The Unfiltered Health Podcast
The Unfiltered Health Podcast delivers real, authentic conversations about health, wellness, and longevity. We break down complex health topics, sharing evidence-based insights, practical advice, and personal experiences. Our mission is to educate, inspire, and build a supportive community committed to living well and thriving together—no filters, just the truth about what it takes to achieve lasting health.
The Unfiltered Health Podcast
88 - Embracing Flexibility: Rethinking Balance, Is It Actually a Realistic Goal?
This episode explores the flawed notion of achieving perfect balance in life, stressing that balance is not static but a dynamic and personal experience. By lowering expectations, understanding individual priorities, and embracing the realities of life’s challenges, listeners can redefine their approach to balance and cultivate resilience.
• Defining balance as a dynamic rather than static experience
• Lowering expectations to better manage life's demands
• The importance of personal priorities in achieving balance
• Challenging the myth of work-life balance and individual definitions
• Developing resilience through coping strategies during imbalance
• The role of visualization and planning in achieving balance
• Understanding that balance is a continuous juggling act
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Hey guys, welcome to another episode. We are at episode 88, and today we are going to be talking about a word that gets thrown around quite a bit. We're going to be unpacking the word balance, so we're going to break down what real balance actually looks like, how to manage your expectations and why sometimes the most balanced thing you can do is let go of the pressure to have it all figured out. So let's kick things off off. Raquel, yeah, what's your definition of balance?
Speaker 2:her balance. My definition is it's not always going to be balanced. So a balance, if you think about what do you think about? When you think of balance do you think of like a scale, and there's old, old school scales where you weigh something and it's like out of balance.
Speaker 2:I think balance is that throwaway term, like you said, where everyone would like to achieve some sort of balance, but ultimately we're saying this off air is that balance, depending on your lifestyle, isn't going to be perfect, and lowering the expectations in your life that you would like to have you know, three hours here and exactly three hours somewhere else on yourself is potentially what is letting you down to have some sort of balance, because there's never going to be this perfect equilibrium all the time. It's going to be 50% here, 20% over there and the rest of it the 30% somewhere else. It could even be less. It could be 90, 90 sometimes on one particular thing like work, and then you got 10 spare. It's not always ideal, of course.
Speaker 2:You know you want to have the chance to do other things. Maybe, maybe, maybe you don't, maybe you don't really care, but if your goal is balance, I'm assuming people out there do care about having some sort of equilibrium between everything homeostasis, however you want to term it. But ultimately, if you lower your expectations and can kind of divvy up a little bit of percentage in some places where you might really want to get them like your fitness, like your health, like your food routine, like spending time with your family and if you have to allocate a little bit like 5%, like 10%, 15%, that's good because over time it adds up. It's the one to two to three to four to five times. Over time ends up adding up maybe to 25%, maybe to 50%, whatever it is. But I hope that kind of makes sense. I don't really think there is such a thing as the connotation of having perfect balance. I think it's you give time to what you think is necessary and how you allocate.
Speaker 1:That is based on you yeah, and I definitely think, like in a perfect world, balance will exist.
Speaker 1:You know you've got your perfect work, life balance, or you know health and fitness balance and all the things, but in reality there are so many highs and lows that life throws at us and we won't always be able to achieve balance.
Speaker 1:And it's like you said when I thought of balance in the definition, I thought of a scale, an old school kind of scale, but it was in a way that you know, on one end it's sort of all the things that lower our balance and on the other end it's all the all the things that lower our balance and on the other end it's all the things that allow us to be balanced and sometimes right, sometimes it's it's not even sometimes, for example, let's give work an example. I know you'll be able to relate sometimes with work. You know we want to work but we also want to enjoy life, but then there are times when we have to put in extra work, which then comes a bit of sacrifice when it comes to life stuff. We might not go out as much, we might not be as social as much, because work is the priority, but that's not always forever.
Speaker 2:It then gets changed and then maybe we're a little bit too social and we don't, you know, we don't work as much, so it's always topping and changing and I think the whole point is being okay with that and accepting that so I think, if we can kind of break down people's beliefs today, that the balance aspect we need to, we need to restructure what you or whatever, break the walls down of what you think balance is because where do you spend 90% of your time, like as an individual, as yourself, steph, even where do you spend 90% of your time? My 90% of my time it's a big chunk of my life is on Ladies Out Lift.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is literally Ladies Out.
