Our first episode! The Balanced Code Podcast is focused on helping listeners discover their unique code for balance in all areas of their lives. Host Katie Rössler, a couples therapist and expert in hidden grief, emotional intelligence, and work-life balance, shares her insights and experience to help listeners identify the different components that make up their own balance code.
In today’s episode Katie uses an umbrella analogy to explain how each piece of fabric represents an important section of your life and how the poles and rods holding it up are the tools and resources that keep it strong.
Key Points:
- Finding balance in life is a unique process that varies for everyone.
- Your balance code changes as you change and grow.
- The Balanced Code podcast focuses on discovering your unique code for balance in all areas of your life.
- The podcast will cover different areas of life, including family, personal growth, health, and work-life balance.
LINKS:
Follow The Balance Code Podcast on Instagram
Follow Katie Rössler on Instagram
Get on a 20 minute free connection call with Katie to see about working together
Or go to the Work with Me page
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Today’s transcript of The Balance Code Podcast:
Welcome, everyone. This is the first episode of the balanced code. And I can’t believe I’m here. I know many people say this, oh, I’ve been talking about starting a podcast forever, but it’s true. I have been. And I’ve been thinking about it for years prior to even talking about it. The issue was, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to talk about.
0:20
If you’ve followed me for a while, then, you know, I kind of have several different branches to the work that I do. I’m a couples therapist, but my background in totality is marriage and family therapy. I’ve created courses and programs for stay at home moms to feel more empowered, and to know that they are chief household officers. Which is a separate job from being a mom, by the way. I work in the grief space, specifically around hidden grief, which is grief, not related to death. It comes through situations of change and adjustment and letting go of the way we thought life would or should go. And I’ve written a book called The New Face of Grief on that. I provide workshops on emotional intelligence for parents who are ready to start working on their own emotional intelligence, so they can help their children as well. And I do consulting work for companies teaching their employees better work life balance, or work life harmony, if you’d like to call it that. I could keep going.
1:14
But you get the point. There were a lot of topics that I could talk about, and I will bring them in on this podcast on different episodes. But what is that general theme? What is that overarching topic that you always want to come back to? Well, that’s challenging. But when I thought about what my clients are struggling with on a regular basis, and what I myself continually work on, I realized it was balance.
1:42
On a regular basis, I have people asking me about balance in their lives. And assuming that I have great balance in my life, because I’m able to get certain things done. And I always laugh because I realize the reality is we all have our own balance code. We have our own components that click together in such a way that open the lock, basically, right. But it’s up to you to figure out what that is. And you can keep looking at other people and the balance they have in their lives and go, Oh, if only I did this more, if I only was like her or him in this way, I’ll have better balance. But the truth is, your balance code is unique to you. And it changes as you change. I know some of you are like come on Katie, like it just needs to be consistent. No because you’re changing and you’re growing.
2:31
So some of those coping tools that used to work probably don’t even scratch the surface anymore. And it’s time for something deeper, or some of the habits you used to have that you thought were creating balance in your life, as you become more healthy, you realize they’re creating imbalance, and I need to remove them or switch them with something else. So when we talk about balance, we end up thinking immediately of like, 50/50, right, you know, you see the scale, and it’s balanced perfectly, because there’s a weight on one side on my weight on the other side, and it’s equal. But anybody who is explored the world of work life balance, or attempted work life balance, knows, it is not 5050, it is not equal. And in fact, to look at parts of our lives, it’s only one whole subject instead of all the increments that can create imbalance in different ways. We limit ourselves.
3:26
So at the balance code, we’re going to be looking at balance in the form of an umbrella. Now, an umbrella has different sections of fabric, I like to think of them as each being a different color. And if you have a colorful umbrella, then this will be a really easy analogy for you. But each piece of fabric is its own color, and each piece of fabric and that color represent an important section of your life. So that could be family. That could be personal growth, that could be your health. And we can all look at those things like the level 10 life and other skills that help you to segment your life in such a way that you cover all the areas.
