Can You Live a "Balanced" Life? (No.) 🧠

What if you’ve been taught to aim for the very thing that keeps you feeling unfulfilled? (5min Read)

TL;DR Summary

• “Work-life balance” was invented in 1985—your nervous system wasn’t built for it.

• Balance is a verb, not a noun. It’s the act of constant adjustment.

• Seeking "balance" often leads to mediocrity; seeking purpose leads to growth.

• Living at the extremes is uncomfortable but essential for extraordinary outcomes.

• Your nervous system needs short-term counterbalancing, not constant equilibrium.

• The real skill? Knowing when to return—and how to prioritize what matters most.

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A Balanced Life is a Lie

I’m reading the book, “The ONE Thing” right now, and a chapter in it on living a balanced life blew my mind last week.

I wanna share some of the key insights with you all today.

The most important takeaway is this: Living a balanced life is a lie.

And I get it.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve said, “I need more balance” so many times in my life.

It’s become the anthem of ambitious, overwhelmed people everywhere.

But what if this idea of balance is a trap?

What if it’s the very thing keeping you from doing the deep, meaningful work—and healing—you crave?

Here’s the truth most people don’t know:

Balance isn’t a noun, it’s a verb.

It’s an action, a behavior.

It’s not a place you arrive—it’s something you do.

You are constantly shifting your weight, redirecting attention, and adjusting course.

That’s balance.

And pretending it’s something you’re supposed to have (rather than practice) sets you up to feel like a failure, day after day.

Let’s talk about it.

300,000 Years of “Work = Life”

For almost all of human history, there was no concept of “work-life” anything.

You hunted, gathered, raised children, and tried to stay alive.

There were no emails. No side hustles. No to-do lists with 42 micro-tasks.

There was just life, and you survived or didn’t.

Then came the Industrial Revolution.

Then offices. Then "9-to-5".

And in 1985, the first recorded use of the phrase work-life balance appeared.

It’s a modern construct.

Your Stone Age nervous system was never designed to keep separate inboxes for work, love, and meaning.

Why the Middle Is a Mirage

If you think of balance as the middle, then out of balance is when you’re away from it.

We love the idea of balance because it sounds safe. Fair. Ethical.

But real life isn’t symmetrical.

And nothing meaningful happens at the center.

We try to balance it all, and attend to all the things, but we can’t.

And when we try, everything ends up getting shortchanged.

This is a problem for your brain.

It hates uncertainty. It craves just right.

The Goldilocks zone.

But growth, healing, and impact all live in the margins—at the edges.

Think of walking a tightrope.

You’re constantly wobbling, recalibrating, tilting left, then right again.

You look balanced from the outside—but on the inside?

You’re in a constant micro-negotiation with gravity.

Same with your life.

Every “yes” you give is a “no” to something else.

That’s not failure. That’s physics.

The Neuroscience of Priorities (Not Balance)

When you shift attention—when you choose one task or relationship over another—you engage your prefrontal cortex, especially the dorsolateral PFC, responsible for complex planning, impulse control, and executive functioning.

But guess what?

That region fatigues easily.

Especially when it's juggling five competing “priorities” (spoiler: that’s an oxymoron).

Your salience network (anterior insula + dorsal anterior cingulate cortex) helps determine what’s most important right now.

But when everything feels equally urgent, your brain becomes paralyzed by indecision, activating your default mode network—and your stress skyrockets.

That overwhelm?

It’s not a character flaw. It’s a neurological bottleneck.

One that anxious achievers know all too well.

How to Live “Out of Balance” On Purpose

Here’s the reframe:

Living a meaningful life means constantly being out of balance, but consciously.

Extraordinary outcomes don’t happen in the middle.

They happen when you choose what matters most, even if it means other things get temporarily neglected.

This is where the author brings in counterbalancing.

The idea of counterbalancing is that you never go so far that you can’t find your way back or stay so long that there is nothing waiting for you when you return.

I’ve done this many times in my life, and it’s never been worth it.

So, what do you do?

• In your professional life: go long. Go deep. Let yourself tip fully into the project, the vision, the work that lights you up—even if your inbox explodes a little.

• In your personal life: go short. Don’t vanish. Stay tethered. Touch in frequently with the people and parts of you that need maintenance, even if they don’t need the spotlight right now.

It’s not about doing everything.

It’s about doing the right things, at the right times.

If you want to actually have space for your personal priorities, you need to get radically clear about what matters most at work and finish it.

That clarity buys you the freedom to shut work off and be fully present at home.

When it’s time to work, work.

When it’s time to rest or play or connect, do that fully.

The same is true in your nervous system: it can tolerate a temporary stressor if it’s in service of a meaningful goal.

But it can’t tolerate chronic misalignment. That’s how burnout happens.

So What Now? One Thing to Try

Block 15 minutes today to name your top priority in both work and life.

Just one for each.

Ask yourself:

• What’s my top priority in my work right now?

• What’s my top priority in my personal life right now?

Then make peace with letting the rest go for today.

This is the act of balancing.

Not having it—but doing it.

Good luck.

Until next time… Live Heroically 🧠

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Supporting Research

• Keller, G., & Papasan, J. (2013). The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results. Bard Press.

• Heatherton, T. F., & Wagner, D. D. (2011). Cognitive neuroscience of self-regulation failure. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15(3), 132–139.

• Menon, V., & Uddin, L. Q. (2010). Saliency, switching, attention and control: a network model of insula function. Brain Structure and Function, 214(5–6), 655–667.

• Raichle M. E. (2015). The brain's default mode network. Annual review of neuroscience, 38, 433–447. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014030

• Schwartz, J., & Begley, S. (2002). The Mind and the Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. Harper Perennial.