I used to be a workaholic, and I went on multi-year quest to find that distant thing called balance. When I started, I didn’t know that Balance was the thing I was looking for. I’d heard the term and here, and I didn’t give a shit about a balanced life-style until last year at 32 years old. The word came up once in a while but I never put into practice.
It turns out that balance is everything. It’s everywhere. It pervades every area of life. Its the difference between burnout, and success. Between living healthily and living sickly. Between living to 50 and living to 100. It turns out that beneath everything we do, we’re all after balance. We just don’t realize it. Or perhaps we do, but we don’t know how to get there.
Most of us struggle to find it because we think we’ll find it out there. Its not out there. It's here, right underneath your nose. I’d like to share the story of my life’s journey to find balance in hopes that you too can find balance within your life. Lets go on a mini-journey.
Software Engineering: The beginning of “Something isn’t right”
When I was in my mid-twenties I had a software development job and I was living comfortably. Back then, I was younger, full of energy, and fit. I ate fairly well, had a number of social connections and I felt that life was good. So I thought. One day, I sat down at my desk and my manager came to me. He said that there was a problem with the product I had just published. It wasn’t running properly. When he left, I turned my gaze back to my computer screen to finish off an email I was writing. Suddenly, I felt the need to vomit. I quickly looked around for a trashcan, and then I blacked out. When I opened my eyes, I saw a bunch heads looking down at me. My first thought was, “I’m at the office! Why the heck am I sleeping!?”
I checked out at the hospital later that day with nothing serious. Apparently, I was overstressed, however I didn’t even realize it. How could I be overstressed? I’m living the good life!
Something shifted inside me that day. Since then, I felt a pervasive sense of unease that lingered like a proverbial rock in my shoe. Eventually, I couldn’t ignore it any longer. I quit my job and wandered around for the next 5 years in search for what I would later discover as “Balance”.
Tree Planting: “The Exploitation of Youth ”
I had money saved up, I had all the time in the world so it was time to go career shopping. I assumed that being outside in nature might do the trick. Out of the blue, an old friend from school reached out to me and answered my prayers. They mentioned they were looking for tree planters. They paid by the tree, which was cents, but I didn’t care. I just wanted to be outside and explore what it would be like to be working outside regularly. I was happy making 50 bucks per day if it came to that. What could go wrong? I packed everything I owned into my little Honda Element and took off for British Columbia. When I got there, I was a like a little kid. I was so happy to be surrounded by new people and new scenes, and I looked forward to doing some good in the world. The company owner gave a wonderful speech about the power of nature. The message was clear: “don’t give up, keep fighting” and “nature will mold me in time.” Everyone was pumped to get to work.
As the first two weeks progressed, I began to realize that I had made a horrible mistake. In Canada, it is illegal to do piece work and it is also illegal to pay someone below minimum wage. And yet, the industry payed per tree. Considering that the average reward for a single tree was around 12 cents, a planter had to plant an average of around 1200 trees by the end of the day. If they weren’t getting that amount by the 3rd week, they got fired. I went from sitting all day on the computer, to one of the most laborious jobs on the planet. I barely lasted a month before my body made the decision for me to leave. I started suffering psychosomatic symptoms. At first it was aches and pains in my joints. Then it was vomiting. Then bouts of anxiety and worry. Then followed intense tears.
This is so wrong! I said to myself as I sat in my car. This industry was convincing young adults that by working themselves to death through grit, exhaustion and with perseverance, that they would be having a once-in-a-lifetime unique experience of doing good for the world, and cultivating self growth. I felt deceived. In reality, they were exploiting young adults and youth by working them to death and pocketing all the profits. They were covering this grand scheme by advertising more nature-connectedness. It was bizarre to me that experienced tree planters would brag about how many trees they could plant, and yet they were walking around with tendon injuries left and right. I later learned that more than 50% of the people who originally signed up had quit that year.
I felt absolutely no remorse for leaving. There was no balance here at all. There wasn't energy left in the tank to think at the end of the day. I packed my bags and drove southward.
Gondola Operator: Working in the Brisk Mountain Air
When I landed in Squamish, Canada’s climbing paradise, I decided to take up a menial job as a Gondola Operator. It was the easiest job I’ve ever had, and I especially enjoyed the mornings. I would get up right around sunrise and drive down the Sea to Sky Highway with the biggest smile on my face. That’s because to my right was the Howe Sound Fjord -one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen. Turquoise water, limestone cliffs, and a small little town where everyone knows each other. To my left was a steep rocky cliff full of climbing and hiking potential. This commute was the highlight of my day. Once I got to work, I rode the Gondola up the mountain. Those 10 minutes when I was alone on the cart I was also in heaven. From the cart, I could see vast mountain ranges with white peaks, just waiting for me to explore them.