Speaker 2:Lift right.
Speaker 2:Work is top priority, and I think, as business owners, we feel that pressure, because it's always on our mind, it's always in the background, we're always doing something, we're always being creative, we're always thinking of the next step, right, but then there's a 10 that you divvy up, sometimes where it might be on yourself. Ultimately, within the 90, though, of our work, we're not just sitting on our desk for 90% of the day. We are doing a whole bunch of different things. We're wearing different hats, we're doing different jobs. We're we're in different roles all day. In that 90%, and it's not always like that every single week. It's like that maybe for a week in the month or two weeks of the month.
Speaker 2:For myself, I feel, I feel like I've been giving a hundred percent for the last three to four weeks, um, with ladies that live before I leave for a holiday, so, and I'm okay with that, because I know the reward at the end is going away, having some space, being able to have some more freedom, whatever it is. So, like I said, we need to like break that down a little bit and be willing to kind of give it where it needs, when you need to put more into something, and then know when you need some of your resources back, when you need to spend more time with family, when you need to spend more time by yourself, when you want to spend time with other people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think I honestly hate the term like work-life balance. Yeah, you know, when people say, oh, you know, you need to have a really good work-life balance, um, your work-life balance needs to be better, it's like, what does that actually mean? Because for different people, it's going to mean, like different things. Everyone will consider, you know, everyone has different priorities based on their lifestyle. So I don't think there is such thing as you know this in quotation work-life balance.
Speaker 2:I think it's very much, yeah, yeah, because you have people who, like us, who are very focused and driven and have a goal and very ambitious. And then you do have other people who are not really interested in the work aspect. They just want to have 20% of work life. They want to focus more on their family. They wish they had more travel time, like that's their priority and that is okay. Guys Like we're not saying you need to be like us and heavy head down bums up at certain times. We also know when to rest and we also have probably learned how to do that.
Speaker 2:So with the work life balance or just the goal of balance in general, it's learning what your needs are for you, and not what society may expect or your parents expect or what social media is telling you you have to do and how to achieve X, y, z. These are all people's own ideas and their own identities. So whatever you gravitate towards, you need to figure that out. You need to figure that out as an individual of what do you want, because I think that will give you a better understanding of where you want to put your time. And maybe, if I just may, as a parent.
Speaker 2:I think this is different, because you do make a decision to become a parent in some way, shape or form, and whether or not you are a parent, you do realize that you have to give time and attention to your creation and if you don't prioritize them, of course there's going to be things that go wrong. So there has to be understanding here that there are times in your life whether you're at uni or you're a mom, or you're working your ass off, to move out of a toxic situation and trying to save up your cash, whatever it might be, there is a priority at every single stage of your life and it will change. So the goal of balance. You need to redirect that energy and find what it is right now that you need boom, my drop.
Speaker 1:I like that, I like that and it's more so like. What is your, I guess, like your goal? What is your goal from right now? What do you need right now?
Speaker 1:And it's sort of like it's what I say with clients when I guess, if they're work has taken a big priority and, you know, I don't know, they need to get a job done that week and so all their effort and all their time is spent doing their work and so their training drops off and they'll come back in and they'll say to me yeah, you know, I was really stuck with training. I know I should have probably made more time. I actually turn around and say, hey, look like. No, I don't like, I don't agree that.
Speaker 1:I don't think you had to necessarily make time sometimes, you know, sometimes things have to be put aside so you can get the stuff done, as long as long as it's not constant. So you know, if they're sacrificing a week of training because they have to go spend overtime doing work, cool, you ride that week off the training. But if it then becomes this habit of I'm now skipping training every single week, well then, okay, cool, something might have to change yeah, you've got to be fair, like you've got to be fair on yourself exactly I think, that's what we're both trying to say here is that you need to know where your expectations and your priorities sit.
Speaker 2:At different times, like if you're injured, like in your case, you'd get a lot of clients who'd be injured and feeling like they're not doing enough sometimes, or it's not healing fast enough, or, in PT land, I'm not getting results fast enough, but you're actually at the perfect pace.
