Balance is my thing. It’s been my mantra for as long as I can remember. The word pops up on my various online profiles, in conversation with friends and family, and in my head countless times during a day. So when a Pilates client asked me “What do you do the other five days of the week, you know, when you’re not here?,” I laughed and said “Finish those reps and I’ll tell you.”
I told her what I’ve been telling people for months now with varying degrees of curiosity (and sometimes trepidation) about their reaction: I teach Pilates AND I run my own marketing business. The order flips depending on who I’m speaking with and often includes only half of the equation. I elaborated that morning by saying “It’s a weird balancing act, huh?” to which my client replied “Actually, it’s kind of awesome.”
You know? It kind of is. And the fact that it’s actually working surprises the hell out of me. I followed this convoluted path – baffling some and inspiring others – and here I am, in the middle of the ultimate balancing act. Or as my friend Peter Shankman calls it, “surfing the duality.”
Peter’s an avid skydiver; he’s also a successful entrepreneur, three times over. He coined the term to describe the feeling he gets from being equally engaged in two very different worlds, with players who don’t understand why he would even want to be in the “other” world. (Thank you, Peter, for giving voice to what I’ve been feeling all these months.) You’ll have to ask him how he makes his particular duality surfing work. Here’s what I think about to make mine come together.
- Embrace the duality. I spend Monday and Tuesday mornings teaching Pilates and the rest of the week with various marketing clients. By the end of my Pilates shift on Tuesday morning, I’m ready to wear business clothes again and deal with the chaos that is brand management, partnership strategy, or whatever I’m doing for my marketing clients. And come Friday evening, I’m beginning to take a deep, cleansing breath with the realization that the weekend is upon me and that I’ll spend the first two mornings of my week in a place of health and balance.
- Compartmentalization is your friend. I have to access the on/off switch between the different sides of my brain at a moment’s notice and be able to shift right back. In order to do this, I put things in their respective boxes and close the lid tight until I need to open it again. Otherwise, my brain gets all muddled with details. But I do leave room for cross-pollination, which I find makes me better at both of my “jobs.”
- Only the organized will survive. I love my planner. Seriously. Between juggling the needs of marketing clients, keeping up with requests from the Pilates studio for last-minute coverage and workshops, and maintaining some semblance of a social life, I’d be a wreck without a centralized place to write it all down. Yes, with pen and paper. Sometimes my iPhone just isn’t enough.
- Be present. If anything can teach you to live in the moment, it’s a ongoing and dramatic switch in professional pursuits during the course of your day or week. The present is sacred. Anything other than the moment is a distraction.
- Never lose sight of the why. For the freedom of being my own boss even if I’m momentarily answerable to my clients. For the flexibility of choosing when and where I want to work and how long I’ll work there. For the wonderfully balanced payoff that comes from living what some might view as an unbalanced and chaotic lifestyle. I cling to my reasons for living this lifestyle as if they were my true north, because some days it still feels like work even though I love what I’m doing.
What about you other surfers out there? How do you keep it all together?
