When You Lose Your Own Balance
It’s really kinda embarrassing when a personal development blogger stops following her own advice, no?
She is supposed to be humming along and cheering you on for the ride, leading the way like a fearless warrior, experimenting away with life and work to report out on the best ways to form smart habits or to stop bad cycles, and then one day, she hits a wall. She stops following her own advice, and falls into the traps that she thought she had conquered.
Yep, that would be yours truly, and the stumbling block is the pursuit of extremes, which almost always comes with the high price of sacrifice.
Reminder: You can still grab The Positive Affirmations for Life program with more than 4 hours of audio affirmations for 7 life situations that impact your happiness and success the most.
It feels like stepping backwards in the journey of growth that was supposed to be moving forward! It feels like going back in time and becoming an older version of yourself, the version that you swore you had left behind. It feels dumb to make the same mistakes, or to let the bad habits sneak up on you again and yet you do it again. And again!
Why do we get in our own way? Why do we resort to sabotaging our chances when things are going great instead of celebrating our forward momentum? Why can we not keep a good cycle going forever?
For two months, I have not been back on the bike. I have not been eating the best way. I have not exercised except for 2 power yoga classes a week but in my book, that hardly counts. I have not even been meditating regularly. I have not been, gasp, a true early riser.
What, then you wonder, am I doing?
How to Restart Habits After a Break
Well, fear not because I have not turned into a sloth. I would forgive myself anything but sloth. Sloth, I would murder right away. Other stuff, deserve some attention and patience.
Work is the answer to my lost balance and my new list of sacrifices, and if it were anything other than building my business, I knew how to scale it back and say no.
I have found a new weakness in working for myself: walking away from work to take a break longer than an hour or than a night’s rest. And I bet if I underwent hypnosis, they would find me solving problems in my sleeping hours.
The thing is, I do like extremes. I want to create and witness fast growth in my itty biz and I want to learn everything about running a business right now, or at the latest, by next Monday! Things that used to be boring to me are no longer as such when I apply them to my business. If I had to learn about debt management or the economics model of a foreign country, I’d be all over it if it mattered to my business.
I want to pursue every passion, and grow in every direction, and I decided that everything that gets in the way of moving forward in my business is a waste of my time. I am shocked that I packed up my smartest and best habits and sent them away in the name of wasting my time!
I am telling you a lot here, I know. But you know what, you deserve to know the truth! I am still mad about self-improvement, personal development, challenges, growth, pushing myself to be the best person I can be and I mean and believe every word I write here in this blog. I have done everything I write about and I am passionate about empowering you to become the absolute best possible person in your life too.
So in the name of full transparency, dear constant reader, how could I not share that I have not been doing as I preach? That my daily meditation has become weekly at best, and that my zen reading has made way for business books and PDF documents, and that my early rising habit stand little chance when I am toiling away way past midnight.
How could I not admit that I have been eating more liberally, especially sometimes out of stress and anxiety?
How could I hide that my social life is nearly extinct (by choice) and my entire livelihood comes from my imagination and my work (and my hubby, lest he reads this and thinks otherwise – I am not talking about you, Andy Brock!)?
Well, there you have it. I have sacrificed just about everything I know to grow my itty biz and I must tell you, I still absolutely love every minute of it. Even if I’m toiling away, getting a neck pain from sitting still or a wrist cramp from typing too much or finding a way out of overwhelm from all the choices, I love being a business owner.
I love working, especially writing, and creating something that was not there before. I love being in charge of my work, my business, my life and essentially my destiny. I love it so much that I am guarding it every minute and now it has become a borderline obsession.
So what’s my plan? How do I get back to being aligned to everything I preach and desperately believe in? How can I regain my own sense of balance?
Your Help in Finding My Balance Again
What do you recommend? This time, I want to listen rather than tell. This is your chance where you get to coach me to help me find my way back to full health and balance. You get to sit me down, give me a lecture, make me a plan, or just whip me into shape with tough love and care. You get to teach me how to let go of this baby I am building long enough to take care of me more? Oh yes, it’s all on you for a change, my dear constant reader. I am ready to receive whatever you got! Share away in the comments.
I am Farnoosh, the founder of Prolific Living. So glad you are here. My mission is to empower you to unblock your creative genius to live your dream life.