Our company was bought by a corporation several months ago and there have been numerous changes since…mostly with employees. Our kitchen alone seems to have new faces every day!
Over the past several days, I’ve talked more and more with one in particular. He’s always so cheerful and positive and greets me with a smile and a big “Hello, Kelly!”. When you deal with the daily stresses of our situation, cheerful people are very hard to come by. But somehow, he manages to hold on to it.
Today, I went to the kitchen to pick up my dinner. As I was waiting for them to plate it up, he came in and started stacking up plates on a tray to deliver. He said, “Hey Kelly! How are ya today?” I said, “I’m good, and you?” He said, “You know how I am? I am superb, terrific, fantastic, and totally awesome!” I said, jokingly, “Wow, what’s your secret?” He replied, “Balance…it’s the secret of life!”
As we’re having this conversation, he finishes stacking his plates on the tray, and the chef hands me mine. I turn to leave and see the guy trying to pick up the tray he has stacked 8 plates on (these are not just plates…these are plates with covers, so he’s got them stacked double high!). After just a few moments of struggling, he picks up the tray over his shoulder, gets it balanced, and heads out the door. I head out behind him and as he slowly makes his way out the door, I say to him, “I don’t know how you’re doing this right now!” He tells me, “Honestly, I have no clue either!” I laughed, then quickly replied with, “Balance, right?”
I replayed this whole scene in my mind the rest of the night at work and the more I thought about it, the more I realized how right he is! The past few days, I’ve been taking my lunch break outside at this totally awesome spot I found right next to our fountain. I love the sound of rushing water! It’s so peaceful and calming! In the midst of all the craziness my job brings, just 30 minutes in front of that thing can change the course of the rest of my entire day.
We really need to keep our lives balanced, or they’ll slip right out of our hands. But what kinds of things do we need to think about when we think about balance?
Family. Friends. Finance. Spiritual life. Health. Work. R&R. We have so much on our plates (or should I say, tray of plates) that it can really be hard to balance it all sometimes. We might have finances weighing heavily on us one minute, and work the next.
Raise your hand if you think it’s strange that I included R&R in that list above.
Nope. That wasn’t a mistake. It IS possible to have too much R&R! You can’t convince yourself that work is so hard on you and tiring that you need to spend every minute of your life at home just sitting mindlessly in front of the tv or lounging in bed longer than necessary. We all NEED some R&R every now and then. But if you let it get to the point of laziness, housework will start to pile up, things at work may start to pile up. Next thing you know, here comes the stress again, even after all this R&R time. You need to find that balance. Don’t think of R&R as “rest and relaxation”. Think of it as “refocus and re-energize”. However long you need to rest from something to get yourself refocused and re-energized for the next item on your list, that’s all you should take, whether it be 5 minutes of crying in the bathroom, a 30 minute lunch break in peace & quiet, or a day off of work to go shopping or lay in bed and watch mindless tv all day. Hey, we all need it every once in a while 
I could take each one of these 7 things and talk about them for days and days…and honestly, I could probably even add more to the list. I just wanted to touch on something that I personally have been struggling with lately. I have found that I am very unbalanced. I put off house chores as long as possible. I come home and go straight to the tv, even if it’s just to channel-surf. I’ve convinced myself that I am entitled to rest because work is so stressful and tiring. But the thing is, I spend half the day at work just sitting behind a desk. So for me to come home and just sit some more is the worst thing I could do for myself.
After the Seventh Day Slumber concert a few weeks ago, I came home and made a list outlining what I wanted my days to look like from now on. I’ve slowly been making these changes and I’m starting to see the beginning of a brand new me. A ‘me’ that I WANT to be. A ‘me’ that I can be proud of. A ‘me’ that is balanced, happy, superb, terrific, fantastic, and totally awesome!
I’m almost there but I know I have to find balance first or I never will get there.
Balance…it really and truly is the secret of life!
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