THE BRAVELY BALANCED BLOG
For the overachiever and the overworked!
How exhausted are you? I know the feeling!
Does being exhausted serve you? What if I told you that you could have it all without subjecting yourself to hustle culture?
Sounds divine, doesn’t it? Follow along and feel the ease!
Category
- Agency
- Analysis Paralysis
- Anger and Depression
- Anxiety Stress & Fear
- Balance
- Burning the candle
- Burnout
- Change
- Dealing with Urgency
- Difficult Choices
- Doubt
- Drive
- Emotional awareness
- Empowerment
- Empowerment and Living
- Epigenetics
- Expectation
- Faith
- Healing
- Hope
- Inspiration
- Introversion
- Leadership
- Living with pain
- Optimism
- Overcoming emotional pain
- Personal Boundaries
- Personal Strengths
- Resilience
- Self-reliance
- Shame
- Trauma
- Victim Mentality
- Vulnerability
- Worry
- avoiding conflict
- balance
- being alone
- conflict resolution
- connection
- dealing with emotions
- decluttering
- duty and guilt
- emotional eating
- emotional pain
- empathy
- energy
- feeling stuck
- gossip
- happiness
Optimism Is More Than Positive Thinking
I have at times been labelled an eternal optimist. I’ve thought of myself that way at times. In truth, the underlying thing that keeps me optimistic is my continued sense of purpose. The only time in my life that I had a boring job was before I turned 20. I can remember looking at the time every 5 minutes or less and vowing never to do that to myself again. I never did.
Viktor Frankl wrote that …
Every Emotion Deserves Attention—Not Every Story Does
Emotions are never worth ignoring.
I’ll clarify. For some of us, there are 2 classes of emotions – those we automatically feel, and those we manufacture and intensify with the stories we tell ourselves. I’m very familiar with both.
The second class is definitely entertaining and can prolong feelings for a very long time, but they aren’t real beyond the story, and can be harmful.
For example, …
The Milestones That Transform Us
I passed a milestone a short while ago, one that I’d been working towards achieving for a number of years. Friends would ask how it changed me. My answer is – at first – that it didn’t change me, that I felt the same. Then I began to notice how I approach challenges differently, and wondered if that is part of the change. How, I ask, can achieving a designation change me that much? …
If You Don’t Feel It, Don’t Fake It
Have you ever wondered how empathy would work for someone who didn’t know how to truly have it? I read a post a while back that, to my mind, expressed this well. In it, the author suggested it was a matter of how you looked and what you said. For instance, adopting what you believe is a kind look on your face, and saying things that acknowledge how hard what that person is going through is.
That isn’t empathy. Empathy can’t be learned like that. …
Fail To Win
I’ve been hearing lots of youtube commentators talk about how young men avoid getting possibly rejected by women by diving into video games and the like. The advice of the commentators is to try it anyway, and if they get a no, try something else.
It’s good advice, but young men are still preferring video games. …
Getting Started
This blog is about the problem of procrastination. Even though I’ve written about this topic many times, the harder things get for us, and the more unstable the world around us feels, the more many of us procrastinate. Things simply overtake us and we don’t know where to start. …
The Gift Hidden In Our Wounding
I work with people feeling wounded daily – it’s my job. I experience wounding in my own life. Who among us hasn’t experienced that.
It’s a human condition. So much so that it bears repeating that the pain we feel from the mistakes we make – or others make – is an essential part of growing into maturity and into a fulfilling life.
Every time I fail in something I’m trying to accomplish, I remind myself …
Why Not Now?
Work is hard to find for many of us these days – costs are up and businesses aren’t hiring. The thing about harder times like these is that it can get you considering options you would never look at otherwise. And some of those options, if you’re like me, are ones I dream about but am too comfortable to try. I can get myself into a nice cozy lull with little effort: get up, have coffee, get dressed, get to working on things I am very familiar with, have dinner, get ready for bed, redo next day.
Then something happens that upturns all that comfort. …
The Problem of ‘Just Talking’ About Others
The destructive nature of gossip came up once more last week in my close circle, so I thought it would be a good thing to talk about because I’m pretty sure it’s an issue belonging to most social circles.
Yes, I’ve heard ad infinitum how we are all social animals and that gossip isn’t necessarily bad. But think for a minute – what you are gossiping about is someone else’s to say. It isn’t about something you read or heard on the news, but something not given for public consumption about someone else.
Gossip is always about something privately obtained that belongs to someone else …
Hope, Magic and the Future of Our Work
These are tough times for us all, and especially for the self-employed. Like many self-employed people, over the past half year, the methods you relied on to successfully market yourself has begun to fail. What now? You’ve probably tried many alternatives: new marketing platforms, free material, podcasts, interviews, social media, workshops, talks. You’re busy exploring all these ways and so far, nothing’s happened.
I’m not here to tell you I have the answer to this new problem so many of us have. What I do want to talk about though is hope and magic. …
Bad Choices Rarely Happen By Accident
I was browsing the internet the other day looking for hair product. I didn’t have an urgent need for it, but was distracting myself from a task I needed to do and didn’t really want to do. Eventually I saw something that caught my eye – or more likely eased my dissatisfaction – and bought it. That “product” turned out to be a scam. …
You Have More Agency Than You Think
A lot of women I speak with feel they lack agency in their work life especially. I know about this issue because I’ve also felt it. I feel it when I am working with someone who is forceful and wants to control everything.
But even when this happens …
The Growth We Miss When We Avoid Conflict
Lots of people in my world are conflict-averse. That includes friends, colleagues and clients. And myself … often.
People dedicated to avoiding conflict will go to immense lengths to sidestep any possible conflict that looks like it might happen. They might verbally agree with someone even if they don’t agree on anything that person said. They might …
Honesty, Humility And The Right Choice
Rahm Emanuel – Chief of Staff during President Obama’s first term - admitted to the mistake the core executive made of letting the bankers off the hook who were central to the housing crash during that time. In an interview, he said if he could do that over again, he’d “slap them”. The decision of President Obama’s to let those bankers off the hook while many ordinary people suffered generated a long-lasting resentment and a sense of betrayal, and led to the formation of the Tea Party. The Tea Party was the foundation of the MAGA movement.
What he said was, to me – the right answer. …
Reframing Rejection – The Quiet Strength Of Vulnerability
I’ve been thinking about the meaning of pain lately, especially emotional pain. The other day, I had asked for something, and was told that if I wanted this, I would need to do something I felt was demeaning. I felt the pain of embarrassment and rejection.
It was a relatively small thing, and yet it hurt, …
The Power of an Inspiring Beginning
How do you begin your day? With a coffee? With family? With meditation? Or a walk?
I begin my day …
Courage To Be Me
This is a story of someone dear to me who, because he decided not to allow fear of what others might think influence him, was able to shine in his chosen field. I know him personally, and have witnessed the changes he had to make for this to happen. It wasn’t easy for him.
As with so many people, he grew up in a family that was kind, but pretty authoritarian: …
What A Cabin Weekend Taught Me About Priorities
I’m going to direct you to a blog Seth Godin wrote a few days ago. In it he discusses all the ways guests at your dinner party might have different food and entertainment priorities than you do. He talks in terms of empathy on your part.
The message I got from this is different. …
When It’s Finally Time To Let Go
“Your emotional pain won’t last forever – but it will wait forever.” This quote from Anita Phillips gave me a chuckle. Not because it wasn’t true, but because it’s very true. That doesn’t stop anyone from testing it out, though. Me included! …