For about 8 hours a day, my duty was to operate the Gondola in the brisk mountain air. Then, I would return home, sit on the couch with a cup of tea, and bask in a satisfying feeling. Somehow, this job seemed to hit the right spot in terms of getting a proper amount of movement in the body. It was so satisfying, I actually considered working there for the rest of my life, even if it was minimum wage.
While staring at the fire in my living room, I often wondered why the previous job as a software engineer never made me feel like this. Why couldn’t I return home and bask in the satisfaction of having worked for the day? Today, it is obvious that being in a natural environment for the day was one key reason. So was being able to move around. The third major contributor to my feeling of unease was the amount of screen time to which I was exposing myself. Unfortunately, this paradise of sorts wasn’t it either. I don't know how I knew that. There was something off within my body, and I couldn't pinpoint it.
Again, my body made the decision for me leave. When the winter came, I started feeling a strange cramping in my right shoulder, which I originally thought was a climbing related injury. The pain grew so bad that I wound up in bed, unable to work for weeks at a time. I had to pack up and leave to my parent’s place back in Ontario, five thousand kilometers away. I went from wilderness paradise to a steel, grungy, smelly town. So began a few more years of depression.
Farm Hand Attempt Number 1: Too Loose
Covid rolled around for the first time, and we were told stay inside. No way in hell was that ever happening. I called up my local farm and I asked them if I could help out. I didn’t really care what I did, I just wanted to be outside and active. I was hoping the farming lifestyle would be good for me. Luckily, they were more than grateful to have me. Their Mexican workers didn’t show up due to flight restriction, so they had plenty of work to do. This owner had 20 acres of land to work, and they were down 4 people!
Every day was intensely laborious. The first week we did nothing but pick up rocks for 10 hours. The second week, we planted onions. The third, carrots. On and on it went, in the cold and sometimes in the rain. I completely offered myself with no regard to my own satisfaction. I’d get up at 6am to do the morning chores. I’d feed the 20 or so meat cows some hay, give food scrap to the pigs in the dungeon, and shovel 3 wheel barrel loads of cow poop over to the compost pile. Then I’d feed the chickens. Then, a regular worker’s day would begin. It had its own set of laborious task which included watering the seedlings, prepping vegetables orders, and getting ready for farmer’s market. I thought I had gotten pretty strong doing all of this work until the Mexican workers showed up. I was humbled by their intense work ethic, and I also felt at home as they brought the Latin American vibe with them.
I couldn’t help but notice that something was still off. This is not it, I remember knowing. I didn’t quite understand why yet. I looked around, and saw how stressed these people were. There was still a pressure of deadlines. There was disgusting amount of waste. I felt my heart break every time I went over to the cattle area. The conditions they were kept in was horrendous. They once had a cow doctor come into the site to look after a sick cow, and I asked, “compared to other places you’ve seen, would you say these animals here were happy?” To which they replied, “yes this is better than most places I’ve seen.” I was sickened by how low we’ve set the standard of living for these cattle animals as a whole. Move over, I couldn't understand how the owner treated the animals differently. The pigs were basically in a concrete prison, never to see the light of day, while the horses where treated like royalty. I later learned that the owner just couldn’t take care of the cattle because there was too much work on the garden. Instead, they delegated the responsibility to their elderly father. The bottom line was that the owner was taking on more than they could chew. Somehow, they were even considering expanding! I thought it was ludicrous idea considering they were constantly complaining how stressed they were, and how they didn’t seem have enough time to do everything required.
Farm Hand Attempt Number 2: Too Tight
Out of the blue, I received an email from a lady that lived in a homestead in the Yukon territories. Since the Mexican workers had finally arrived, I didn’t feel too bad about leaving. I packed up, and hit the road. Seven thousand kilometers later, I arrived at the remote homestead location just a 30 minutes drive away from Whitehorse. She was an old lady who sounded really nice on the phone. I was expecting a Zen like experience. Boy was I disappointed.
I met the most anxious person on the planet. I understood that homesteading had its own demands. However, homesteading in the boreal forest was a whole other game. This person seemed to be fighting for her survival at every turn.
