Balance is a Tight Rope at Any Age

Normally, this blog is about what I learn from my daughter but sometimes I learn from other teens, and sometimes it’s what I can teach my daughter. This week’s blog is what we can teach each other because this topic is something we ALL struggle with: work-life balance. I know you’re thinking how teenagers don’t have this problem because the majority of their time is spent doing what they want, but that really isn’t true, especially during certain times of the year, especially if you’re an athlete. In fact, it is expected of you NOT to have any balance. You are expected to be work heavy and not have a life except for your sport. How can this be bad, you might ask? Sports keep kids out of trouble. They help motivate kids to keep their grades up. They even give kids something to focus on. So what’s wrong with all of this? Just hear me out. I am a coach, and this was an issue I struggled with and finally overcame. This is also a challenge that many adults face in a somewhat different way. If we can help our children deal with it much earlier in life, perhaps then they will not face the same difficulties we ourselves deal with on a daily basis.

Here’s my first example. It’s basketball season, and that means that it’s all the kids can talk about since the season just started and no one is tired of it yet. One of the players who has only just begun playing, which means she is playing junior varsity, decides to go skiing one day instead of going to practice. She has not missed one practice and they have had tons of practices, Saturday practices, even one practice at midnight. Now I do not condone missing a practice or skipping school to go skiing, but I figured that she went during the week versus the weekend because it was cheaper. I’ve gone skiing on the weekend before and, wow, it is an expensive sport. The assistant coach made the comment that they needed to talk about “commitment to basketball” at practice that day. My question is why? This player doesn’t need to have a lecture about commitment to the sport. What this player was thinking about was doing something she enjoyed, that she was good at. She was adding balance to her life. She had been concentrating everything on basketball. Basketball had been focus, had been her commitment. Is she not allowed to do other things that bring her joy? When we as coaches dominate an athlete’s time so that they can do nothing else but our sport how does that make that player better? Sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve seen many players suffer from burnout way before their senior year. Players who could have been great college players but who were pushed day in and day out by their coaches to do nothing but their sport and were berated when they did anything else. I do concede that it depends on the person and their love of the sport, but I experienced this myself as a cross country coach.

I had ten runners. I had some who were very serious about running and wanted to compete at a higher level and some who told me point blank that they joined cross country solely to stay in shape for another sport. I had to deal with that. They participated in practice, had decent attitudes, and gave enough effort but really weren’t interested in competing at a higher level, and that was okay. I had to realize it was their journey, and their decision did not reflect on me as a coach. Not everyone is meant to be a college runner or even a runner at state level. It was enough for some of them just to be out there. Just like it’s enough for that young woman to be out there on the basketball court.

This doesn’t just happen with sports. Work is the same thing. I see this with myself, my husband, and my 17-year-old daughter. She stepped away from one job where she was putting in long hours for another one where it’s practically the same pattern. Maybe that’s just how high school jobs are or maybe she learned from me and my husband. If I’m being honest, I feel lazy if I’m not doing something over the weekend. I mean, I do work two jobs, excluding this blog, and now that it’s the slow season for photography, I feel as if I’m a slug. Why do we associate time to ourselves and our family with these negative thoughts? I know my daughter sees this because when she is home, she’s always cleaning or working on something. She is very rarely doing something for herself. It doesn’t seem to matter what age we are, none of us understand how to truly balance our lives where we can be happy. We always associate success with someone who is working hard. It’s not about someone who is happy. It’s encouraged for someone to put in those long hours, to put in the time to be better. It’s no different in the workplace than it is on the court.

Instead of demanding our athletes and workers complete obedience, what if we demonstrated ways to have work-life balance? Don’t you feel better after a weekend of restful sleep and spending time doing something you love? I know I do. We need to help our children and ourselves learn that it is acceptable to allot time doing activities we love and spending time with those we care about. It’s alright to step away from the basketball court or the office because that time spent away will help you appreciate it more when you return to it. Be a better person and in turn, you might even be a better player or worker. If nothing else, you might love yourself a little more, or maybe get a little more out of this precious thing we call life.