Speaker 2:You know you're losing kilo a week or you're doing your exercises every week and you are seeing gradual improvements. We are allowed and can put a bit of weight on this injured part that you couldn't last time, right. So I think it's also taking taking some more time to be grateful and maybe potentially I think we spoke on this another week earlier about your routine and like checking where I think I said this off air was checking where the blind spots, checking where the the gaps are in your day where you might have a bit extra time. Um, I love having my calendar. I never used to use it so rigorously and plop in a bunch of different things that I need to do for work, where I need to be who, I need to call topics I need to be working on mentor calls, I've got training hours, lunch time, break time I got it all in my calendar.
Speaker 2:And if I start earlier. Sometimes I'm kicking it. If I start earlier with work, I'm just like, okay, I've powered through all the things that I wanted to do today, I'm still on task. Yeah, so for the next week or the next couple days I can maybe can have some more extra free time because I've done things in advance or if I'm getting through things faster or things are taking more time. I need to allocate more time here. So I think like it does sound maybe a bit tedious and trying to find, to actually see where your balance needs to go percentage wise. But ultimately I think I'm a visual learner and if anyone like also agrees with this and themselves, if you can visualize and see what you need to do, when you need to start, when you finish, like it's a bit methodical and it might be a bit tedious to some people, but trust me, for me as a business, business owner, this has helped me so much more to power through the weeks where I need to just move yeah, I very much set myself in my diary.
Speaker 1:I'll set a high priority task list to do for the day or even for the week, and it'll be like two or three max things that I absolutely must get done, and then the other stuff underneath will be the stuff that I, you know I can do if I get time but I don't have to stress about it and I find that just keeps me in check. And if I do those high-priority tasks then I'm like now I can go for a walk or I can go get a coffee with friends, or it's kind of like a little reward system in a sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I think that's good for us who are like this and need that kind of structure and and thrive off a little bit of routine with our work life like it does. It's helpful for people who aren't like that and like to be a bit more free-flowing. I would say prioritize obviously your free-flowing movements or areas where you know you need the most, whether it's in the morning or at the night, and everything else maybe is done some other time or work around your work life. You know, maybe you schedule in more breaks, maybe you schedule in more you time. You schedule in where you want to.
Speaker 2:When I say scheduled to, I mean like for some people, they just know what they want to do. They know they want to train, they know they want to sit outside or they want to be with friends or they want to go for a walk. So if that's what you want to do, do those things. We're not saying don't because I definitely enjoy rest time I know you do, steph as well Like we're able to just switch off, and that comes with practice too, with the business.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, yeah, just balance. It's good, it's fantastic. I think it really does come with structure. Yeah, balance, because it was like you said.
Speaker 2:You know, if we, if we write things down, if we get things done in terms of our work, then cool, we can go off and do the things that we want to do, that we really enjoy, and that is balance, that is a form of balance yeah, because I feel like we both sound like we're very like masculine energy dominating and I guess it's like the business energy, but at the same time we also have that very like centered side of ourselves where we know we need our own time for ourself and I feel like we're pretty good at doing that for ourselves and I think if there's ever a time where I'm not good at it just say example, if I am just head down in work and nothing else matters there will come a point where I will start to burn out or feel absolutely wrecked because my balance has been thrown out the door.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of like we said before. You know, there's always going to be time to juggle things or prioritise things when necessary. But if you're doing too much of one thing and it's the one thing that may lead you down to being a little bit more stressed because you're not doing the things that you normally do to keep your body feeling good and optimal and healthy then you'll start to feel the consequences of, you know, feeling tired or burnt out or mentally fatigued or stressed or overwhelmed, or, you know, in pain or whatever it may be yeah, there's a fine line on those burnt out moments, maybe even thinking of female health period weeks.
Speaker 2:I know I was due for my period on the photo shoot that we just had and I was like no, I'm not getting my period on this day, like please, please wait.
Speaker 2:I told my body please wait, and it did. I got it after, but I feel like the day before, a couple of days before I was riding this, just like burnt out fine line of you're almost at the edge, but it wasn't like emotionally, like heightened, it was more just like I am tired, I am drained. I'm really looking forward to a break and just recognizing that and knowing when I needed to just lay down, if I was looking at work and just like staring at it, I'd be like, all right, go lie down, go in the sun, go make some lunch, go do something else, because that can also be a form of balance. Instead of trying to get through and push through something that is icky or not really working right now, go do something else that makes you equally well not equally makes you more happy, gives you more space. So I think that's important to recognize as well, yeah, I think so too.