I will admit, though, that I was intrigued by this person’s homestead setup. It was tiny compared to the last farm. This time, it was all about quality. At the first farm, I was shoving those onions into the ground without a second glance, and forcefully. In contrast, I was now handling each little seedling with the most gentle precision I could muster. They took care to make high-quality soil by themselves, and with a few beds here and there, they never took on more than they could chew. The majority of the plants were perennials. They had enormous Rhubarbs that were 20 years old and they were almost as tall as I was. Since the sun was out 23-hours of the day during the summer, almost every plant grew twice as big as they did down south. The animals were well taken care of. They had 3 Goose, 4 Yews, 7 lambs, 1 Ram, 3 Dogs, 2 cats. Everything single one of them had a role to play in the farm. The cats chased the squirrels away. The dogs warred off large predators such as grizzly bears. The cattle ate the grass, which kept the flies away. The ram impregnated the yews every year, and the 7 lambs were fattened up with the most green vegetation on the property. I was the farm hand. I got on my knees every morning and collected grass for the growing lambs. There was something unsettling about knowing that this person was going to kill 7 lambs at the end of the year and that she was essentially going to eat the energy of my hard labor. To be honest, we just didn’t get along. I resented her a little bit, and I simply didn’t want to give myself up to her.
As a result, I was struggling inside. In this lifestyle, this person was fighting against nature in every possible way, and I was caught in the middle of their struggle. They were cranky and worried all the time. I imagine it was because they were trying grow vegetables in a location that was not suitable for them to grow. Not only was the climate not appropriate, but the wildlife also wanted a piece of the pie. “Out here you have keep watching the weather day by day, and you adapt! You have to keep problem solving. Don’t give up!” I remembered them telling me. They had a really strong personality as a result of living in the wild, however, they were not playing by nature’s rules. They were forcing their own agenda, and coming up with a strategy to fight nature off at every turn. In my eyes, it was a pointless, unwinnable struggle.
Eventually, I had enough of their perfectionism. It seemed that no matter what I did, I could not satisfy them in any way. Their criticisms were endless. I even got a notepad and wrote down little details to make sure I did everything right. They still found a way to scold me. Accepting that they would never praise me, and seeing the way that they lived, I thought, This is not it either.
Window Cleaning: The answer was always with me.
Eventually I landed in Victoria, BC, and started learning ways to connect with nature more. I started watching the birds, the plants and even people with greater detail. I asked, “How the heck do animals learn to live and hunt like they do without verbal communication?” “How does a spider know how to weave a web with its tiny little brain” “How do ants know what to do with no brain!?” I began to realize that “I” was never going to find the solution to the feeling of unease, to anxiety, to my “proper” way of living. In other words, the solution did not exist in my head, within my brain, within any conceptual understanding. I was never going to figure this out. Rather, the solution was in my body. Nobody had my answer and nobody was going to show me how to live with ease. I had to tune into my body and somehow derive answers from there.
I was finally doing what nobody had recommended for me to do up until this point: stop trying to solve the problem of living. Instead, I surrendered. At first, it was one or two surrenders per day. I would sit by a tree, take a few breaths, and surrender my problems for a few moments. As time passed, the frequency of surrendering grew. Eventually, I got to several hundred times per day, and then an uncountable number of times.
My entire personality began to change, and it was most obvious within my new job as a window cleaner. At first, I was excited to learn from a coyote teacher. Gilbert was the most experienced person on the island, having done the job for over 40 years. He didn’t talk much. He simply showed his craft with an interesting grace and effortlessness. I followed him closely for several months, until one day it became second nature to me. I could clean a window in 10 seconds with one S stroke. I got faster and faster, and the employers loved me for it, since they charged clients by the window.
One day I asked myself, “Why am I working so hard? It makes no difference whether I clean slow or fast. I get payed by the hour, not by the window.” I took my foot off the pedal slightly. I went about the same pace as Gilbert. He was becoming elderly, so he was rather slow. I enjoyed his relaxedness. The employers would push me to go faster, and I’d say, “Sure, sure” but I never changed my pace. I actually slowed down more and more as time went on.
