Ted Talk 95: How To Bring Your Life Back Into Balance

Podcast Transcription: How To Bring Your Life Back Into Balance

Ted Ryce: How would you like to know the secret behind finding balance between your work life, and your social life, and your health and all the things that you want to do, or your responsibilities in your life? How would you like to know the secret behind finding that balance? 

But that's what we're going to be talking about today and welcome back to the Legendary Life podcast. I'm your host, Ted Ryce, coach to entrepreneurs, executives, and other high performing folks. And what we do on Real Talk Fridays, today, is we have a conversation about how to feel and perform better.

So we go a bit deeper than well, you know, I don't like to say deeper than the scientific details, but a bit more personal, a bit more conversational. And in our last Real Talk Friday, we talked about how the key to performing like a superhuman is to realize first that you're only human. If you haven't heard that episode, you really want to go back to it and check it out. 

But today we're going to be talking about how to find balance in our lives. Now, some people hate this idea, they are like “balance doesn't exist. It's a stupid idea. It's not something that you should strive for.” 

Now, here's the thing. That's just an opinion, or even better, even more specific. It's a model. It's a model of looking at the world. It's a framework to use to operate in the world. But I like the idea of balance. I love this idea. In fact, it's a very old idea. 

When I was in Asia for two years and got into a bit of Buddhism, one of the things that they talked about in Buddhism, in talking about the concepts there is that define the middle way, the middle path, the path where and if you don't know the story, I'll share very briefly, but Buddha was a man. He was not like Jesus, who was the Son of God, right? 

As the story goes. Buddha was a man, not a God or spiritual or divine being or anything. And he lived extremes. And he at first was a very wealthy prince and lived a life of hedonism and indulgence. 

And then he became an ascetic and he starved himself, he went without food and went without pleasures. And just totally deprived himself. And he eventually came to the idea that neither one of those extremes was healthy. And he came up with this concept of the middle way, the middle path. 

And although I'm not a Buddhist, but I really appreciate that idea. A lot of the concepts that I learned from Buddhism, but this idea of the middle way, finding the balance.

And the thing about balance, is that it's not a point. It's not, oh, I'm imbalanced. Okay, I'm out of balance. It's actually, it's more like trying to stand on one leg. Try it right now, in fact. Stand on one leg, as long as you're not driving or doing a heavy set of squats or something like that. 

Try standing on one leg if you can. And actually do this, do something for once while listening to a podcast. 

I mean, you know, people sit and listen and certainly I sit and record this. I'm sitting on my butt right now, but one of the things that I can tell you is the less sitting you do the better.  So get up, stand on one leg right now. I will wait. 

So as you're standing on one leg, feel how you can find that balance point, but you start to shift eventually, and it doesn't matter.  Eventually you are going to start to shift and you'll have to correct it.

And then again, you're going to shift and start to lose your balance and you're going to correct it. And that's a perfect example of balance or your body has balanced. It's called homeostasis.

For example, if your temperature gets too high, you've got a fever. If it gets too low, that's a problem too. So there's a range. In other words, it's not a point, but it's a range, it's a range and it's gotta be corrected. 

It takes effort to find the balance point or to stay in that range of balance. It takes effort and like all things you know that are good in life, it takes effort. Good relationships take effort, good health takes effort, having a rewarding career or financial situation takes effort. 

And what I want to suggest to you, is the key in this is to understand one, it takes work to find balance. It takes time and the balance point can shift.

For me I want to, I want to give you an example of how I actually use this in my life. So right now I've got a bunch of goals. My goal is to, and I want you to think, as I'm talking about my goals, I want you to think about your goals. What are your goals right now?

So my goals are I'm learning kitesurfing. I shared with you some lessons about how I got slammed around by the kite into the water, because I lost the balance point. You know, to stay with the concept we're talking about today. I got really pulled off balance because I lost control.

So I'm learning kitesurfing. I'm also working on my business. I joined a coaching program and this coaching program it's insane. I can't believe how I'm so grateful to be. It's like therapy to me, I'm so grateful that I found this group, just really grateful. 

And so working on my business and so I have coaches now, I've got more than one. I've got one main coach, but I've got other coaches who I meet with too. It's just fantastic. We have a call with our coach once a week, me and my business partner. So that's another goal. 

Another goal is I'm getting back in shape again. I want to get lean, but I don't just want to get lean. I want to have fun doing it. So I have some goals in the gym. Right now my goal is I want to get back to doing ring dips. So if you've ever seen gymnastic rings and if you ever tried gymnastic ring dips, they're really hard. 