Speaker 1:And when it comes to when you're coaching clients and your clients getting results, or when I'm coaching clients in a in a rehab space and looking at results in terms of being pain free, I know that most clients do try to chase that ideal, perfect world of having perfect life and balance.
Speaker 1:But I I teach this a lot in terms of rehab with my clients it's that your training and your progression will come like in waves, like. Life is a bit of a roller coaster, so it's not always going to be uh, it's not always going to um increase, it's not always going to be linear, it's always going to dip and it's always going to increase, based on what life throws at you exactly. And the key to addressing that and the key to being able to continue regardless is the strategies that you put in place and you implement to help manage that. For you know, when you are feeling a little bit low whether it be low in the sense that you're not making progress, low in the sense you haven't been trained because work is stressful, or low in the sense that you know you've had a pain, flare-up, cool what strategies can we put in place to then get you back. So it's kind of like that's our version, I suppose, of finding that balance, that sweet spot.
Speaker 2:I think that I think that was a really good sum up, like I think, ultimately, maybe we could give some strategies or maybe we have. What do you?
Speaker 1:yeah, I think we have. In the sense of, the biggest thing that came to me is just the expectation of don't expect you to have the perfect work-life balance, or you know, personal life or relationship life, whatever it is that you know in your balance, in your life.
Speaker 1:Don't expect to have everything feel balanced and zen and perfect all the time, because I think that's really unrealistic and I think the sooner you accept that the sooner you can then just stay consistent, I guess, stay consistent and be more structured and, you know, the sooner you can then implement strategies for when you are feeling like you know you're working a bit too much and other things have you know you've been slack with other things, that's when you can start implementing some strategies to get yourself out of that. So I think you know, don't be unrealistic in the sense of feeling like everything needs to be perfect all the time and, in order to get you out of that rut, when you are feeling down or life goes with curveball, have strategies in place to get you back on your path it's that mental resilience and, I think, also knowing that with every high there is also an equal low, and I think just that's just part of life.
Speaker 2:Like, if you look at stoicism, if you look at all the history books, there's always major major peaks and then what happens? Major, major lows. And I think just if you can have that perspective in your own life that with every high there's probably going to be an equally low period and you need to be able to mentally build your resilience and toughness to go through those emotions when it does happen. I know for business, like there's times where things are flying and soaring and I know in the back of my mind I'm going to enjoy the high because I know there's going to be a time where something else has to come up and I need to be resilient enough to cope with it, to deal with it and not get too emotional.
Speaker 2:Sometimes with business stuff, whether it's personal life too you can be so awesome, awesome, awesome.
Speaker 2:And then something else happens.
Speaker 2:You're like I just got to deal with it, like you got to have that resiliency to be able to feel your feelings feel a bit upset, low, do what you need to do, but you need to have strategies that come back to yourself, and I think, just as females, we need to have better coping mechanisms and habits and hobbies that you can do that elicit this self-love, like you need to do something with yourself or have some practice, whether it's dancing, it's going for for a walk, it's laughing with other people going and doing a new practice.
Speaker 2:I think this is also part of the balance talk, because you said something about like, not always knowing that it's going to be positive, seth, and I think, um, if you can realize that it's not always going to be great and have this self-love for yourself, you will get through hard times, because hard will come. We're all going to go through them, no matter what it is. We all have our own stories, we all have our own things. So I think just everyone please realize that it's okay. Like, going through the lows is also equally important to ride to get through whatever it is you need to get through.
Speaker 1:I think of it like a juggling act. Yeah, it is. All the balls that you're juggling are like. They're good, they're bad, they're high priority. You know they're everything that you value and you think is important and you being able to constantly juggle them is technically balanced. But when one drops, then you know when one drops off consistently over time, the rest will then drop, and then that's when we feel things like, you know, burnout or stress or fatigue or overwhelm, or you know all those effects that come with it All right.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that was a really good sum up. Thanks for listening everyone. Steph, are we done? Is that the episode we're done?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hope you guys found that helpful and had a hope you had some um insights. Yeah, a few aha moments and um you just think about balancing a bit differently yeah, be more open to the fact that it's not always gonna be perfect. Yeah, thanks guys, imperfections, see you.