Balance Is A Myth - Priorities Are The Truth

By Victoria (Tori) Martinez

Dear Gentle Reader,

What if you don't need to find more balance in your life. What if instead you need more clarity. Let go of the idea that “Life is a balancing act.” No, my dear, it is not. Living life according to this idea is only going to bring stress, worry, and bad health. Instead, embrace the idea that life is about prioritizing what’s most important.

Sitting in my comfy chair, wrapped in my fuzzy blanket, with a cup of tea in hand, I reflected back on what it was in my life that brought me to a point of such severe illness. After many tears, a couple of boxes of tissues, and the bravery to face some hard realities about my choices, this is what I realized.

I had been living from moment to moment, goal to goal, chasing happiness instead of choosing it. I had been trying to balance everything. Picture for a moment a juggler at a circus with 5 balls, two sticks and 10 plates all in the air at the same time. That was me. I foolishly thought that I could balance being a mom, being a wife, my career, pursuing higher education, keeping up with my hobbies, being a daughter of aging parents, etc.

My dear is that you, was that you? You are not alone. Because so many of us live like that. We have been told the ultimate lie and we believed it whole heartedly. The lie that “We Could Have It all.”  Well, when Michelle Obama proclaimed the truth it was a light bulb, epiphany moment for many of us. She said we can have it all, but not at the same time. There is a time and place for everything. There’s a time to be a mother, time to have a career, time to be a wife, etc.

This was freeing to finally realize that I can prioritize one thing at a time instead of being the wonder woman of multi-tasking but not really being good at any of it. We naively convince ourselves that we are good at multi-tasking. But really, we are just rapidly shifting attention from one thing to the next and back again. That gets harder as we get older, it gets hard and is sometimes impossible when we get sick.

Prioritizing verses balancing it all might look like one day prioritize my child and the next day prioritize time to write my next book. One day I might be all about my husband and the next week I might take a vacation just for my own mental health. We need to normalize prioritizing instead of trying to do it all and be everything.

Take a moment dear reader and allow yourself to let go of doing it all perfectly. Cry if you need to, then laugh like I did. Because when I finally let go of doing it all I realized that all those people I used to worry about were always in God’s hands and not mine. It was freeing, it was transformative. It made me see how all that work of balancing made me neglect what really mattered, love, relationships and health.

After years of balancing, it leaves your body forever changed. Once you break your body, you have to live with the consequences, live with the chronic illness that came and stayed.

No matter what age you are reading this, it's never too late to let go of balance and start prioritizing.

If you would like help prioritizing and setting goals around your new priorities, watch this video on my YouTube channel. Remember, you don't have to do chronic illness alone, we're in this together.