Dips are challenging depending on your body weight, but ring dips. Wow! They are really challenging unless you're a very light and strong person. So I'm not that light. And to be honest, I'm not that strong either. Not right now especially, been much stronger. 

So these are three big goals that I have, right? I've got other goals too, but these are my three main goals. Kitesurfing really gives me something to focus on. In the past it's been martial arts but I really don't want to train Thai boxing at the moment. 

I want to do something different or it's been diving, but I'm in Florianopolis, Brazil. People don't go diving here right now because of the cold environment. So I've had to be flexible and shift my focus over to something different and kitesurfing is that thing right now.

And in terms of exercise, I didn't have rings before. So I was focused on something different, but now I have rings. So again, my focus has shifted. And then I wasn't in a coaching program before and now I've got more clarity, more accountability because of this coaching program. 

So what I'm trying to tell you is that those are my goals. Now, as I share those things, what are your current goals? And I want you to think about how your goals have shifted, if like you or like me rather you were in a situation before, and then that situation changed. 

Maybe the environment changed, maybe the access to something like, for me I didn't have rings before. So the access to rings changed. Before I was doing Thai boxing, but Thai boxing is a little bit harder to organize here. And kite surfing has just flowed a little bit more easily and I'm brand new to it.

So there's also that being a beginner, that's kind of fun, but also frustrating at the same time. So what are your goals right now? And make a mental note of what shifts have happened in those goals. And so how do we find the balance between these things? 

So I've got three things that I need to do, right? I need to do all my business stuff. So not only do I have to participate in the coaching, but I've got to do the episodes for the podcast. In fact, that's what I'm doing right now. As I record this, I've also have to work with my clients, which I love doing that.

And I love recording the Real Talk Fridays too. I hope that comes across. So I need to do that. I need to show up to the gym regularly, whether I'm doing ring dips or not, it's part of my upkeep, just part of basic maintenance. 

Like I shared the story of how my car had that check engine light on and I kept driving it and eventually the engine blew up. Because I didn't have time to take my car in and get the oil changed, total bullshit, total nonsense. But that's what I did. And so doing exercise is part of the upkeep, but I'll tell you what, here's what happened. 

So I did…, instead of a two hour lesson yesterday, I did a three hour kitesurfing lesson. And man, after the second, when I got started in the third hour and let me share a bit of the backstory here. 

So I've gotten good at kitesurfing very quickly, in less than four hours I've been on the board and rode on the board. In other words, if you see people doing kite surfing and they're on the board and the kites are pulling them, I've done that already in four hours. 

Usually it takes, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of five to ten hours to do that, but in four hours, boom, I'm on it already rode, got some cool video that I'm waiting for the guy to send me from yesterday. 

So I can share it on social media to show you what I've been up to. And to get me something to post like, Hey, look, it's my cool lifestyle. Only if you knew the other half though, like recording this, I've got a blanket over me right now to improve the audio quality. So I wish I could take a picture of this. 

So I have all these things and as I said instead of doing two hours, I did three hours yesterday. And right as I started to get into my third hour, I got a calf cramp and that's a sign where it's like, Ooh, you're pushing the edge here. 

I didn't drink any water because I didn't have any water out there. And I didn't feel dehydrated, because you're in the water, I've swallowed a lot of seawater. My face getting slammed into the ocean. 

But you know, I started cramping up and I was exhausted, but I kept pushing and I knew it was a bad idea. Just like probably 10 minutes into that third hour. It's just, it's more demanding. 

The wind got stronger too. So the kite became harder to manage, it was a situation. Oh man, just thinking about getting dragged by that kite, thank God I'm in a big, open shallow lagoon. So it's perfect. It wasn't dangerous. 

There were no power lines or rocks or things like that. So I was really in a safe area, but man, I was just thinking about getting dragged around by that kite like a ragdoll. 

So anyway, that third hour I pushed a little bit too much. Why am I telling you this? Because I became out of balance and why did I make that decision? Well, the night before I slept poorly, if you sleep poorly, you make bad decisions more often, especially if you're under duress. 

I could've stopped it at two hours and walked away and been fine. But no, I got slammed more times. I ended up getting my ankle, my right ankle a little bit twisted. I thought I hurt my knee, but my knee feels okay. My ankle feels okay too. 

