My RE-BALANCING ACT after unexpected job loss and numerous setbacks
Celebrating TWO years of Harmonious Balance
May 2024 marks the two-year anniversary of Harmonious Balance!! I originally launched Harmonious Balance primarily as video content. Though initially I wanted to write because I thought writing was one of my few scalable skill sets. But it appeared that blogging was obsolete, especially for a new content creator. Video seemed to be the way to go and Harmonious Balance started as a YouTube channel. Obviously, I pivoted to writing because you are reading this on Substack. Video is still cool and even fun to create. But it is rather layered from an execution standpoint. Writing, on the other hand, is much more straight forward. From a productivity standpoint, my written production is much more efficient and consistent. I’m thankful that there are platforms that center and/or prioritize writers.
If you are new to Harmonious Balance, then it’s probably best to learn what Harmonious Balance is all about. You can read more thoroughly about it, as I most certainly wrote about it in detail. But in a nutshell, it is an emerging wellness ideology based in the principles of energy management which allow for achieving balance physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. With Harmonious Balance, balance is viewed as the input not the output. When we achieve balance across those four energy valences, then we experience the harmonious outcomes of living our best lives, being our better selves and accomplishing the greater good.
On the Harmonious Balance website, I share the origin story of where the idea came from. However, my journey to starting Harmonious Balance wasn’t quite balanced. My life really looks nothing like I imagined it. For most of my life, I thought my life would be centered on being a wife and mother. Purpose-wise I did believe that something more would be carved out for me specificially, but I thought it would likely align with marriage and family or be revealed once marriage and family were in full swing. For the longest time that remained the top desire of my heart and all I could really see for myself. And despite my best efforts, I sit here today having never been married with zero children.
I was never career driven. To best represent myself, I endeavored to do a good job. But recognition, promotion, advancement, etc, were not motivators for me. Though I never found my identity in my career, I did resolve within myself that for as long as I was employed, I would do something that I enjoyed. Which led to my first career pivot, leaving behind engineering, manufacturing and the corporate world to earn my master’s degree in counseling to help people find more rewarding careers and lead more fulfilling lives. I found the perfect lane for my newfound career in higher education and stayed there for more than 15 years. For the most part I controlled my career and accumulated the experiences that I wanted. It never occurred to me that I would lose control of my career.
Before I get into my job loss (though I’m not so sure what all I will say about it other than it happened) I need to talk about other challenges that were occurring in parallel to my career. I’d been dealt the unfortunate fate of injury and illness. From an illness perspective, my thyroid began giving me the blues at the young age of 16. I enjoy being active and between the ages of 13 and 14, I suffered my first injury. Since then I’ve had multiple injuries leading to multiple surgeries and countless physical therapy sessions. The cumulative effect of all the injuries made me fear being active which was core form of self-expression for me. I was relegated to wearing flats. Though I’ve always been sensible with my footwear, my shoe choices were also a form of self-expression. I saw it as an outlet for my edge and sass. In short, I felt like I was being silenced.
As for my thyroid, my condition was stable until it wasn’t. My levels were checked annually. In February 2010, all was good but come December, it went haywire. I was then diagnosed and treated for Graves’ Disease. I lost a significant amount of hair that has yet to be fully restored and may never be restored. That diagnosis coupled with being inactive led to significant weight gain. Meanwhile my relationship blues continued. Marriage and family was the vision I had for myself. And upon realizing that that vision may never be realized, my standing prayer was for a new vision. A vision that would not become clear until several years later.
Emotionally I felt myself slowly becoming jaded. I honestly felt like my heart, as in the desires of my heart for myself, didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I could feel the jadedness coming on but I didn’t want it. I saw what it looked like on other people and I didn’t want that for myself. Yet I didn’t know how to stop it.
Then on some random day while living in Virginia, I heard then Vice President Joe Biden say, "A fulfilled life is one, having something to do; two, someone to love; and three, something to look forward to.” I liked the succinctness of what he said but it made me feel miserable because by that logic I was 1-2. Then when I lost my job years later, I became 0-3.
When I say my life looks nothing like I thought it would look, it really doesn’t. I now live in Los Angeles and have no desire to move again. A place I never thought I would live. I was born and raised in the Midwest, specifically Gary, Indiana. North Carolina was my target location. Nothing about the west coast appealed to me. Not that I thought it was bad but nothing drew me to the west coast. In 2016, I had to make a very quick trip to LA for work. When I say quick, I mean quick. I was on the ground for less than 24 hours. But it was long enough to leave me intrigued. Mind you I visited LA many years before but somehow this trip struck a chord with me and made me curious about living there.
Also while working in Chicago, the seeds of entrepreneurship were planted in my spirit after working with students pursuing the world of startups and entrepreneurship. I distinctly remember wondering
Could I really make a life for myself on my own accord? Were my skills and talents enough to create a thriving business? I didn’t have a complete answer for that, but I tucked the idea away in my heart and mind as an open question.
