When people talk about balance, they often imagine something like a gymnast on a beam. But unless you’re Olga Korbut performing at the 1972 Summer Olympics, balancing perfectly on a narrow beam is incredibly hard. One wobble and you’re off.
That’s what the phrase work-life balance implies: a kind of constant equilibrium where work and life are evenly distributed, stable, and gracefully aligned.
But real life doesn’t work that way.
Life is much more like a see-saw. Sometimes work demands more of your attention—a product launch, a big project, a period of intense creativity. Other times life rightfully takes the lead—a family need, a health scare, a long-awaited vacation, or simply the desire to slow down.
The key isn’t perfect balance; it’s dynamic movement.
There are seasons when the see-saw tilts heavily toward work, and seasons when it tilts toward life. What matters is not whether the plank is perfectly level every day, but whether over time you feel a sense of meaning, energy, and alignment.
In my own life, I’ve found that the goal isn’t balance—it’s integration. When work expresses your curiosity, creativity, or purpose, it doesn’t sit on the opposite side of the beam from life.
It becomes part of life itself.
So instead of trying to stand like a gymnast on a beam, maybe the wiser approach is to accept the rhythm of the see-saw—and enjoy the ride.
-Chip
P.S. I’m a big fan of Maria Popova’s The Marginalian newsletter and saw that she recently featured our MEA guest faculty member David Whyte talking about work-marriage-self balance and why he’s troubled by the balancing beam premise as well. David will be at our Santa Fe campus starting a week from this Thursday co-leading a workshop on “Leading from Soul: Inner Wisdom for Transformational Impact” March 26-29 and then a second workshop March 29-April 2 on “Crossing the Unknown Sea: Navigating the Thresholds of the Midlife Voyage.”