Hello From Katie 💗 Finding PEACE, Not Balance
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Welcome to Meditation for Anxiety. I'm Katie Kramitzos. I'm the creator of the Women's Meditation Network and your guide here. I am so grateful you've taken the time to be here with me right now. This episode is made possible thanks to the generosity of our sponsors. And after a message from them, we'll begin today's episode. If you'd like to listen ad-free, become a premium member by following the link in the show notes.

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Hey, it's Katie, and I'm so grateful that you're here with me right now.

I hope you've really been enjoying these meditations. If there's one in particular that you've been really loving, one that you keep coming back to, one that is really speaking to your heart, I would love to hear it. You can do so by leaving us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. And not only will I be able to see which one has been your favorite lately, but by giving us a rating and review, it helps other people just like you find our podcasts and get exactly what they need.

So thank you. Today I wanted to talk a little bit about finding balance. There's a dirty little word out there that just makes me cringe. It exists mostly in the worlds of self-help, motherhood, finance, and life optimization. It's the word balance. It swims around us in many varieties. Living a balanced life. How do you balance it all?

A balanced meal. A balanced portfolio. Spoiler alert: Balance doesn't exist. Well, at least not in the way it's being sold. When you look up the definition of balance, you find the following: An even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady. A condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.

Keep or put something in a steady position so that it does not fall. While these definitions are kind of correct, the world would have us believe that balance is an end goal, a stable and secure Shangri-La we should all aspire to and compare our lives against. I disagree. Life moves, shapeshifts, ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes, seasons cycle, and so do we.

Balance happens in moments during this movement. It's a part of the whole, not the static fixed end game. Imagine you're standing on a BOSU ball. I can still hear Oprah's words in my head as I remember her analogy with that half ball thing that you find at the gym. Telling yourself to balance on the BOSU ball comes with a lot of movement. Your hips shift and your weight adjusts over and over again.

But to ask yourself to stay balanced is laughable, right? Because you know there's no such thing. If we use a tool like Tony Robbins' Wheel of Life to help us rate how we're doing in each of the important areas of our lives, we may mistakenly believe that the goal is to achieve maximum satisfaction in every one of those areas. Or, in other words, to be completely still and balanced on this BOSU ball. But that's completely missing the point.

Any parent can tell you that there are times when you're killing it as a parent, but perhaps your eating isn't the best. Or maybe you and your spouse are incredibly connected, but your career feels a tad unsatisfying. Or maybe you're training and feeling strong, but you've been missing some quality time with your kids.

Perhaps we can step back from these tools and these false beliefs of static perfection and instead decide the goal is to simply dance with it all as our most authentic and peaceful selves. What are we really talking about when we desire balance? When someone inquires how I balance it all, what they're really wondering is how I'm so peaceful with all the moving parts.

When we strive for a balanced financial portfolio, what we're really interested in is the peace of feeling secure. When we talk about a balanced meal, we're really interested in a peaceful understanding of and relationship with food.

But don't be tempted to simply switch out peace for balance. Because peace is not an endgame either. It's not something we strive for. It's not something we seek. It's something we find inside of ourselves. It's within us. All the time. Right now. Available in abundance. Peace exists in our relationship with all the moving parts around us.

What would life look like if you stopped striving for balance and instead decided to be at peace as you showed up to the world today? Changes things a bit, right? The title of this episode is a little misleading because peace is not something we find. It's something that we are, no matter what's going on around us. So how can we remember our peace? How can we easily tap into the pools of peace that already exist within us? First,

Meditation. Of course, I would say meditation, right? When we meditate, we pull ourselves off of the fast-moving wheel of thoughts and circumstances and come into our true selves. This inevitably reminds us of our divinity, our peace. Second, surrender. So much of our suffering comes from resisting what is.

There is an enormous amount of peace that comes when we simply surrender. When we allow life to be what it is in any particular moment. Third, remember your wholeness. You are whole and perfect just as you are right now. You don't need fixing. You don't need to achieve anything. You simply are whole and perfect. There's no striving that needs to happen. When you remember this,

You are flooded with peace. The goal is not balance. The goal is not peace. The goal is you. Using this journey of life to continually discover who you are. And the more you are you, the more obvious your true nature of wholeness and peace become. And the more peacefully you dance with the ever-moving, ever-evolving pieces of life,

May you remember today, right now, that you are peace. Namaste, beautiful.