may want to include, if not, then continue to the next question. Do this until you have reflected on all your answers.

In case you do not know quite how to do this I am going to give you an example:

  1. What is making me feel uninspired? The sheer quantity of work to do every day from work itself to then having to vacuum daily, do washing and pack it away, and the list goes on. Once work ends at 4 and I start doing what needs to be done I do not want to do anything else
  2. What is being uninspired doing to me? It makes me irritated, I get so mad at myself. I have all these things I can do, read, draw, paint, write, and up-skill myself but I am so tired and uninspired and then hate myself for feeling this way yet I still sit and hang out on my self-sabotage couch wasting my life.
  3. What do I want to change? I want to do ONE thing every day that makes me happy but also refreshes me (drawing, painting, writing, learning something new.) I want to stop being on autopilot ad start living intentionally.

Now that you have a better understanding of what actually makes you feel uninspired, and how it makes you feel let us move on to the doing.

Often when we feel uninspired and we WANT TO WANT to do something but we don’t, we sit around and either numb ourselves or we ‘plan’ what we love, for example, I want to get better at drawing and painting so I spend a lot of time watching videos of other people doing it and never actually do it myself. While there is nothing wrong with watching videos or reading stuff, we need to be intentional about it so that it does not become a numbing mechanism. We need to get out of the planning phase and into the doing phase.

The second step to trying to get out of this uninspired phase is going to sound ridiculous but hear me out.

JUST DO IT

Okay, Kayla! So I am on my self-sabotage couch and I do not feel like doing anything yet here you are telling me to do something ((insert face palm here))

Well yes, my friend that is what I am telling you to do. There is no permanent cure for being inspired, it happens to everyone all the time. What I want you and I to do differently is what happens after you feel this way. You almost catch the feelings before it does any damage or any more damage.

We live in a world that says, do it later, we have time. Guess what? We do not. How much time do we waste on feeling like shit waiting for it to miraculously disappear while the world continues? TO MUCH TIME. We need to get over this ‘I need motivation’ thing. No, what we need is to reflect and just do it.

So you have just finished reflecting on what makes you feel inspired, what it is doing to you, and what you want to change. So go on, just do it.

Do it right now, well I mean after you finish reading this ((insert smiley face here))

Reflecting allows you to feel your feelings. Get them out of your head and on paper. Just doing it allows you to intentionally change what is making you feel this way, even if it is only 10 minutes.

Alright, example time.

On my list I wrote drawing and painting, I also write about learning something new. So I am going to count to 3 and get off my self-sabotage couch and go to my craft table and get out my sketchbook, pencils, paint, and all the other necessary equipment. I am going to set my iPad up and head over to YouTube and choose one of those videos I watched and I am going to follow along, draw and paint. Is it going to look good? Probably not. Do I care? No. After 5, 10, or 15 minutes I am feeling so calm and happy that I just want to do this all the time.

Okay now remember this feeling, remember how light you feel doing the thing you love doing. You are going to need to remember this feeling when you are down and in that hole, we spoke about at the beginning of this post.

Can I tell you the secret to stop feeling uninspired? Rinse and repeat those two things. ALL THE TIME. Feel the feelings, get it out on paper and understand why you feel this way, and then just get out there and do the things that make you happy.

You are the only one living your life, no one else, and if you are constantly sitting on your self-sabotage couch trying to numb things nothing is ever going to change.

NOTHING CHANGES IF NOTHING CHANGES.

So count to 3 (for real, count to 3) stand up, even while reading this post and go complete steps 1 and 2, right after one another and I pray that you actually do this. Do it for yourself, you need to stop just surviving every day, you need to start living every day.

Now GO!

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Self Improvement

The not-so-perfect Perfect Blend

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I decided to name my blog ‘The Perfect Blend’ because it is what I strive to do. Life can be so demanding and before you know it you are being stretched in many different directions at the same time.

Can you relate?

