When Balance is the Goal

When we are motivated, we often identify aspects of our life that we want to change. Often, this takes the form of some major point of misery or strong desire that convinces us to crave something more.

This desire rises and takes hold of our thoughts. We can’t shake it. We need this new change, and we must find a way to acquire it.

Let’s pretend that we use this new desire, transfer it to motivation and push towards our goal. We cross the finish line, exhausted but thrilled at our accomplishment. Now what?

There is a concept in behavioral economics referred to as threshold effects. Threshold effects is a concept used to describe that moment over the crescent of our goal. We reached it. We passed it and acquired whatever we wanted.

But now, threshold effects show us, we lose motivation. We don’t keep pushing forward. We don’t have that intense feeling to push towards more. Instead, we fall right back to our previous level, unable to sustain any value from our accomplishment.

We have all experienced this. Maybe we used a diet to hit our goal weight. Soon we lose momentum and go back to old eating habits. The weight returns and we aren’t any better than we were before we started.

Balance is underrated when we talk about goals. Most goals are set for those extremes that we want to experience. We want more, not balance. But balance is more powerful and will always win in the long run.

In Summits of Self, author Alan Mallory says, “Balance is perhaps the most important and foundational secret of existence. We see balance throughout the universe in many important ways. The Earth itself is essentially a giant buffer system that maintains a delicate balance to allow the existence of life as we know it, and though we usually take for granted phenomena like the Earth-atmosphere energy balance to regulate radiation from the sun and maintain a steady-state global climate, we’re beginning to realize we shouldn’t.”

As Mallory states, balance is foundational. It is ominous. We ignore it but it remains. This explains why our attempts at change often fail. We don’t respect and acknowledge balance and try to balance the scales. Instead, we try to tip the scales.

In systems thinking, we learn about feedback loops. These are the critical systems structures found everywhere and account for growing or depreciating values.

But there is a lesser-known feedback loop structure. It is the balancing feedback loop. In my opinion it is much more powerful than any other feedback loop.

The reason is that the balancing feedback loop is the only enduring structure. Other feedback loops continue for a while but will eventually be halted by a balancing feedback loop.

This means that we should respect balance in our life. If we want more and want to change, we should use balance to help us get there.

This often means going at a much slower pace. It allows us to push forward a bit, then create a new balancing feedback loop.

There is a concept in Agile project management called a spike. This is a research period that allows a software developer to research an aspect of the project to gain a better understanding. The concept comes from rock climbing where you use a spike to set up a new level.

What if you can take this concept and apply it to self-improvement? You would make balance the goal, not achievement. At each round of improvement, you would stop and add a spike period where you solidify your new level.

Once it is solidified, you can move forward with confidence, knowing that any slip-up will cause you to fall back to the spike level, not back to start.

If you have desire to change and improve, use that motivation to help grow. But don’t forget to make balance the ultimate goal. That will be the only way to truly sustain all that growth, so you don’t keep falling right back down to square one. This will allow you to keep building and improving.

For more on this many other improvement concepts, check out Summits of Self.