I get asked this question often, especially when facilitating retreats.

As someone who often tries to take on more projects than I can handle, I know what it’s like to juggle many responsibilities. Keeping up with work, family and self-care often feels like a never-ending rat race.

Balance obviously means something different to everyone, yet most of us are seeking it in some way or another. When we’re stressed and overwhelmed, finding balance seems like the ultimate answer to our problems.

So what does it mean to lead a well-balanced life and why does balance feel like an elusive concept?

What I have learnt over the years is that balance is not something we can get; it’s actually a state of mind. It’s the realisation that life is not stable but in constant motion.

Balance is about finding harmony in our internal world so we can more easily juggle the many balls in the air.

It’s no secret that most of us are feeling stressed and overwhelmed by the contant juggle. We feel like we never have enough time to get everything done, and we’re constantly chasing after something that seems just out of reach. We crave more balance in our lives, but how do we find it amongst the contant juggle?

The first step to finding balance is to look within. When we’re feeling out of balance, it’s often because we’ve lost touch with our own needs and wants. We get so caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday life that we often look outside of ourselves to find the balance we crave. It’s important to take some time each day to connect with your inner self. This can be done through a mindfulness practice like meditation, journaling, or simply taking a few deep breaths and asking yourself with kindness and compassion what it is that you need right now.

The second step is to get in touch with our masculine and feminine energy and know when one or the other is out of balance. In our fast-paced world, it’s easy to get caught up in the masculine energy of doing and achieving. This can lead to feelings of stress and anxiety. It’s important to also nurture the feminine energy of being and receiving. This can be done by taking time for yourself, spending time in nature, or doing something that brings you joy. Everything in life contains both feminine and masculine energy. In order to find balance, we must learn to embrace both energies and notice when either are out of balance.

Personally, I’ve found the balance of doing and being a hard one to strike. We live in a world that values doing and achieving above all else, and I have wrapped a lot of my self worth around being a doer.  But I also know that it can come at a cost to my health if I don’t balance out the doing with being.

I realised that prioritising being amidst all the doing is a critical part of creating a balanced, healthy life. Not just on weekends or holildays, but every single day.

Mindfulness meditation is the most effective practice I’ve found to help me shift out of doing and relax into being. I’m reminded that it’s okay to allow things to unfold, instead of always directing or controlling them. I’m able to hear my intuitive voice beneath my monkey mind chatter. I’m also more connected to my body and its signals. When I feel stressed or overwhelmed, that’s my body’s way of telling me that I’m more in my masculine and that life is out of balance. I know I need to slow down and connect more to my feminine. Now, I choose to pause and meditate (even for just a few minutes) instead of pushing through no matter what, and I feel the benefits immediately.

The third step is to acknowledge and honour the seasons of life. Just as the world goes through seasons, so do we. There are times when life is full of activity and movement, and there are also times when things are more quiet and still. It’s important to respect both the highs and lows, and to find balance within them. As winter approaches, it’s the perfect time to retreat inwards, to rest, reflect and allow ourselves time to renew our overall sense of wellbeing.

By attuning ourselves to the natural rhythms of the earth and finding balance between the masculine and feminine energies within us, we can begin to find a sense of harmony in our lives. When we are able to find this balance, we can start to live more authentically and with purpose. We can also begin to let go of the things that no longer serve us, making juggling less balls much more effortless and allowing space for more joy and ease into our lives.

So, the next time you’re feeling out of balance, take a moment to connect with yourself, your own masculine and feminine energies and become more aware of the season you’re in. By doing so, you just might find the secret to finding more balance in your own life.

I hope this blog post has inspired you to start your own journey towards finding greater balance from within. 

It’s Mother’s Day on Sunday and I wanted to use this occasion to talk about some false truths about motherhood and to uncover the reasons why so many women struggle through the early years of parenting.  

I have sat with hundreds of women over the last couple of years, and these false truths I’m about to share with you, contribute to the enormous load that so many women struggle with.

We have bought into some truths about motherhood that simply aren’t true. They are making us really exhausted, keeping us in our overwhelm, and feelings of guilt and shame are stopping us from really exploring what a pleasure filled life can look like. So, what are these false truths?

 False Truth #1

To be a good mother you need to sacrifice your life for your children.

