Balance Means There is no Movement
If my family isn’t around there is a good chance I’m not listening to music. Instead, my ears are filled with various podcasts. At one point most of the podcasts I listened to were running and fitness related. That transitioned to informational podcasts then as I got into real estate, podcasts about real estate became my focus. Now I find myself listening to more and more business, entrepreneurship, fatherhood, and interview-driven podcasts. While listening to an episode of The Dad Edge Podcast. The hosts were interviewing Armando Cruz and Armando said something that grabbed my attention. At the time I didn’t take note of which podcast or where in that podcast it was. But because the comment and subsequent conversation was so attention-grabbing I had to go back and find it. It took a few weeks and relistening to multiple podcasts episodes but I found it.
One of the hosts, Shawn Stevenson, asks a long leading question to get to the punch you in the gut idea. “When I hear the word rich, especially when combined with the whole sentiment you created with the R.I.C.H Man Experience. For me, that brings up tales like the Richest Man in Babylon. I don’t know if anybody out there has checked out this wonderful tale but, this is really about having a perspective of we can have it all. This is beyond a superficial, I’m like Scrooge McDuck, I’m swimming in money thing. This is like I want a complete life. I want to have powerful happy relationships. I want to have a fulfilling career. I want to be able to contribute to and serve others. And I also, of course, want to have my financial needs met. And all of this and of course have a healthy state with our body and vitality. All of that creates that R.I.C.H. Man’s Experiences from what I’m hearing and I think that this is something we are all kind of striving for but we can kind of get out of alignment. So how do we actually balance things? Let’s talk a little about that with our marriage, with fatherhood, with entrepreneurship how does all this stuff balance out? How can we have it all?”
Armando responds with the following. “So one thing, and again, it’s being clear. The concept of having it all, when somebody says that I get it, right? You want all the best. But really we look at it, we’re talking about what are the things that serve you the best, right? Because the very nature of making one choice you are negating something else. You can’t ever have it all from that perspective. Because you can’t be one and the other but what your looking for is what are those things that are gonna serve you the best. And as far as the balance that’s kind of like a myth. And here’s why I say that. It’s a myth because balance means there is no movement. When something is in balance it is at zero. It is neither going forward or going backward. It is just there.”
He goes on to talk about imbalance. How imbalance is what causes growth, movement. But are we moving in the direction we want to go in?
I have never thought about life this way. I have always heard people talk about having a work- life balance.
Balance this. Balance that.
I want to see positive movement in my business life, with my relationships with friends and family
In some cases, I want to see things going backward.
Right now, my weight is something I want to see a decrease in. More specifically I want to see my body lose this extra fat it has collected over the last 10 years. Then when the time is right I’ll increase my calories, more specifically protein, as I increase my weight training to get swoll. That is the new term for being fit, shredded, or “toned”. I hate when people use the word toned. 
All of those things require some sort of imbalance. Balance leads to stagnation.
Sometimes that means is less sleep. To allow more hours of self-study. Maybe less free time so that I can go run, exercise, and meal prep.
Sometimes it means passing on a movie to spend more time reading a book to one of my kids.
Maybe it means stop wasting time on my phone and going on a walk with my wife after her workout. I missed out on that last night. 👎
It was a great episode. You all should check out the Dad Edge Podcast episode R.I.C.H. Man Experience & How to Connect with Your Spouse – Interview with Armando Cruz.
I don’t want balance in my life. I want movement. I want growth. I’m working toward an imbalanced life.
I hope you will too.