The more I learn about living the kind of life God intends for us to live, the more crucial balance seems to be. Balance is hard, but it is fundamental to progression. It’s important to balance the different varieties of food that we eat and how much of each. It is important to read scripture and learn from them, but if we don’t put them down and practice what we are learning then we’re out of balance and not living the way God intends. To avoid being burned out we must balance the right kinds of self-care with ministering to others.
I grew up as one of six children. I am the third of five sons with my one sister being the youngest. Being surrounded by only boys for the first eleven years of my life, we had a lot of rough and tumble play. One of our favorite games was for each of us to find a stick, pretend it was a sword, and then fight each other. Being the competitive boys that we were, we needed to implement a few rules so that we could determine who won. As I remember it, there were really only three rules. First, if I touch your neck, chest, back, or abdomen with my sword you are dead. Second, if my sword touches your arm or leg then you lose that limb. Third, the last man standing wins.
With these rules as the only guidance for five competitive boys, you can imagine how often we ended up with scenes like when King Arthur meets the Black Knight in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” If you’re not familiar with the movie, the Black Knight refuses to allow King Arthur to pass and a sword fight ensues. King Arthur cuts the knight’s arm off and declares himself the victor. The Black Knight ignores the dismembered limb with his famous quote, “It’s just a flesh wound.” The fight continues with King Arthur lopping off the Black Knight’s other arm. The armless knight is still convinced he can defeat King Arthur and continues to attack. Eventually, the knight loses both of his legs as well. As King Arthur rides away the Black Knight calls him names, challenges him to come back, and threatens to bite his legs off. This ridiculous scenario is somewhat similar to how the sword fights with my brothers often happened.
These experiences taught me about balance. As you can imagine, five boys sword fighting with sticks led to a lot of injuries. Most of these injuries were smarting knuckles and sore arms from where we’d been hit. Looking back, what I find interesting is that most injuries didn’t come as a result of competitiveness or anger. Those feelings actually came from getting hurt. And most of those times that we got hurt was when our opponent was out of balance.
One of the things we learned as we frequently fought each other is that it is often hard to strike an opponent’s chest for a one-hit-kill, but it is usually easy to “chop off” their leg or foot. Then your opponent must begin hopping about on one foot as they continue trying to defeat you. Trying to chase, dodge, and lunge on one foot is very difficult, and you are almost constantly out of balance. And even if you are balanced before you swing your sword at your opponent, you won’t be when your stick connects with theirs. An involuntary consequence is that you swing harder than you normally would. Your body and brain automatically put more power into the strike to help you try and stay vertical while your equilibrium is off. Even when we discovered this and tried to control it, we swung and hit harder than we normally would. We discovered you could exacerbate this effect if you “cut off” your opponent’s other arm above the elbow. They would have to tuck that arm tightly behind their back which meant they couldn’t use it as a counter-balance as they hopped around on one foot.
When you are out of balance, every single one of your swings is harder than necessary. Every strike you make has more force than it needs to do the job. If you are trying to connect with your spouse while you are out of balance, your “swings” or attempts to communicate will have too much energy behind them and can accidentally hurt. You’ll “swing” harder at work, but harder isn’t better. The harder you swing, the less control you have. Your accuracy plummets and misunderstandings and miscommunications sky-rocket. When you connect, you do it too forcefully. You may be trying to give your co-worker an appropriate “tap” in the right direction but may end up nearly welting them instead.
When you are out of balance, every strike is harder than needed. In other words, you are expending more energy than you intend. You are wearing yourself out faster than you would if you were properly balanced. If the analogy of sword fighting doesn’t make sense for you here, think of car tires, shoes, ball bearings, or something else where even wear is important. When I served a mission for my church I had several companions whose stride was uneven. The outside edge of their shoes wore down much faster than the inside edge. Their shoes wore out and became unwearable much faster than my companions who walked with an even gait. The longer they walked out of balance, the more their shoes wore out incorrectly. The more messed up their shoes were, the harder it became to try and walk evenly. When you are out of balance you tire yourself out sooner than you normally would. And the longer you are out of balance the harder it is to get back into balance.
The list of things that get us out of balance is nearly endless. Fortunately, the list of ways to regain balance is much shorter.
