on balance
A big welcome to all new readers! I am Judit; by day a long-time corporate CEO, business thinker and entrepreneur; and by night after changing out of the black sheath dress into jeans I become an infinitely curious writer exploring how we live now and how we can shape our future. Off duty, I love chatting and writing about urban life, culture, societies and how geopolitics shapes them, nutrition – and the occasional tv shows that shape conversations. I’m particularly passionate about balance, wellbeing practices and urban greenery. Thanks for being here. I’d love for you to join the conversation too, so feel free to add your comments on the site.
As a side effect of the pandemic, after two very busy decades, I’ve finally had time to think. I’ve been thinking a lot.
About businesses, strategy and management, leadership in general and how new skills need to be developed to manage those stealthily but radically changed organisations. About a new way of life we can create on the back of this incredible disruption that created some reversible and many more unreversible changes.
About how our cities serve us and don’t serve us and how we don’t have to live with high levels of air pollution. About how our relationships changed, how we get information, who we trust and why and whether our politicians are up to the task.
About what we eat, and how, about the meaning of sharing food with people we love, and how eating local means missing out on things but eating seasonal can be such a joy exactly because of the transitory nature of produce. How as one extreme diet disappears two others pop up while healthy eating is batted away.
Over long lockdown days, I couldn’t help but think about how advice on social media is not just ubiquitous but often baseless, unsupported by fact or experience, but is worded as the definite truth. How ‘the only way to’ and ‘you must do this if you want to be successful’ are not just harmful but plain wrong as everyone’s circumstances are different. How non-experts shout loud while experts try to decide whether to risk troll outrage for pointing out issues or just ignore and move on.
I’ve been thinking about the people who are less fortunate than me and my relations, and about how many more fortunate ones don’t care about those who are left behind. About how some people attack, viciously, reason and expertise that don’t fit with decisions they already made rather than ask questions and re-evaluate. That social media and careless algorithms made them do it. How holding extreme points of view is becoming the norm and extreme hostility towards those who oppose these is the response we now expect to see. Outrage sells. That so many sensible and thoughtful people self-censor constantly so as to avoid being attacked by trolls. Self-censoring to preserve their mental health. How bipolar tribalism became the norm as if overnight and moderate views don’t even make it onto our timelines.
How the words of extremes are ruining us and now we need to find balance.
Those familiar with Eastern philosophies would have heard of the Tao or Dao, which essentially means The Way. That’s all. Nothing more, nothing less, just ‘the way’, which is of course everything. I find Daoism fascinating, especially when there is no one definite answer. In our modern lives, we often look for absolutes, and hacks, ways to tick things off our lists and move on. We want to live our lives in a fast, linear fashion. Start, do, move on, start new, and so on. But our lives are not linear. Problems are not linear. Neither are projects and personal development.
But I digress. I wanted to talk about Balance.
One step towards balancing our lives is to recognise that many of those definite soundbites, or motivational quotes, we get bombarded with and thus internalise without realising is picked and loved by - algorithms. You only have to look back at books, thoughts and teaching by sages at any time in history to see that simple soundbites and definite actions were never, in fact, simple. It is wise to realise that while simple definitive soundbites look good on a (virtual) post-it note on Instagram or in a 140 character limited tweet, as much as it makes us feel good that we have found an easy solution to all our troubles – they are not in fact the same as sage advice. They are click baits. That is all.
Sage advice of course can be communicated in very simple ways. Sage advice is often short. But there is a lot of thought behind it. And it often doesn’t sound sexy. However, simply communicated sage advice makes you think. It doesn’t give you the dopamine kick of that ‘yeah I have it all figured out now I just do what this post-it worthy half-sentence says’. Quite the opposite.
It makes you ponder. It makes you slightly uncomfortable as you start thinking about what those words really mean. To you. As the simple form hides complex thinking. There is no shortcut but you shouldn’t be afraid of complex thinking. And you won’t be once you accept that there is no definite answer.
Because there is indeed a ‘way’, but it isn’t just one way. You have to make it Your Way - and that’s hard work.
And with that, I’m off in search of balance so I can share it with you.