My joints have been through enough in life. They didn't need more. So that was an example of being out of balance. Now I'm feeling my elbows too. So I wanted to go work out today in the gym, but I had to skip it. Instead, what I'm going to do, is I'm going to do some cardio later. 

So what I'm trying to tell you already, I don't know what you're taking away. I would be very interested in what you're taking away from this story right now, but just to break it down for you, I did something. I came out of balance and now I'm having to relax to pull myself back into balance. 

I'm having to, I meditated twice yesterday to kind of bring my heart rate down. My heart rate was very elevated from all the exercise and activity. It just was a lot.

And so I've had to work hard to bring myself back into balance and instead of hitting the gym today where I could go and push myself and work out with weights, but I'll tell you, I know that would be pushing me out of balance more into more breakdown mode instead of recovery mode. 

And it's very important that you're able to distinguish between the two. So going into the gym and pushing yourself with weights, that's breakdown mode. 

Doing two or three hours of hard training with kite surfing or Brazilian jujitsu or handball or tennis or even golf it's breakdown. So whenever you push yourself to the edge like that, you've got to say, okay, well, how am I going to bring myself back? What am I going to do? 

And for me, instead of doing weights today, I'm going to do light cardio and I'm going to keep it to about 30 minutes. Or if I don't do cardio, what I'm going to do is I'm going to do some light isometric work on certain areas of my body to bring myself back into balance. 

So hopefully what you're taking away from this, besides any insights that are coming up for you, is that there are things that break us down. There are things that stress us and things that help us recover. And you need to understand which is which, and also you need to be able to do, you need to be able to switch.

And this is probably one of the most important lessons, because what happens is high-performers we get hooked. For example, when I was doing Brazilian jujitsu, I was like addicted to Brazilian jujitsu, addicted to it, to the point where I get into these weird conversations with myself. 

Like, no, I'm not going to go tonight. I'm not going to go to jujitsu tonight. No, my body needs to rest. Nope. Oh, but it's exercise. It's healthy for me. It's good for me. So I'm going to go. It's like, no, my body was aching, but I was addicted to Brazilian jujitsu. 

I was addicted to the adrenaline. It made me feel better psychologically, but it beat up my body and the problem with doing something to help you feel better psychologically, but beating up your body is that your body starts to break down. And then all of a sudden that thing that you've done, that helped you psychologically. You really, you can't do it anymore.

In fact, I don't really train Brazilian jujitsu because of the injuries that I got from pushing so hard. 

So I want to ask you right now, do you have something where you keep pushing and maybe you're a little addicted to it and it doesn't have to be Brazilian jujitsu or a sport. It could be work. 

Are you a little bit too addicted to your work? Are you a bit of a workaholic? Have you crossed that boundary? Maybe you're not an alcoholic. Maybe you're not a drug addict. Maybe you're not a gambling addict. 

Maybe you're not a sex addict. Maybe you're not a Brazilian jujitsu addict, but you're a little bit of workaholic. And even though you could set better boundaries with people at work, your colleagues, your boss, your employees, your partners, you don't because there's a part of you that feels like, oh, it's the thing, right? 

It's the thing that brings me the most satisfaction. But when you do that again, you get pulled out of balance. 

And what I want to make the argument here, is that the more emotionally healthy you are, the more you're going to be able to tell what is healthy for you. 

What is stress for you? What recovery for you and how to find the right amount and also to act on when you know you need to take a break, do you? Because so many of us, we don't, do we? 

We know you should take a break, but we start to tell ourselves stories about how we should keep going, or people are relying on us or people need us. When in reality, if we died tomorrow, the world's going to go on without us. Sure there would be a whole host of people missing us, especially if you have family, especially if you have children, but come on when it comes to your job, your work, the economy is going to go on without us.

So we really have to ask ourselves, just a little sip of water there, like am I approaching this in a healthy way, because what so many of us do is we start to feel the itch and we scratch it, scratch the itch. 

Oh, I got to work more, in my case, oh, I got to do Brazilian jujitsu, I gotta do Brazilian jujitsu. I gotta go do that thing. Right. Got to go do that thing, that makes me feel so good psychologically. But it's got kind of that “my precious” Gollum sort of creepy. To me, it's a little bit creepy. It's the creepy part of human beings, that addictive side to us, right? 

That's what, if you're a Lord of the Rings fan like I am. Gollum, he loved the ring so much that it destroyed him. His teeth got all fallen out. His hair started falling out. 

It really changed him that addiction, that obsession, that compulsive behavior and that ring. I mean, that could be exercise for some of us. It could be food for others of us.