While doing some research I looked up the word ‘perfect’, seeing as it is the name of this blog, and according to Merriam-Webster, perfect means “being entirely without fault or defect: flawless: a perfect diamond: satisfying all requirements“

Now I know perfection according to Merriam-Webster is impossible but perhaps we need a new definition of the word. From now on ‘perfect’ means showing up, it means trying your best, and it also means putting in the work. We can be a diamond in the rough, we can set our own requirements so that WE can be satisfied with them.

Listen, friends, we are all on different journeys and we have all experienced life differently but I do know that we have more in common than you think.

In society people expect you to be perfect (the real definition), but who are they to speak? Do they wake up every day in your life? Live out your routines? Experience the emotions you do? NO, THEY DON’T! So do not let that define you, hold you back, or make you feel the opposite of perfect because you are a child of God and you were created in His image, therefore you are already perfect!

I read something on Facebook a few years ago from someone calling themself “redheadhatchet” and took a screenshot of it. It says the following:

——

One of my college professors used to say “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” I didn’t understand that for years because I didn’t do anything poorly, I couldn’t do anything poorly, I HAD TO DO EVERYTHING PERFECTLY.

But brushing your teeth for 30 seconds is better than not brushing them at all when 2 minutes seem exhausting. Doing 10 minutes of yoga is better than 10 minutes of sitting when doing 30 minutes of cardio seems impossible.

Changing your clothes is good when a whole shower is impossible. Standing on the porch for a few minutes is worth it after being in the house for three straight days because you don’t have the energy to go anywhere.

Anything worth doing is worth doing it poorly… because doing it poorly is better than not doing it at all.

——

Can you relate to any of that? I know I can. More often than I would care to admit. BUT, we need to stop being so hard on ourselves.

Living life in 2023 feels like you are trying to juggle everything and it is on fire. It is a lot. So today I want you to sit down, open your notes app, or take out a piece of paper and a pen and write out A REALISTIC definition of perfect for YOU, and come up with even just one ‘habit’ that will help you when you get caught up in your day to day life and you just want to scream.

This is my go-to when it comes to my own definition of ‘perfect’, the one where I am just showing up, trying MY best, and putting in the work, even if it seems so small in comparison to what we see on social media or with the people around us.

So let us set our new go-to habit so that we have a bare minimum that we can achieve and still be happy with our ‘perfect’. These are the two things I try and implement in my life when even showing up feels like a chore.

1. Time Yourself

You have just had a full day of work, you have dishes that you need to pack away, clothes that need to be taken off the washing line and put in the cupboard, the dogs need to be fed, the food heated up and you do not want to do ANY of it. You are tired and all you want to do is sit in front of the TV and binge Netflix. As lovely as that sounds (and I have done it, A LOT) the worse it actually makes you feel because you still have to do those things and probably even more.

Time yourself completing a task, it sounds silly, yes, but hear me out. I usually use my watch but using your phone or a traditional clock/ timer works too. I hit start and begin the task and press stop when I am done. Do you know what I found?

It takes me 3 minutes to pack away the dishes, and less than 10 minutes to take my washing off the line and pack them away. Doing this one seemingly silly habit has helped me achieve something even when doing most things seem just too much.

2. The Two-Minute Rule

This one was a game changer for me and I constantly tell people about it who will listen to me. Similar to my previous go-to except it requires even less effort when it comes to thinking which is perfect when all you want to do is crawl under a blanket and not human anymore.

What takes you less than 2 minutes to do?

You have put water in the kettle and turned it on to boil, in the time it takes for the water to boil you can fold some towels that you washed, take out the chicken from the freezer, look at the pantry, and jot down what you need to buy for the week ahead.

All seemingly small and trivial things that require very little thought yet make such a huge difference when you forget to take out the chicken and you now have nothing to cook and get take out or the towels just sit in the basket for days.

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I am not saying you need to constantly be busy because let’s face it, no one wants to constantly be busy. I yearn for those few minutes to just sit and breathe. What I am saying is regardless of whether we like it or not things need to be done and we cannot escape reality, so instead of sitting and feeling so imperfect because you didn’t do 1000 things rather be proud because you did 3, 3 fewer things that you need to do tomorrow.

I pray that you really read this, and it helped even a little bit. Just remember to redefine perfect for you, so that you can be proud of yourself for just showing up and trying.

God Bless!

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