All the while I had been praying for something new. Everything felt stale and dull. Though I had relocated multiple times, life was the same just in a different city. I NEEDED something to change to escape the jaws of jadedness. Moving to Los Angeles started to percolate more in my spirit. But I ignored it until I couldn’t. I thought I owed it to myself to try one more time for North Carolina. An opportunity opened up that was as promising as opportunities get. Then things fell apart at the very end in the most inglorious fashion. I guess that was a sign I needed to go all in on LA.
As luck would have it, I found a job in LA that was everything I was looking for. There was even an entrepreneurial aspect to it in that it was a new role on a new team. It began to look like I was moving from 1-2 to 2-1. In my mind, 2 out of 3 was the majority. To get most of what I wanted was certainly better than getting less than what I wanted. Things were looking up. Everything about Los Angeles was new. I would find myself drained, in a good way, every day because it was all new. Nothing about Los Angeles was familiar. Though I was quite experienced in higher education, I knew very little about schools on the west coast. So I was learning something new everyday and I liked that.
When the pandemic hit a year later, everything being so new ended up being a liability. Everything and everyone were new to me and I was new to everything and everyone. Meaning long standing relationships were core to getting through the pandemic. It was tough for me initially but things leveled out. Work was going well until it wasn’t. Less than two and half years later, in the middle of a once in a century world-wide pandemic, I found myself without a job and not of my own doing. Needless to say I experienced a range of emotions, but what hurt me the most was that I went from 2-1 to 0-3 and the vision that I had been praying for continued to elude me (sigh).
Now at this point in my life if I were to take stock of my life using the framework of Harmonious Balance, I was off balance in most of the four energy valences. To illustrate how things were for me, I marked up the What Energy Looks Like scales below. As you can see I was struggling with three of the four energy valences. And while I was doing pretty well physically, it was even more frustrating because I had all this pinned up physical energy with no outlet. It was like being all dressed up with no where to go.
Thankfully, while hope had been deferred ultimately hope did not disappoint. The vision I had long prayed for became clear to me on a Saturday morning in late July. I woke up that morning with an agenda to pick one niece up at the airport and drop the other off at the airport, with a smidgen of time in between so the two sisters could briefly see each other.
That smidgen of time became even smaller because that morning I woke up receiving a vision download like never before! I kept having to pause whatever I was doing to capture thoughts and ideas. It was exhilarating and irritating at the same time.
Exhilarating because it was like I instantaneously went from 0-3 to 2-1. Irritating because we were late getting out the door and arriving to the airport. But the exhilaration outweighed the irritation and I’ll take that any day.
Interestingly enough, I came up with the name Harmonious Balance about a year or so prior and began talking with a graphic designer about a logo, but it wouldn’t be finalized until the vision became clear. The clear vision for Harmonious Balance is detailed on the Harmonious Balance website.
If I were to update the What Energy Looks Like scales now, I would say that all four valences are running in the green!! Now green doesn’t mean perfect. Nothing about this experience has been perfect. It has all the trimmings of entrepreneurship in its early stages. Life challenges do not cease just because I have a newfound vision for my life. My outward circumstances do not match the balance I am experiencing internally.
If I were to add another energy valence, it would be financial. But financial concerns usually show up in the four main valences. So it’s not like our financial worlds are not properly accounted for in the energy management conversation. For me, I sum up my current financial status with the mantra I abided by when I made my first career pivot into a much less paying career. I’m not going to worry about money. My addition to that mantra stemming from financial decisions I have to make presently is, “I’ll do what is required to sustain myself. Doing so is purposeful and there is no shame in that.” At the end of the day, Harmonious Balance ain’t going no where. I’ll ride the tide as it ebbs and flows. There is absolutely no way I’m going to let go so quickly of the thing I prayed for and waited so long to get!!
As for the third that’s missing, I never thought I would arrive at the place where that disappointment would not hurt anymore. But I will say that I’ve attained a level of peace about it that was unimaginable to me before. For that I am truly thankful. I certainly would like to graduate from 2-1 to 3-0. Will that graduation happen? I don’t know. I do know that if it does it will happen along the journey I’m on with Harmonious Balance. In the meantime, there are people in my life that I do love and I have decided not to withhold that love but express it. Love at all levels is meant to be expressed and love at any level is still the ultimate balancer.
Thanks for taking the time to read about my journey. I know it was a lengthier read/listen. If you didn’t notice the offer in the headline picture, the two-year celebration comes with an offer of 22% off 1:1 coaching using the code, HB22. The offer runs through our anniversary month, expiring on 5/31/24.
Much love and appreciation to all for your support of Harmonious Balance!!
Johanna
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What a beautiful and vulnerable account of your journey. You have such a unique and important perspective. Grateful for all the effort you put into Harmonious Balance.