I think one of the conversations that isn't had in health and fitness, is how some folks who are in "great shape", they're actually really, they have an unhealthy obsession with exercise. 

They push themselves too much and then they try to act like they're better off than other people, but really what's driving their behavior that ends up having them with a lower body or ends up you know, creating a lower body fat percentage. It's an unhealthy obsession with exercise. 

That was me by the way. Now that's not the most common one. Well, most common one. If we look at statistics is 70% of people in the United States are overweight or obese. And the story that's not being talked about there it's, oh, it's hyper-palatable foods, genetics.

And our hypothalamus is not regulating. Our metabolism rate and certainly there's truth to that. But the conversation we're not having is that people are eating their emotions. People are eating their emotions. 

One of my clients who lost over a hundred pounds and kept it off for years, she said, you know I'm a Christian mom. I'm not going to be doing meth on the, she said this example. 

And she said, I'm a Christian mom. I'm not going to be doing meth off the toilet seat. Okay. That's just, I got a family, I'm a mother. Shout out to you Sarah, if you're listening. I'm a mother. I'm not going to do that, but I'll eat. And she said like, that's the perfectly acceptable addiction in society today. 

Even though we say, oh yeah, all the pressure to look a certain way from society, when really how many fit people do you know, how many overweight people do you know? 

There may be this pressure from advertising, that makes you feel kind of bad, but really 70% of the population is overweight or obese. All right. And that's being generous. If we looked at body fat percentages, it would probably be 80 or 90% of people are just eating their emotions. 

And again, what is the point here? The point is not about singling out. Oh, well, you're eating too much because a lot of, again, those unhealthy obsessed exercise people will talk shit about people who are overweight or obese because, hey, you can see it, right. Because you can see it. You can't see people's cocaine habit though. Not unless you hang out with them.

It's like Bob, you sure?I have had the sniffles for a long time now, that cough syrup with the dextro, you know, whatever it is I forget the name of the, you know, a lot of these cough syrups have pseudoephedrine is what it has in it. It's got that. And it seems like you've got more than pseudoephedrine going through your system too.

So anyway, we don't see these things. So people, it's easy to see when someone's overweight or obese, they kind of push out of their clothes. It's really obvious, especially in America. 

But the point is this, it's less about the particular way this unhealthy behavior shows up. It's about what's going on deeper. So whether it's drugs, gambling, sex, food exercise, if it's out of balance, it's unhealthy. It's not that middle way. It's extreme.

I even had a conversation with the kitesurfing guy we were talking about because he's into extreme sports. And he has some friends who are into the wingsuit. If you don't know what that is, it's that suit that you put on and you fly. 

I mean, Google wingsuit, if you don't know what I'm talking about. Google wingsuit, tap on videos, play, one of the videos, the ones that catches your eye, look at the craziness that these people do. And these professionals wingsuit people, they die. These are professionals. 

So they're the best of the best because they don't want to fly through the air. They want to fly close to a mountain. It really, they want to push the limits. We got into an interesting conversation about it, actually with my kitesurfing instructor. 

Now he's a Brazilian guy. His family is Italian. But grew up in Brazil and he's lived in various places in the world, been to like 40 countries or something, you know, very cool. And we got into this conversation about it. 

And he said, you know, these people, it's like, if they don't do these things, they don't feel alive. And that's kind of like how, that's a good way to talk about addiction. For me again, it's not about the jiu jitsu, it's about the feeling that we're chasing through whatever activity we get it from. 

Why can't you stop eating so much? Well I just don't feel good if I do that? Why can't you just skip jujitsu for a fucking night? Well, I just don't feel good. I feel like I got to go. I feel like if I don't go something bad will happen. When in reality, the healthy thing to do is to fight through that craving because that's what it is. So you don't end up like the Gollum. Super obsessed with this thing, my precious. It's got that creepy quality to it. 

And again I would argue the more Gollum that you have going on for you, the more emotionally unhealthy you are. It's such a great, I love Lord of the rings so much because there are all these examples of archetypes and you know, human personified, human behaviors.

And yeah, it's just a, especially with Gollum, you know, that my precious thing, it's just always it's so.... it's just something about it. Even if we don't really understand it, the first couple of times we see it, what it really means.

We really kind of resonate with, something deep down inside of us understands that type of behavior. That, like almost child that didn't get enough of whatever it was during his life, or her life as the case may be. And then has this obsession, this addiction, this compulsive behavior. 

