The Beginning of a Balanced Life

Here's how my journey towards achieving balance started.

I was recently fortunate enough to get to share my story towards living a balanced life on a local podcast. And it made me realize, I haven’t yet shared how it all started on this blog. I’m excited to share this with you because what I hope it helps you realize is that the “thing” that moves the needle for you, the something that you find or learn that helps you take the first step, could be just around the corner. And when it happens, you likely won’t realize it. In fact, you might not realize it for quite some time.

I’ve shared the story before about fully acknowledging my depression and how a random book from Amazon was my first real step toward doing something about it. But I haven’t shared my first step towards mindfulness. And while the book brought me some simple tools and awareness, it was mindfulness that really started to help me start to achieve a more balanced life.

I was volunteering at the time for a local arts council, doing the marketing for the arts festival, and I met up with the council’s executive director one day. She had this look about her, she looked happy and bright and shiny, almost glowing. I thought, “Man, I want to look like that.” Mind you, this was during a pretty major dark spot of my depression.

I asked the executive director, “What are you doing?” And she simply said, “I’m meditating.” Well, I thought, I can try that. And she invited me to join her at a small mindfulness meditation group that was meeting weekly at the Unitarian church.

The group was welcoming and thoughtful and gracious, all the things you needed a small group of strangers to be. Especially when you were in a place of opening up to your life to no one. Each meeting started with a reading, then a formal meditation, then some tea and conversation at the end. It’s in this group where I learned more about my thoughts.

Here’s what I learned about my thoughts through mindfulness that helped my find more balance:

• That my thoughts did not dictate my worth or my emotions.
  
  
• That my depressive thoughts were not normal, I genuinely thought everyone experienced the same thoughts I did.
  
  
• While there are many thoughts that are serving (nothing in this world would exist without a thought to create it), there were just as many thoughts that were not serving. Those thoughts should be acknowledged and then allowed to pass with compassion and grace.
  
  
• That you could slow down your thoughts and quiet the chatter in your mind.
  

All of this learning helped tame my insomnia. It slowed down my thoughts enough so I could finally experience the joy of sweet sleep.

Sleeping allowed me the energy to start exercising (I’d always enjoyed it, just never stuck with it), and exercising made me want to eat a little better. And this subtle shift towards balance made my world open up. It made me want to live healthier, including how I was spending my time, who I was spending it with, and how I was giving back to my community.

This balance felt GOOD. And for a gal who used to chase a similar feeling through negative attention, this shift towards the positive was a game changer.

As with everything I decide I like in life, I started consuming any and all information about it I could get my hands on. I read all the mindfulness books, found different meditation forms and groups, found moving meditation (a.k.a. yoga), and I was off to begin to build a life and feel a way I didn’t know was possible.

But when I first peaked my head in that small room, at the sweet little church, with the kindest people, I had no clue where this would take me. And I still struggled for a very long time before the most significant change came.

In a future blog I’ll fill you in on how my mindfulness has since shifted from a more formal meditation and yoga practice to my far less formal (and more balanced, in my opinion) way of living mindfully in my day-to-day life.

But for now...

My message to you is this, keep going. Keep trying to find that thing that speaks to you. You have no idea when that thing will arrive and when it does, you still won’t know for a very long time. It is out there for you, it is out there for every single one of us.

Don’t give up, and make sure you stay as kind and compassionate towards yourself as possible while you keep looking.

It is worth the wait. 💕

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