Why "Perfect Balance" Is an Illusion (And What to Aim for Instead) (BKI 59)

Hi, this is Diana. Bright knowledge instants give you one thing you can do today to move your creativity ahead. It's the solstice right now. So in the northern hemisphere it is the longest day of the year. In the southern hemisphere it's the winter solstice. So that is the longest night of the year. This has me thinking about the two sides of creativity. The light side and the dark side.

The light side, the more sunny daylight side, is the more forward moving, analytical, public facing, goals driven type of creativity. And then the dark side is the more mysterious, intuitive, receptive, letting things unfold in their own time. And that we actually want both those sides to be present in our creativity for our creativity to come forward. However, these two sides are always in different relationship with each other.

The fact that we can have the longest day on one side side of the world and the longest night on the other side of the world shows me that just as it is for the world, it is for us. Our creativity is constantly rebalancing and that's a fine and good thing. If we are for a while much more sort of publicly driven in our creativity and then we turn around and become much more inward, internal, kind of retreat in a way.

Although we know things are gestating inside, this is all good. If we try to put everything in perfect balance at all time, you know, this seeking balance thing, I don't feel like it's going to be very sustainable or very natural because guess what, we're growing all the time, so we're constantly changing. So whatever balance we find, then we grow and it's out of balance again. I don't think the balance is the thing that we're necessarily looking for.

It's essentially a type of flow and flux, just like the world shows us. So today on the solstice, give yourself a break. Really honor whatever phase of creativity you're in right now. Are you more goals driven and moving forward? Great. Are you more in a retreat mode where you're generating quietly inside and you may not be having much to show for it? That doesn't matter at all. Trust that you are growing inside and you are much like the longest night of the year, gathering together your tools so that you can shine later.

We always want to flow between these balances in order to feel sustainable. We can't be completely night all the time or completely day all the time. We want to flow. So today, give yourself a break. And wherever you are in the balance, that's exactly where you need to be. Bye.