What is your feather?
Today I was watching a video from Italy’s Got Talent and I was amazed! It was Marula Eugster Rigolo’s audition in which she uses a feather and many other pieces, that seem wood, to balance with each other. In fact, I recommend you watching it before continue reading my text. Marula’s ability to balance everything was amazing, but this video also got me thinking about how it can also be a metaphor for our lives.
Marula starts and finishes the video showing the importance of a feather. An item that is so delicate and light (especially when compared to the others she used) makes us think that it will make no difference with the result. It seems that the feather is just a decorative objective on the structure Marula is building. However, at the end of the video Marula shows us that every piece in that structure was important, even the feather. If everything is not synced, the balance is affected.
In life is the same. If we don’t have all of our pieces synced, it seems that we are not in harmony. In everyone’s lives, these pieces are different. While some people can consider that these pieces are work, family, and friends, other people might call them work, mind, and pleasure. It doesn’t matter how you call them, the importance is that you recognize which ones are the pieces that matter in your life and how you can sync them.
We know that it is not easy to find this perfect sync and every now and then we let “the feather” fall and it seems the worst day/period ever. However, if we have our minds straight, we are strong enough to put ourselves together and rebuild everything until we find the perfect balance once more.
However, once we find peace in our mind and know the importance of each piece of the structure, the feather tends to fall less often. This is work-life harmony. It is the moment we understand the important pieces in our lives and find a way to sync all of them. This is different than finding balance. When we think about balance, we feel that we are weighing one side at the expense of the other. Thinking about harmony is thinking that the whole is more important than the thought that focusing on one piece is harming the other.
You are probably thinking that is easier said than done, and I agree. Even though we find this harmony, we eventually have some fallbacks, and we must concentrate to come back to this work-life harmony. I would like to share some tricks I use to find my harmony:
1. Find out what matters to you: Bear in mind that this is adaptive to the stage of life. My priorities used to be work, friends, and leisure, and now they are mind, work, family, and health. It is ok to change over time.
2. Understand your current situation: Among your priorities, understand how your current harmony is. You can be in the middle of an important work project that you have to dedicate 110% or you can be in a moment that you need to focus on your mental health.
3. Understand how you feel: Even though you might know how you are syncing your current pieces, you might not be happy with it. Understanding the reason why you are not happy and working towards a solution is an important step to find harmony.
4. Find your feather: There is always one piece in our lives that seems inoffensive, but once we forget about it, everything falls apart.
I believe these four steps must be reviewed every now and then, especially because we change over time. Our priorities change, our situations change, the way we feel changes, and our feathers change. The feathers are usually the ones we give less importance but are also the most responsible for making everything fall apart. I consider my mind to be my feather. What would you consider to be yours?
