When trying to find balance you may find yourself constantly working to change your habits, your schedule, or your beliefs. Sometimes these changes may be 100% necessary.
The upside: you make a self-improvement and you and your family benefit.
The downside: you expend a great deal of energy changing.
What if you stopped wasting your energy on changing something that you see as a weakness or block in your life and try using it to your advantage?
An example
When my wife and I were working on figuring out a new schedule with our son Fionn and how we were going to survive with the lack of sleep we came up with what seemed like a good plan:
I worked during the days, so I got to sleep in the mornings while she and Fionn hung out. She was home all day with Fionn, so she got to relax at night while Fionn and I hung out.
Seemed perfectly logical.
We had it backwards
The problem with our plan was: Ashlea can barely even cope with the idea of morning, while I am one of those annoying morning people. After work and by Fionn’s bedtime I am usually tired and not at my best.
Our plan seemed reasonable, but we were expending energy to work through our limitations instead of accepting them.
4am cleared it all up
In the spring Fionn went through a ten-day stretch where he woke up at 4:30am every day and was energized and ready to play. Ashlea couldn’t do it; 6am is questionable, but 4:30am? For Ashlea’s operating system that was a no go.
So, I started getting up in the mornings. It wasn’t easy, 4:30am is tough even for a morning person, but I was far more capable of doing it than my wife. After a few days it just became part of my daily ritual and I got to spend some great time with my son before going to work. At the same time Ashlea started to take care of the bedtime activities, which occurred at a far better time of the day for her.
We each accepted our weakness for being effective at a particular time of the day, and changed our plan to work within these weaknesses instead of spending energy changing them.
What is a weakness you have that, if you stopped fighting it, and just accepted it, it would help make your life easier?