Eventually, I started to question my brake times, and I started to challenge my employers. I was strictly allowed two ten minute breaks, followed by 30 minutes for lunch. Very gradually, I gave myself more break time. I figured that as long as I finished the assignments, which I always did, it shouldn't really matter. Well, the employers didn't like it. They started following me around in secret, watching from afar to make sure I wasn't stealing their time. When I noticed this, I started to question whether they had better things to do than to watch me earn money for them. I wanted to learn how they thought. Sometimes I would return to the office 1 or even 2 hours early than they expected to see if they would leave me alone. Of course, they had no problem with that, since they payed me less anyway. However, when they scolded me in their office for taking 15 minute instead of 10 minute breaks, I've had enough. These people, like the rest of the laborious world, were maximizing their profits by pushing their employees to work faster and longer. I realized that they did not see me as a fellow member, but as a disposable money-earning object.
Alas, a contract was a contract, and it was what I signed up for. However, I was done with this game of trading my time for money. I figured that so long as others controlled my time, and how my my energy would be expended within it, I would never find myself a sense of balance. That night I called my employer and told him that I was leaving.
Balance in all things
Eventually, I learned that work vs life balance was just one tiny dimension of “balance.” There was balance to be discovered everywhere.
Paradoxically, trying to find balance always led to me to not finding it. Instead, tuning into my body more and more, balance was automatically restored on the most pressing issue. For example, I seemed to be perpetually tired. Work was taking up everything. I let my body figure it out.
At work we had these long extendable poles with brushes on the ends that shoot out water. We used those to clean the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th story windows when we couldn’t use our squeegees. At first, I would use my entire upper body in a very inefficient way. I would raise and lower my arms repeatedly in order to scrub those windows. By the end of the day, I was very tired. I would ask myself, “How could I do this with more ease?” and then I would surrender. Somehow, the body of this pole and my own body would merge into one. The pole became a part of me, and I could almost feel the forces traveling up this long pole, which had a springiness to it. My body automatically found a way to brush the window, without my involvement, using the spring property of the pole. Like a parent who pushes their child on a swing, adding momentum bit by bit on the upswing, I too realized, I simply needed to give it a tiny little nudge by taking one half step. The system would automatically begin to oscillate. The oscillation motion provided all the scrubbing I needed. One day, I was so keen on seeing how far I could take it, that I accidently broke this very expensive pole. The oscillating energy was apparently too much for this device to handle.
The balance point of this system revealed itself when I stopped using force. Instead, I used the power of air and water to get the job done. When the wind blew, I would lean into it, and I would let it guide the pole to where it wanted to go, rather than hold steady against it. When it rained, I simply skipped the brushing part, and made a quick rinse. There was no difference in quality and the job was finished quicker.
Everyday I came home with more and more energy available in the tank. I had room for more activities!
Total Surrender: Letting life find its own balance
More recently, I was sitting on the kitchen with my laptop open working on my stuff, when my roommate suddenly sat down with a plate full of food. He started munching on his food really fast. I think he probably ate a full breakfast meal in less than five minutes. He looked at me with a mouthful and asked, “Why am I always in a rush!” Apparently he was on the clock to catch the bus which takes him to work. “I’ve been asking myself that question for many years!” I said jokingly.
He got up and left to go to work. When he closed the door, I peered into my room and realized it has been perpetually clean for a while. I noticed that I haven’t been stacking up plates either. My counter space and shelves were also tidied up and empty. “At what point did I get so clean!?” I wondered since I didn’t actually make an intention to clean more, or even schedule any cleaning time. I just became a more clean person very gradually over time. I noticed that when I arrive home, my shoes and jacket automatically went to their proper places. My watch, phone and wallet also went into their spots. When I’m done eating or cooking, everything gets washed and put to dry. When I got out of bed, my bed got made.
I put myself in my roommates shoes, and tried to remember my old way of being. For one, there was a constant feeling that wasn’t ever enough time. It was a low grade pressure that motivated me to do things, and I never actually realized it was there until it left. There was another perpetual feeling that “right now” there was something wrong and that I needed to get this activity over with as soon as possible so that I could go and do something else. Sometimes I would interpret the emotion incorrectly. I thought that the feeling was telling me that I was being inadequate in some way. I would identify myself with what I was feeling. I would say, “I’m just not a person that enjoys cleaning.” I noticed that because I was perpetually late to things, that sometimes I would just skip the cleaning altogether so as to not be late. I never enjoyed cleaning because it felt like a chore. When I did clean, I would do it completely rushed because there was something else to be done. When I got home, I was exhausted and didn’t feel like putting my things away. My jacket automatically draped over the kitchen chair, and my food containers sat on the table until the next day when I needed them again. The possibility of me enjoying my chores was not even remotely found anywhere in my mind.
