A Question of Balance

There\’s one simple yet important principle that is always at the heart of effective life coaching … we are all unique.

Yet, despite this uniqueness, we all strive (either consciously or subconsciously) for one thing… balance.

Put these two concepts together and it follows that each of us has our own unique definition of balance.

[box type=\”shadow\”]\”The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.\”

The \’sweet spot\’

A balanced life is one in which we occupy that \’sweet spot\’ at the fulcrum between competing basic needs that are in perfect balance.

When we live perfectly balanced lives we are driven by higher order needs, the need for personal growth and the need to contribute to the world around us in whatever way we are uniquely capable of doing.

Oscillating between competing needs

However, most of us struggle to find and maintain our \’sweet spots\’ spending our time oscillating between having either too much or too little of the competing needs of certainty and variety or significance and love and connection.

Let me explain.

Certainty and Variety

Certainty and variety are two basic but opposite human needs. Too much of one and you start to crave more of the other and vice versa until you find your own unique balance between the two – or your \’sweet spot\’ as I like to call it.

Certainty is characterised by predictability, lack of change, sameness, the known, the comfortable and the expected, whereas variety is characterised by contrast, change, unpredictability, the unexpected, the uncertain and the unknown.

Generally speaking employees would have a higher need for certainty than entrepreneurs. Explorers have a higher need for variety than administrators, retired folk would have higher level of need for certainty than youngsters and traders a higher need for variety than conventional investors.

Significance and Love & Connection

Two other fundamental yet opposite human needs are significance and love and connection. The former is characterised by extroversion, recognition of self, role model status or notoriety, aloofness, receiving, standing out and being different, whereas the latter is characterised by introversion, being part of, being accepted, caring and being cared for, nurturing and being nurtured, conforming, giving.

Generally speaking celebrities have a high need for significance whereas young mothers are more driven by love and connection. Leaders have a higher need for significance than followers. Charity workers have a higher need for love and connection than business people.

Explaining apparent incompatibility

Coming back to the issue of uniqueness, the different propensities that we each have to experience certainty, variety, significance or love and connection, would go along way towards explaining the apparent incompatibility between certain people and groups of people.

Take a married couple for example.

Imagine each person in the relationship being represented by a pair of giant scales. In each case, the ratio of certainty and variety or significance and love and connection required to bring perfect balance to the scales is different.

But life as a couple requires compromise, so each individual has to take a little out here and put a little more in there, with the result that both sets of scales tip out of balance.

Rebalancing

Both partners will naturally try to rebalance their scales, but the way in which they attempt to do that (and there are four generic categories of behaviour that they can employ, which I will explore in a future article) will determine whether the relationship remains relatively harmonious or gets thrown completely out of kilter.

Tolerance, growth and contribution

None of us live in complete isolation so it\’s clear that we need to appreciate and practice tolerance of the fact that whereas we are all driven by basic needs, each of us has a different point of perfect balance or \’sweet spot\’ that we aspire to reach.

The more of us who can bring balance to our basic needs, the more of us who will be in a position to focus on our personal growth and the uniquely positive contribution that we can make to our society.

That\’s got to be a good thing 🙂