Balance it's something that you must constantly manage and work on. You'll start to have most everything figured out when a curveball is thrown your way. A new semester starts, your baby starts to crawl, your vehicle dies and you have to get a loan to buy new transportation so you can do the things you need to, your oldest child goes away to college, you are asked to take on new responsibilities at church or in the PTA, etc. You'll spend some time tossing and juggling things as you discover your new balance. Spend a little more time here, a little less attention there, etc. How quickly you adapt has to do with how well balanced you were before, how often you've experienced changes like this one, your personality, and a few other things.
Obtaining a balance is a bit of a trial-and-error process. You have to find what works for you. Think of those older balancing scales that have a bowl suspended on either end of a pole. As you pursue a healthy balance you'll find that you have a little too much on one side. You'll need to take a little off that side or add a little more to the other. This can be done by adding more or less to your to-do list in that area. It can be done by re-evaluating what your priorities are and which ones really matter to you. Perhaps the surest way to obtain balance is through a process described by President Ezra Taft Benson, "When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities" (April 1988 General Conference, 'The Great Commandment').
There are many ways to put God first. A lot of those ways are spiritual, but not all are.
There are very few things I can think of where it is best to seek the extreme side of things; almost always, balance is needed. Satan loves to play the extreme ends of things. First, he’ll try to stoke feelings of enmity towards other people, then he’ll point out how prideful you are and that you need humility. As you seek to be more humble he’ll swing to the opposite extreme and try to stoke feelings of enmity towards yourself. Remember what Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles says about what humility really is, “We don’t discover humility by thinking less of ourselves; we discover humility by thinking less about ourselves” (October 2010 General Conference).
Another example is how we serve. If he can, Satan will persuade you that you should spend all of your time on yourself. He’ll whisper that others don’t need, don’t want, or don’t deserve your time and service. Perhaps he’ll tell you that you need all of your time in order to maintain your own health or sanity. If he can’t keep you from serving then he will often try to get you to serve way too much, to give so much that you are too exhausted to keep giving in meaningful ways. You can’t give what you don’t have, so it is important to balance time on yourself with time spent on others. “Self-care” has become a kind of buzz-word recently in our culture, but what most people think of as self-care I think could be more accurately described as “selfish-care.” When you are really caring for yourself you practice “selfless-care” which puts you in a position where you are better prepared to minister to others than you were before. Selfless-care often looks like doing the things that need to be done, many of which may not be fun. Selfish-care is doing what is fun, often at the expense of what needs to be done.
There are times when it is appropriate to be intentionally out of balance, but only for a season. Doing so for short periods of time allows you to make faster progress in specific areas or on specific tasks than you normally would if you were maintaining balance. A real-life example may help. I was preparing to apply to graduate school while trying to balance my bachelor’s degree studies, having a healthy relationship with my wife, as well as work. No one had explained to me the process of applying to graduate school, so I was figuring it out on my own which isn’t the best idea for something as demanding as a Master’s degree program. I learned that I had to take the GRE, which is basically like the ACT or SAT exam to get into a graduate program. As I was looking at the timing of how soon I would need to take the exam to meet the application deadlines for my chosen programs of study, as well as when and where I could take it, I realized the only opportunity I had to take this high-stakes exam was one week away. For that week it became necessary to be intentionally out of balance. I went to my classes, but only did the simplest homework assignments. I went to work when I had to, but put off anything I could for an extra week. My wife barely saw me that week as I spent nearly all of my free time studying the things I would need to do well on my exam. After spending a week out of balance, on purpose, I took the exam and returned to a more balanced approach to my responsibilities.
When you are balanced it is much easier to reach and stay at Level Zero on the Chemical Scale. I've talked about what it is like to be Zeroed Out and what it can be like to Live at Level Zero. Being balanced won't automatically bring you to Level Zero, but it will make it much easier; especially if your Border Patrol is balanced. Don't overprotect one or two of your walls at the expense of the others.
Balance is something that must be sought after and maintained every day. If we are out of balance it is harder for us to Live at Level Zero, we exhaust ourselves faster, and we are more likely to hurt those around us. When we maintain balance our work and relationships improve, we become more useful instruments in the hands of God as He ministers to His children, and we more quickly progress towards becoming the kind of person we want to be.
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