It’s Funny How the Very Thing I Spent Years Chasing Doesn’t Actually Exist

🎧 “I’ll be missing you” – JH Marco

The question I’ve been trying to solve for so long is — what is the perfect balance of work and life? How can I achieve more balance between work and life?

This idea that there is a perfect balance. But what if the very question I’ve been asking myself is the wrong question? What if there’s a completely different way of looking at this altogether?

My Vipassana teacher said it’s not just about sitting in meditation all day. It’s about being able to do things mindfully. To bring presence into everything, the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday things we usually do on autopilot.

And that’s when it hit me. What if it isn’t about how can I achieve the perfect balance, but more about how can I bring more mindfulness into my day, into everything I do, into my everyday activities?

This whole time I’d been chasing something that maybe doesn’t even exist. The perfect balance I was looking for was never out there. What I actually needed was already within me. I just didn’t know it yet.

For the last couple of years I’d always say the same thing to my friends. I’m good, but I’m really struggling with finding the right balance between work and life.

There were days where I’d literally only work one or two hours, trying to give my body the rest it was clearly asking for. I could feel it, the tension, the dizziness, the exhaustion. So I’d cut back. But even on those minimal work days, because I was pressuring myself to get so much done in that small window, I was still operating in a high pressure, stressed state. And when I’d go to enjoy the rest of my day, I’d feel better for resting, but I was already depleted before I even started.

And I couldn’t understand it. I’d barely worked. I should be feeling good, energised, free. So why did I still feel like that? The guilt of it was almost worse than the exhaustion itself.

Here’s the thing. You can create a schedule that looks perfectly balanced on paper, sure. But if you’re moving through your day in a reactive state, checking every ping of your email, jumping at every notification, rushing through activities and tasks, chasing productivity, you’re spending a big portion of your day, your week, in a stressed state. You’re not truly present.

Which means no amount of balance in your schedule will solve this.

You may only work a few hours a day, but if in that time you aren’t mindful, you will still feel it. Tense shoulders, tired, low energy. The symptoms of stress. Maybe not to the extreme of a 10 hour day, but you still shift into that stressed state. And that’s not balance, that’s just a softer version of the same thing.

Which brings me to my point.

We need to learn to be mindful with everything that we do. The more present we are, the more energy we have, the more flow we feel. And flow equals happiness and freedom.

Which is exactly what I had been searching for from the perfect work life balance the whole time.

The thing I was looking for on the outside was always something I needed to cultivate on the inside.