So do you have a “precious”? For me, I've had various different ones. But I'm able to kind of balance it out more and the key was to get more emotionally healthy. And that's what I would say folks, about finding balance. 

The secret is this, that finding balance it's understanding there is no one point, it's a fluid thing. You've gotta be flexible. You can't be inflexible. You can't be all or nothing. 

And then the other thing is this. If you have such a hard time maintaining balance, you've got to ask, where is this coming from? Where's this inner Gollum. Where did it come from?

Did it come from, when did it start for you as a good question? Did it start in childhood? What does it bring up for you when you think about it? Maybe it started somewhere else. I think most of my stuff started in childhood. 

So that's what I think about, but maybe, I don't know, I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, maybe it's different for different people. What is it for you? Right? Where does this behavior come from? And again, for a lot of people, it can be food.

I think food and business go a lot together. Food, alcohol, and business. They just go well together because one thing is, if you make money and I don't think this way. I think you're, I don't want to say a loser. That's really a bit strong language and it's a bit negative, but I think you're someone who doesn't have their shit together and you've got some work. Let's put it like this. You're a person who's got some work to do. 

It's like, you're really overweight. You know, the type of person who can afford a Ferrari, but when you get in one, afford a Porsche or Ferrari, but when you try to get out of it is a real struggle. I saw a video of that the other day, it was really funny. 

This Brazilian guy, this video was going around. This guy got in his Ferrari. He was about to buy it. It was at the showroom, but then he had to crawl out of it. So he worked his whole life and now he can afford a Ferrari. Can't get out of one, even though he managed to get in it. 

So like, again we reward financial success and we think, oh yeah, whatever you gotta do to get it. But the new way and better way of looking at things is how do we make it sustainable? Not just a sustainable business, but sustainable for our health. 

So we don't end up you know, with these health problems that are really preventable. And again you know, the workaholism, the alcoholism, the foodoholism. We haven't come up with a word for that. We don't want to call it. Some people will say food addiction, but yeah. 

I don't know, but you know, where's that coming from? What deeper work do you need to do to deal with that? And personally, I've had, if you've been listening for a while, you know I've tried a lot of different things. I've done a lot of different things. I've done therapy, I've done breath work, drank Ayahuasca with shamans. You know, a lot of this stuff, a lot of these things. I do meditation. I meditate almost every day.

So again where is this coming from for you? And what can you try to handle it? Because so many of us, we live not only, you know, so many of us we're obsessed with sustainable business. In other words, not scalable and sustainable. 

So we want to, and sustainable, not economic or environmentally sustainable business. That's a whole nother conversation and one, I'm not really, probably the best to have. It's not something I knew a lot about. I have an internet business, but sustainable from like, oh, we make a certain amount of money and we can continue to make that money. 

And then scalability, we want to scale our businesses. So we make more money. And again, it's sustainable, but how do we do that by also having sustainability with our health? How do we have sustainability with our relationships and how do we have sustainability with the most important relationship, the relationship with ourselves.

So that's what I want to leave you on. That's what I want you to ponder, if you will. What does that mean to you? What did today bring up for you? And again, like how I love to end all these Real Talk Fridays, what is something you can, instead of going on to the next podcast episode, because you know, we binge watch, we binge listen to podcasts, just like how we binge watch series. 

What can you take action on? Okay. Because at the end of you know, the Falcon in the winter soldier, there's no call to action there. It's just stay tuned for season two or Loki. 

Those are the ones that I'm watching right now. Or man I'm really looking forward to the Book of Boba Fett. If you're not on Disney plus, I mean, get on that, but there's no call to action there, that's entertainment, but I'd like this to be more than entertainment. 

I'd like this to be actionable. So what can you do instead of binge listening? Even if you go and listen to something else, because maybe you're in your car, what's something that you can do today properly right now. What is something that you can do today to take action? 

Because what we need, we need to build habit of taking action. Once you do that, life gets better. It's going to be easier to tackle the things that you don't want to tackle. 

Cause I know I don't need to tell you if your workout themed, I don't need to tell you to go work out. If you're a healthy eating theme, I don't need to tell you to eat clean. If you're a person, you know, who's ,you don't need to be told that. It's the areas that we need help with. 

That's where we need to take the action. That's where we need to switch gears and take action towards those things that we're struggling with. So what is that for you? Right now, today. Go and make that happen. All right.

That's all I've got for you today. Hope you enjoyed it. Have an amazing weekend. Love you lots. And I will speak to you on Monday.