4:05
But the reality is, you have to decide for yourself, what each of those pieces of fabric on that umbrella represent to you. Now with this analogy, we have that fabric and we also have these poles and rods that help to keep the umbrella strong and capable of functioning at its best, right protecting us from rain, or sun. depending on who’s using it and why you’re using it. Those polls are essential to holding up the brand umbrella. I want you to think of those polls as being the tools and resources that you have gathered throughout your life that are holding up those pieces of fabric and if you think about it, they’re holding up usually two sides, right right where they come together. And if one side is broken, it can impact the other sides. They’re not as strong. We all can envision and maybe you’ve got one in your own home right now or in your car, that umbrella that has like the broken pole that allows the piece of fabric to just flap in the wind, right. And it’s really sad if it’s on both sides, because you’re like, This poor umbrella just cannot function at its best. So if we think about all of these pieces of fabric, right, and the areas of our lives that are most important to us that we value, and we think about these rods and poles, helping us to stay more balanced, so that this umbrella our life, can function in a way that supports us and helps us, then we start to see that balance isn’t just life, or work. It’s a multitude of different areas, and different things can impact it.
5:45
Now, yes, there are parts to our balanced code that will be similar for all of us getting a good night’s sleep. I mean, I can’t think of anybody who can raise their hand and be like, No, that actually doesn’t help me to feel balanced. No, we all need a good night’s sleep. And as a mom of three with a two year old right now, who is really just at the prime of her brain development, which making sleep fun, I love getting a good night’s sleep. And when I do, I rejoice and celebrate it. So this is an important part of our lives, we need good sleep, that will be a part of all of our codes.
6:23
But the other pieces are going to be different. The other pieces will involve boundaries, the other pieces will involve us really looking at our family history, our cultural history, being honest with ourselves about addictions that we have relationships that we’ve kept around, it’s going to be a bit of a challenge. However, once you find your balance code, and you know what really creates this beautiful umbrella of balance in your life, you thrive.
6:50
It is amazing when I work with my clients and help them to create better balance in their life and to really heal around the hidden grief from their past and let go of the things that they’ve been holding on to that involve regret, and really heal from any burnout that has occurred in their life. They have the bandwidth to get projects done, they’ve been putting off for years, I’m serious years, they have the creativity to come up with ideas that just rocket and soar them through in life in ways that they had never imagined. Because they couldn’t, they were exhausted, they were imbalanced. When my clients create greater balance, they actually enjoy free time and space. Now you might be like, well, who doesn’t enjoy free time and space? Oh, there’s many of you who don’t, especially if you’re listening to this, it’s uncomfortable. And we’ll get to an episode soon on that. Because often what happens as soon as there’s a free spot in our calendar, we call somebody to fill it up, or we find something else to do, or we put that project in there. We don’t just keep it open. There’s a reason for that. We’ll get to that later.
7:59
So your balanced code is your code. I’m not here to tell you what you need to do. I’m here to get you thinking, I’m here to challenge you on some of the areas that you may think are balanced. But when you actually look at them, you realize they’re causing a lot of the energy drain that you fill in your life and a lot of the imbalance leading you to feel a sense of burnout. I’m here to support you cheerlead you through and give you a dose of honesty in the most loving way that I can with a lot of humor. And you’ll learn a lot of analogies.
8:35
I think we’re all going through a time in our lives, we’re really tired of feeling alone and isolated. And we’re ready to know we’re not by ourselves in the struggles that we’re going through that others are going through these challenges to or others feel or think the way that we do. So I will happily share my own personal stories. But it’s also going to be you challenging yourself to start to speak up and share with others. Hey, I’d listened to this episode on the balance code. And it’s making me think about this. And I’m wondering if you’re going through it too. And as soon as you start those conversations, we decrease the feeling of shame around things in our lives that we’ve been told are wrong or bad, or inappropriate, and we start to learn those were lies, and they were there to keep us small and scared.
9:23
I don’t know about you. But feeling small and scared do not add to balance in my life. So part of the balanced code podcast is getting us to start having conversations about the imbalances in our lives and the reasons they’re there. And learning from each other tools that we can start using to create better balance in our lives. I really hope you enjoy the balanced code podcast and I thank you for taking time to listen to this first episode. It truly is a celebration within me to be here at this point now offering this to you. It’s time for us to discover our balance code.
Hey Katie. Thoroughly enjoyed your inaugural Balanced Code podcast! Especially related to your broken umbrella analogy. Excellent and relevant content. Keep up the great work.
Thank you! I am so glad you are enjoying it!!
Hey Katie,
I really like the way you talk about things. All the examples and analogies you give are easy to imagine.As a non-native english speaker I also like the possibility to read the podcast after I’ve listened to it. Keep on going!! I enjoy it so much. Thanks a lot!!
Thank you Heike! I am so glad you are enjoying the podcast!