It’s called “The Good Mother” syndrome and is the typical 1950’s housewife description. Women have sacrificed their life for their children for years because they believed that’s what they needed to do and never questioned it. Then in the 60’s and 70’s everything changed with the wave of feminism. Feminism empowered women to have it all. But what actually happened was that in addition to being a mother, women could also work, have their own business and say yes to more opportunities.

We were told that we could do it all. But no one mentioned what would happen to the caring responsibility of the children. What happened was that we just added mothering to a long list of to-dos. Mothering became another tick box that we needed to get done.

Now to be a good mother today you have to be able to not only be a domestic goddess, but you also have to work like you don’t have kids and parent like you don’t work, and often without a village around you for support.

Burnout, stress and anxiety started to become the norm and women soon realised that the idea of having it all would lead to burn out.

But that stopping and stepping back wasn’t an option because of the second false truth.

False truth #2

To be a successful woman you must be able to do it all and be superwoman and that our strength only comes from constantly pushing and being able to handle it all.

And when we have this belief running deep, we just keep going no matter what, feeling more and more depleted until something forces us to stop – we get sick or we simply break down. And then when we do finally stop, we feel like a failure. We feel guilt and shame that we couldn’t keep up and wonder why everyone else seems to manage it all and we can’t.

Before kids, my identity and self worth was completely wrapped up in my work. After having kids I had to completely rethink who I was but it took me almost 7 years to get to that point of realising that I wasn’t the same person I was before kids and I had to rediscover my new truth and reshape my identity as a woman and a mum. 

False truth #3

Motherhood comes naturally and you will love every minute of it.  

This was a core belief of mine before having kids. My expectations of motherhood of being effortlessly patient, nurturing and kind, thinking it would all come so naturally from a place deep inside was far from the harsh reality I faced as a new mother. 

Motherhood did not come naturally to me and when I couldn’t breastfeed my boys, I thought I had failed. The guilt and shame robbed me of my motherhood joy.

We often have such high expectations of ourselves and we put ourselves under an enormous amount of pressure to perform every job to the best of our ability. So when we suddenly don’t meet those expectations, our world starts to crumble.  

These false truths are stopping us from living a life that truly makes us happy. 

The real truth is that everything in our lives works better when we prioritise ourselves and we’re thriving. We feel better when we have energy, when we’re nourishing ourselves, when we’re giving from the overflow of our cup rather than a half empty cup. When we give from the overflow, we give from a place of abundance rather than resentment.

When we look at the beliefs and expectations around motherhood, we can see why it’s so hard to be a mother in the modern world and how attached we are to these false truths.

To be a good mother, we actually need to constantly be filling our own cup and we can’t do that if we have this underlying belief that it’s selfish. We would never drive our car with no petrol in it, we are constantly refilling our car tanks. So why don’t we refill our own tanks on a more regular basis?

I hear from so many women who tell me that they are completely exhausted. They are struggling in their relationships and there is a distinct lack of joy and pleasure in their lives.

Many women I speak to don’t have the basic self-care fundamentals in place because their lives are so busy and moving at such a rapid speed that there is simply no time or capacity to even fit in the basics like nourishing food, regular movement, rest and good quality sleep.

Even though we know that everything feels better when we’re thriving, we don’t focus on those things because consciously or unconsciously we have been led to believe that there is no other way.

I have spent the last few years rediscovering and redefining my own truth. I realised it was not my fault that I felt this way and trying to be worthy, and this self-sacrificing behaviour, was not the answer. The truth I like to now live by is that to be a successful woman I need to rest and soften and not to feel guilt when I say no. To be a good mother I need to prioritise my own needs on a daily basis, and when I do then everything else in my life works so much better. My ability to parent and show up in my marriage, to be present in everything I do each day and to be grateful for it all. So, I go on girl’s weekends away, I go out for coffee with friends, I meditate, I laugh, I find pleasure in the simple things, I go for walks in nature, I spend the time making nourishing foods for myself (not just for the kids), I spend quality time with my husband, I move my body with exercises that feel good, and this year I am also taking myself off to a retreat for a whole week. Because at the end of the day, this is my life, I deserve to feel amazing and I choose to make the most of every moment.

I wonder what being a good mother and a successful woman means to you and how much these false truths influence your choices and the way you live your life?