The key to keeping your balance is knowing when you’ve lost it.
After a 3-week hiatus from blogging, I am grateful to say, “I’m back.” I needed the first two weeks off in order to ‘separate’ from the past 12 months of populating my web site with twice weekly blogs, articles related to my services and DIY e-books. 2011 was an immensely productive yet peaceful year spent writing in the sanctuary of my home office. However in December, I sensed change was upon me. And like a huge wake up call, it happened almost instantaneously.
Last week, I stepped out of my self-managed pace and workflow into a corporate roller coaster inhabited by 120 people transitioning (not by their choice) into an unknown future. In a few days, I witnessed the full spectrum of emotional and physical experience — from panic to tears to betrayal to lack of sleep over an ending to relief and excitement over a new beginning. Add to the clients’ turmoil the chaos of me rapidly learning two new workflows and you have a recipe for tipping one’s internal sense of balance. As the quote above states, I knew I was losing mine.
Standing peacefully in the midst of such immediate and apparent needs is its own balance challenge. Negotiating a pace for learning and contributing that does not push one’s panic button is a significant piece of the balance pie. Although I love new learning experiences and learn quickly, a “too much, too fast” pace serves only to overwhelm and exhaust. Grateful for the swift reminder, I immediately scaled back to three days per week, which allows me to return to blogging every Tuesday. As a further adaptation on my part, I will not be blogging twice a week. Instead you will see more substantive articles from me on coaching, organizational design and personal transformation. These articles will be precursors to the three books I am currently co-writing on yoga, transformational practices and adaptive enterprise design, which all have publication dates for 2012.
Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how
the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. Steven R. Covey
Maintaining balance between my “inner world” experiences with those in my outer world looks like my theme for the next several months. In 2011, I was very much living and enjoying an inner world experience of writing and creating. Two weeks into 2012 and I dramatically shifted to serving in the world outside of me. One of the tools I created to help me manage this inner-outer balance, SPICE (Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Communal and Emotional), helps me strategize and act from a whole person perspective. As human’s being, we are complex entities needing to find peace, love and joy in both our creative (inner) and community (outer) worlds.
As a means to reflect on and set your intentions for your creative contributions in 2012, complete the SPICE activity below. As an example, I shared some of my intentions for 2012.
We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium in the face of any
situation rests within ourselves. Francis J. Braceland
