How to find balance by letting go of control

Let’s talk about something we all love to do: Who doesn’t love going away on holiday?

I have been in a place previously when all I wanted to do on a holiday (or “vacation” for my fellow Americans) was allow myself to indulge – lots of food, drinking, and lounging about. That’s what a holiday is supposed to be all about, right?

Year after year though, I began to realise that all of these things can be enjoyable at times, sure! But I certainly wasn’t enjoying myself the next day. And I 100% was not returning back with a full cup, feeling good in my mind or my body.

When you go on holiday and just binged and overindulged and then you return to your normal life with those post-holiday blues. Your body feels horrible, your mind isn’t in a great space. What I’ve discovered has worked best for me is finding balance even in those times of relaxation. When I’m on holiday, I have found that if I still get my workouts in and take time to do my meditations, to go for walks and move my body, to meet my NEEDs, I then not only enjoy those other things a little bit more, but my enjoyment is sustainable. External pleasures are only temporary and when we NEED these states to be permanent, they don’t in actuality bring us that happiness we were looking for in the first place. In fact, it can drag us down to an even worse place. So what do we actually mean when we talk about balance? I feel like this became a buzz word over the past few years and I’ve really taken a lot of time to think about this word in the context of my life and one way that I choose to think about it is to imagine a graph and you have this baseline level that you’re generally at. Things will come that bring you up a bit higher and things will come that will bring you down a bit lower. But if you can keep that baseline higher up on the graph, the lows won’t be able to knock you quite so low. You work each day to do your practices, to look after yourself, to be kind, to keep your baseline at a sustainable level – not at some unachievable high level of productivity, a flow state if you will – or even some heightened level of pleasure. it isn’t sustainable to be at that level at all times. But if you can keep your baseline at this place of contentment, you won’t be as easily able to hit rock bottom. You pick yourself back up and get yourself to that baseline again. So we’ve let go of control of the need to be in a desired place, which ultimately allows us to be in a place of contentment. When we find balance in what we do externally, we start to find inner balance.