I recently happened upon an interview with a spiritual guru who claims that there’s no such thing as life balance — that when we’re balanced out, we’re boring, we’re stagnant, we’re not reaching out for our goals. While I get what he’s getting at — that we as humans should always be aiming for something bigger than the current life we’re leading, whatever that means for each of us — I think he misses the point of life balance.

I’m a big believer in (and recommender of!) life balance, which is particularly challenging for moms! By my definition, achieving a balanced life means you’re taking care of yourself well enough not to feel crazed much of the time, not to feel frustrated and frazzled and always attempting to compensate for stuff we’ve done wrong.

I often use the image of a tidal wave crashing in as the sign of a life out of balance with stresses not being handled well (stress = the huge waves!), versus a balanced life feeling calm like a quiet lake that you drop a rock into and tiny ripples disturb the surface temporarily and then dissipate. Is your life like that quiet lake or more like an ocean with lots of tidal waves crashing in, stressing you out as you go?

True balance to me means, among other things, eating well and avoiding trigger foods to ensure a Physical Food Drama-free life. It’s getting enough physical activity in that I sleep well, feel strong and have a great way of relieving day-to-day stress. It’s taking a minute now and then to just *be* and relax. It’s making sure to take small pockets of time for self-care. It’s being able to help my clients and Inner Circle members and still spend as much time with my family as possible. It’s being able to take a little time to learn new things each and every day and apply them in my life and share them with others. And often — despite the words of the guru-who-shall-go-unnamed — in my life, even though I feel “balanced,” there’s still certainly stress, and lots of it because let’s face it — life’s stressful, particularly with families to take care of and all the obligations that go with being a member of our communities. Good stress is stress too, after all, and there’s always plenty of good upheaval in a family. And personal growth — whether we’re talking about taking care of our bodies or anything else — is stressful, yet vitally necessary if we want to thrive!

This past week has been a week where it’s been a struggle to keep my balance. I was at a business conference for a couple days, sleeping in my own bed at night but spending my days absorbing knowledge, making plans and taking action on that knowledge and worrying a wee bit about my son as I spent long hours away from him for the first time in his young life. Just after discovering on my own that I had to get my car inspected, I got a ticket for not getting said inspection on time. *sighs* I dropped my glasses at the park with my son while wearing my sunglasses and when I located the lost glasses, they’d gotten pretty badly mangled. (I also wear contacts, but only for short periods of time.) We’ve also had web server trouble, email trouble and other stress around here that I won’t bore you with. What a week!

The bottom line is that in weeks like this one, it’s good that most of the time my life’s mostly in balance (there’s no such thing as perfect balance because it’s different for each of us) because when the problems start crashing in like waves, I was remarkably calm, considering. That’s not always been the case for me, certainly. And I say this not to brag.

If you find that you’re struggling with your weight, odds are good that your LIFE is currently out of balance, not just how you eat. I’m not saying you need to rework each and every aspect of your life just to lose a few pounds(!), but sometimes looking at the bigger picture will help you see what’s really going on. And how you currently handle stress is indicative of whether you’re balanced or feeling out of control, overwhelmed. So what can you do to destress? Even tiny changes typically add up to a great sense of relief in the slightly longer run.