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
- Anger and Depression
- Anxiety Stress & Fear
- Balance
- Burning the candle
- Burnout
- Change
- Dealing with Urgency
- Doubt
- Drive
- Emotional awareness
- Empowerment and Living
- Epigenetics
- Expectation
- Healing
- Hope
- Introversion
- Leadership
- Personal Boundaries
- Personal Strengths
- Resilience
- Self-reliance
- Shame
- Trauma
- Victim Mentality
- Vulnerability
- Worry
- avoiding conflict
- balance
- being alone
- conflict resolution
- connection
- decluttering
- duty and guilt
- emotional eating
- empathy
- energy
- feeling stuck
- happiness
- imposter syndrome
- intentions
- justice
- mindfulness
- overeating
- perfection
- perfectionism
- procrastination
- regret
- resolotions
- self-awareness
- solving problems
Will It Improve The Silence?
“When do I speak up? I usually keep quiet because I tell myself that I need to process something first. But am I fooling myself?”
I get this question a lot. I’ve asked myself this question many times. …
Changing My Attitude Changed Everything
All of us encounter times when we are torn between two actions.
Here’s a fairly common one for me:
I had a real problem: …
The Quiet Message of an Overloaded Space
I read the quote below online recently, and resonated with it. When I’m busy, I’ll occasionally stop and take a good look around my office. If there’s any place other than my chair to sit, that means things are pretty good. It means that I’m addressing what I need to address, bit by bit. Piles of stuff are slowly disappearing from all the surfaces.
Those piles of stuff represent …
From Autopilot to Awareness: The Power of Noticing
When I find myself watching another food video, when I end up reading a novel till 2am, when I eat so much at Thanksgiving I hurt … it isn’t that any of these are bad things to do (except for the overeating at Thanksgiving, but safe to say few of us haven’t been there), it’s that I find myself doing them automatically, unaware of it until I’ve been doing them for some time. …
How Risk-Taking Changed When I Stopped Overcommitting
What I want to talk about today is risky for me. It’s about going too far, something I am intimately familiar with.
What I mean by this is: the usual way I tend to overcommit is to …
When Duty Becomes A Distraction
A friend of mine has been riddled with guilt over several things – he doesn’t want to do them but feels duty-bound to do so. It’s so distracting that he’s finding he isn’t getting his job done or anything else.
I’ve done many things …
Why Some Decisions Feel So Hard (Even When They Shouldn’t)
It used to be, for me, really difficult to decide who not to invite to something I was hosting. I’d want to include everyone, even if it wasn’t very feasible. That went for Christmas gifting, and anything that meant the possibility of leaving someone I knew out.
I’d feel guilty, …
The Trouble With Expectations
Every morning, I remind myself that when I have an expectation, to notice it, to let it go and instead be open to whatever happens.
Expectations are stories …
I Used to Worry About Everything - Now I Choose What Matters
I worry about the future, and have since I was too young to remember not worrying about the future. I would worry about getting things done, about getting things done right, about being accepted, about wearing the right clothes, about serving the right food, about being prepared for any possible disaster – no matter how remote.
…
Embracing Solitude
My husband and I were talking about living in very small communities – 100 or less. I’ve lived in such a community when I lived in the Rockies. In that community, people came together for community Bingo night and other such events, …
When Emotions Run High, Pause First
In planning for my weekly blogs, I write down any ideas I come across, then review them for my next blog post. The following idea popped up: how powerful a momentary pause is in becoming master of our personal world.
I was talking to a friend yesterday about a relative he loves who tends to get bossy …
A Strength And Its Shadow: Lessons From A Two-Toned Car
Green and orange: that was the colour of our family car – bright orange covering the top; dark forest green covering the bottom. My dad was a traveling salesman and spent a lot of time out of town. Apparently, this was his way of keeping track of my mom as she went about her day.
Needless to say, it failed:
Decluttering Your Mind
I used to spend most of my time in my mind, dreaming, planning, worrying, and spiraling. It was not only off-putting to anyone around me, it could also be dangerous. …
When Hard Work Turns Harmful: A Story Of Change
I spent time with an old friend a few weekends ago, who was convalescing after a long illness that was caused largely from overwork. My friend was known for her relentlessly hard work, never stopping when she got tired, pushing through any physical barrier to finish what she’d committed to on time.
People admired her for her energy …
From Knowing to Experiencing: A Journey of Self-Discovery
I spent time, recently, re-connecting with friends who I haven’t seen for a while. I loved those re-connections: they brought back past times where we worked together for a common goal and experienced, together, both triumphs and trials. I believe we grew and matured from the experiences, and that an essential part of that growth was our connection.
I was thinking specifically about the trials we met together in an organization we belonged to. …
Ready for a New Beginning? Embracing the Next Chapter of Your Life
What do you do when your spouse decides to leave? Or when you find yourself needing to learn to live without the one you can’t live without? Or when your business partner suddenly turns on you and demands a change you can’t agree to?
These are a few instances of major life changes that are visited on us many times over, …
Navigating Unfairness: Finding Empowerment In Chaos
My mind and heart have been dwelling on how unsafe the world feels lately. How innocent people are being hurt and that harm is justified by the countries inflicting it. …
From Resolutions To Intentions: A Journey Of Self-Discovery
It’s March already so the typical resolution time has come and gone. But not for me – I do mine on my birthday, which was in February. I also decided a while back to switch from making resolutions to making intentions.
Resolutions, for me, were concrete goals I felt I wanted to attain. They often entailed …
You Already Have Everything You Need
What can I do? That’s a question I’m asking myself about my life situation and the (mostly political) chaos around me today. What can I do? So that I can feel like I’m part of the solution in my own life and in my community and not feel helpless.
The answer,…
From Fear To Freedom: Embracing Total Self-Acceptance
I’m a driven woman, and I work with driven women and men. Being driven is a wonderful way to live, if one’s drive is the kind that feeds one’s spirit. It is for many of us. And at least for some, it’s tinged with something that doesn‘t feed the spirit.
If you find yourself worried …