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SURFING. FIND BALANCE IN LIFE FOR MENTAL WELLBEING.


Last week I talked about self awareness. Self awareness is critical to finding balance. My therapist told me an analogy he'd heard on this. Balance in any aspect of life is like surfing. You can't lean too far forward and you can't lean too far back. Makes sense on the surface. But it's human nature to have a tendency to pendulum swing hard in the opposite direction. I've never surfed, but I've wake surfed. If you smash your weight in one direction or the other, it's over. You're either in the back of the boat or behind the wave. The adjustments have to be subtle.


Back in college, I spent quite a few hours working in a shack under a bridge at the late Overpass Skatepark. We had a wheelchair there for a while and I'd goof around doing little wheelies. When you are first figuring it out, it's super hard and awkward. But then all of a sudden, you figure out what the equilibrium feels like and how the micro adjustments feel.


You have to know what that equilibrium feels like in order to achieve it. You have to feel the balance to know what out-of-balance feels like. As one of my professor's at Jiu Jitsu has told me, sometimes you gotta touch the stove a couple times so you know what not to do.


Here are a few things I've learned that balance is not:


  • It's not - my job is stressful, !@#$ this job, I quit.

  • It's not - I've been sitting on the couch for two years, time to run 5 miles.

  • It's not - I've been training my face off for a week straight, I'm going to pile out all day.


We also know that surfing isn't just about sitting in the middle of the wave, in balance, doing nothing. Once you get good, you can carve around.  You can start to play around with momentum and imbalance intentionally. You can be at the bottom, at the top, back and forth, while always being able to come back to equilibrium. You can't stay at the top of the wave forever, and you can't stay at the bottom of the wave forever. Think about a fighter in camp. That's not sustainable. But they get to absolutely peak physical condition at the expense of other things. Probably including their emotional health. I know some fighters choose to stay away from their families during camp.


This is also, in essence, how cutting and bulking works. We generally want more lean tissue and less fat tissue. These are both good for our health and metabolism. But if we are in a constant calorie surplus, we will start having adverse effects. If we are in a constant calorie deficit, we will start having adverse effects.


Admittedly, I've been wildly out of balance with work the last couple of weeks. I'm in the middle of rebalancing right now. Making those minor adjustments, catching myself feeling inappropriately irritated, making further minor adjustments. For me, those minor adjustments are lookin like:


  • Giving myself permission to leave the function early

  • Giving myself permission to sleep an extra hour when was up for an hour stressed out in the middle of the night

  • Giving myself time to myself to think, process and write

  • Extra time in the sun

  • Extra breath work

  • Giving myself permission to do the bare minimum on the Friday following a 13 hour Wednesday.

  • Permission to dial back in workout intensity to offset some stress


I've got to slightly lean too far in the opposite direction in order to stay in the wave, and then recenter once I'm back in the middle of the wave.


Learning to surf these metaphorical stressors takes time and can feel daunting. But the ability to carve around on these waves that we don't have control over, leaning back and forth to goof around and have some fun is essentially what I'd boil down to the ultimate skill we are after to live a meaningful life.


 

Do you have any questions on this article? Do you have any topics you'd like to see covered in the future? Email me at jack@leaveitcinders.com and let me know!


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