Finding Balance Within the Juggle!

In a world full of chaos and major economic shifts, finding balance has become more challenging. And I know it's been a minute since the last post, so thank you for being here, but my intent remains the same. I want to always make sure that we are operating under the same definitions and understandings. So when I say finding balance, I mean finding resilience and the ability to maintain emotional stability amid chaos and competing priorities. 

Some immediately recommend focusing on self-care for emotional regulation and reliance, without educating on why understanding what your priorities are and what is required to drive emotional regulation is essential to establishing and maintaining self-care efforts while addressing your emotions. Finding true balance requires consideration of each of these. So let's look at each individually.

I. Understanding the Juggle

As with all elements of change, it's always best to first recognize where the struggle begins before trying to remedy it. Understanding competing demands is most important on the path to finding balance. Competing demands include family, work, relationships, etc. Anything that keeps you from finding time to regulate emotions and show intentional care while also showing up in all other areas of life. Because this step only requires recognition, there are no tips and tricks. The challenge with this step lies in the intent to call out the imbalance rather than to rationalize becoming comfortable with it.

II. Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is central to finding internal balance. Think about how easy it is to lose control when you are overwhelemed. Emotional regulation supports you being able to maintain composure, because you can regulate your emotions to respond appropriately, e.g. healthy language/communciation, not rash behavior, e.g. yelling and screaming.

Considering that balance is really internally centered, and a function of your intention, emotional regulation is the driver of balance. So what is emotional regulation? According to APA emotional regulation is, "the ability of an individual to modulate an emotion or set of emotions. Explicit emotion regulation requires conscious monitoring, using techniques such as learning to construe situations differently in order to manage them better, changing the target of an emotion (e.g., anger) in a way likely to produce a more positive outcome, and recognizing how different behaviors can be used in the service of a given emotional state. Implicit emotion regulation operates without deliberate monitoring; it modulates the intensity or duration of an emotional response without the need for awareness."

Essentially, it's the ability to identify and address emotions to negate impulsive reactions. This step follows understanding the juggle because in order to determine best way to moderate emotions, you need to understand what demands trigger emotional dysregulation. Subsequently, the purpose of the emtoional regulation step is then to address the demands that prompt negative emotions and adjust to more adaptive/healthy responses.

This I fear will be a bit of a controversial opinion, but it's always easier to blame experience for emotional response, but not our choice to maintain that response to that experience...

III. Choosing Resilience

Resilience is often used to explain or interpreted as finding comfort within, or the ability to sustain, trials, tribulations, and storms. And while there are elements of the ability to sustain within resilience, little conversation surrounds the significance of coping strategies and tools. 

Resilience requires adaptability, but that does not equate to being comfortable. Comfort denotes the anticipation of the same storms, trials, etc., and responding without growth or capacity for change. Adaptability encompasses the willingness to change, learn, and thrive in the midst of storms and trials. So when you choose resilience, you choose to adapt, to be flexible, to grow/learn, and evolve, to discourage future trials of the same capacity.

IV. Finding & Maintaing the Balance

With the understanding that resilience encompasses heightened emotional awareness and reflexivity in adjusting to life demands. The key to maintaining balance is using all things to best support emotional regulation. And emotional regulation includes using resources, e.g., coping strategies, that help maintain balance. Coping strategies often referenced include deep breathing, mindfulness, meditation, music, yoga, exercise, and daily affirmations. The significance of each tool depends on how it applies to your situation and whether it is functional or best supports immediate use.

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