Off balance but on target
Trying to live a balanced life is like sitting on one end of a teeter-totter. 
Work obligations, dirty laundry, the checkbook, family and friends all weigh down one ene, and as a result, our feet are never on the ground.
Work obligations, dirty laundry, the checkbook, family and friends all weigh down one ene, and as a result, our feet are never on the ground.
But living a balanced life, said Barbie Tootle, the keynote speaker for the fourth annual Women’s Professional Development conference, is a myth.
Tootle, president of Left Field Consulting and a former speech writer for OSU President Gordon Gee, said women are often expected to “do it all.”
“The fact is, we’re never balanced. There’s always something pulling us from one side or the other, but that can be a fabulous thing,” she said. “It’s like walking on a balance beam. The cool thing is you have a choice … tons of choices.”
She offered those in attendance advice on how to make choices to “stay off balance but on target.”
First, Tootle said, women need to let go and lighten their baggage by choosing to eliminate unimportant things and learning to say no. “No is really hard to say, but we have to let go and say no. It’s also important to hear no,” she said. It’s also important to let go of high-maintenance, negative, demanding and judgmental people in our lives.
It’s all about prioritizing and moving some things – and some people – to the back burner, and learning to spend time in important ways. “Learn to do the things you value and cut out the irrelevant,” Tootle advised, adding that it will be important to decide what you will not give up and learn ways to get “unstuck.”
For the list makers in the audience, Tootle suggested instead making an “I did” list that will be encouraging and self-affirming. “Otherwise, there’s going to be a to-do list on the lid of your casket.”
Tootle also recommends living in the present, where she said stress does not exist. The present also includes assessing what you see, think and do, and making changes.
“Change the channel, expose yourself to people unlike you, take up a new hobby. Say yes. Get energy from the new and weed out the unimportant.
“If you say yes and you’re already really busy, it’s because it’s something you really want to do.”
Finally, she challenged the audience to create unforgettable days “because you deserve them.”
“And make peace with the fact that you will never be balanced.”
Posted on March 3, 2008