Coming back to now, I asked myself, “What’s it like to be me right now?” and noticed that I was very peaceful. I didn’t feel that rushing feeling to be somewhere else but here. I don’t have the mild anxiety in my body pushing to do the things that needed to be done. I had things to do ahead of me, of course, but there was no rush to do those things. I haven’t scheduled any cleaning time, and yet things are perpetually clean. At some point, I realized that I was always cleaning my laziness, and my body automatically resolved to cleaning up after myself.
No Resistance in Me
When I move about my day, I always ask myself, “What's it like to be me right now?” I’m usually on the lookout for resistance. If there is resistance, then I do my best to not resist the resistance. Otherwise I’ll ask, “why am I not ok with the way things are right now?” If I look real closely, I can see I am resisting some sort of emotional state of being. I'm in a state of imbalance. Usually, I’ll discover that beneath the urge to do something, there is an emotional charge that needs to be expressed. Typically when I am idling, there is enough space for emotional content to come up. If I feel the need to grab my phone during this time, the supposed boredom is actually just resistance to an emotion which I am deathly afraid of feeling out.
After doing this once or twice a day for over a year, much of the resistances in my body has faded away.
This entire of this article really is about effortless action. It's about not resisting the natural order of things. What is the natural order of things? Our bodies knows the natural order already. If we tune in, we will know when its time to work and when its not time to work. Tuning in will allow us to know if we are resisting something or not. Our mind, on the other hand, gets in the way. It barges in and says, “We need to work 8 hours straight for the next 5 days because that’s the way society dictates it. Hence, a 40-hour workweek will be the natural order of things.” However, if I follow what my mind says, which is often the voice of belief, I will feel uncomfortable and mentally tired. I will feel depleted because I’ve been resisting my most natural self in favor of a held belief. A 40-hour workweek is not a natural thing. It is a societal belief about how we should go about acquiring money. Not that 40-hour work weeks are a bad thing, nor that even 50 or 60 hours a week are a bad thing either. If the body wills it, the body wills it.
However, we’re all in the habit of disregarding what our bodies are trying to tell us, and as a result, we suffer. That’s why we feel we need vacations in the first place. We have this need to recharge ourselves mentally after a long year of work. However, if we simply lived according to our most natural way, then we wouldn’t feel the need to vacate our lives. We would be thriving and happy just by living like all the rest of the animals on our planet.
For me, effortless action really comes down to living a life so effortlessly and with no resistance, that it feels like doing absolutely nothing, and yet a lot of things are happening around me. There really is a distinct feeling of lightness paired with a cool breeze. It is serene. There’s no specific energetic urge to get anything done, and yet things magically get done on their own. Once I’m inside of it well enough, it's so obvious that most people are living life with a heavy backpack, and they don’t even realize it. I know it is completely possible to live out a sense of ease that is always instinctively there deep within. In order to get there, however, I have to let go of the weight, which is the need to do something suggested by my mind. If I surrender my desire for things to be a particular way and allow the full expression of all my emotions, I stop resisting them. This habit to resist them is causing me to pick up the backpack again.
When I force myself to live unnaturally, I come out of that balance. I start to suffer.
Creativity and Productivity On Steroids 🌿
Fascinating things started happening when I started surrendering all of my problems. At some point, I realized that my body was capable of creating a life that was 100x more interesting then I could. If I didn’t know the answer to a problem, I simply surrendered. Somehow, I have always arrived at the appropriate decision. I think the habit pattern of reflecting on whether I had made a good decision isn’t there anymore or is very reduced. Things just are what they are, and I make best use of it. It is actually a more intimate way of tuning into what’s going in the present moment.
I noticed that perfectionistic tendencies arise when I spend too much time wondering if people are going to like what I am creating. When I recognize that these thoughts have no foundation to them, they start to dissolve automatically. I used to edit my work incessantly throughout the writing process. My mind used to roll on unnecessary details. By surrendering, perfectionism disappears, and in its place arises effortless action. This entire page was born in a single day. I don’t mind the spelling mistakes. I don’t mind the grammar mistake. Overtime, these things will sort themselves out. I simply care that I express myself as naturally as possible. Expanding this way of thinking, everything becomes effortless. There is no exertion. No tension. Nothing is done without joy.
Thank you for reading!
-Guillermo