A balancing act.

This isn’t what you think it’s going to be so please keep reading – I promise you haven’t heard this before.

Balance is a word we throw around a lot. And like most things ubiquitous, there’s a certain judgment implied, leading us to believe that we should strive towards some death defying act of balance that eludes most but is ours for the taking – provided we just work hard enough and make good choices.

Not true my friends. At least not in the way we currently think about it.

I’d like to bring your attention to another word: stumbling.

Stumbling is something that – like you – I’ve always seen as a negative. This summer my view changed. I read Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness (http://www.randomhouse.com/kvpa/gilbert/) and my views on balance, stumbling and even happiness itself got all twisted around.

Gilbert’s book shows up that when we strive for anything – especially happiness – the act of striving and the process therein, changes us in ways that we cannot predict so that by the time we achieve that thing we thought would make us happy we’re no longer the person for whom it would and, therefore, achieving it probably won’t make us as happy as we thought it would.

Got it? Don’t worry. It takes a while.

Think about baking a cake. You start off with a lot of ingredients that all go together and somewhere along the line get transformed into a cake.

We are made up of ingredients (experiences, if you will) and our list of ingredients is constantly changing while simultaneously being added to the mix that is our cake. As we cannot limit our experience in the same way we can limit the ingredients when baking a cake, we can’t expect our lives to come out exactly the same as if we were only having experiences from the fixed a controlled list of possibilities

That’s the elusive nature of happiness and the paradox of balance.

When we strive for either, the act of striving collects in us experiences that by their very nature change (enhance, contribute, sometimes diminish) the essence of who we are and, in turn, shape how we define the very things we set out to achieve.

Happiness, like balance, isn’t a state towards which we can aspire. Rather it is a constant series of stumbles that will bring us closer to or further away from that which might or might not feel like balance or happiness in any given moment depending on what has happened or is happening.

Two keys words here folks: stumbling and moment.

All the smart-phone inspired organization and pop-psychology induced goal-setting in the world can only at best thinly veil what is really happening.

We’re stumbling. Admit it. You might think you know where you’re going – and you should have a very clear idea – but if you’re being honest with yourself does it ever really feel like you thought it might when you get there?

Maybe sometimes.

And those are our moments. When the act is no longer striving but a blissful coalescence between some expected desired state and an outcome that closely enough proximates it that we find ourselves fully embraced in the moment. Some, like our good friend Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, would call this flow (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)) but I’m just going to call it a moment – a moment when we take a break from stumbling towards anything else and simply appreciate where we’ve landed this time.

And besides, Mihaly isn’t the friend I want to talk about today. It’s Amy Platt. Or more accurately the newly minted Dr. Amy Platt. Amy has spent the last five years working towards her PhD in psychology. An admirable feat but not one that many others before her haven’t achieved. What makes this story special is that during those five years Amy was also working full time as an elementary school teacher while often taking on additional students who she not only tutored but successfully coached through school. She also got married. And had her first child. More impressed? Thought you might be.

So you see, Mihaly may know a lot about flow but my even better friend Amy knows all about stumbling. Amy is one of those people who has made stumbling look like balance as she does it with grace. But I would venture a guess that if you heard her tell her story there were probably a few moments when the momentum of her life was moving her forward with far greater force than even the most well laid plan.

The stumbling stopped – for a moment – last week after Amy defended her PhD thesis. I had the honour of spending some time with her that day and it was a moment. A great, glorious moment with a wonderful friend who was basking in the glow of her accomplishment and savoring it all. By the end of our time together, of course, she had decided it was time to start stumbling towards something else and began asking me about getting more involved in an organization for which I volunteer.

Less than a week later and Amy is looking to join me on the board of that organization and is actively pursuing other challenges.

We’re stumblers. It’s what we do. Our stumbling brings us to great moments in life from time to time. But even when we don’t achieve these in the ways we might hope, we still keep stumbling towards them as their promise holds an intrinsic motivation all its own.
So keep stumbling. It will often get you somewhere good. Even if it’s not always where you thought you would end up. We all can’t be Amys. At least not all the time – not even Amy can do that! But we can keep stumbling with the hopes that we’ll eventually realize we’ve landed exactly in the place we were meant to be.

Congrats Amy on an amazing accomplishment! You really do inspire us all.

Scott