Maybe, it was never about balance.
Maybe the problem was never the split. Maybe it was the direction.
For two decades, I was the person in the room who could always find the blind spot - in a brief, in a pitch, or in a team member.
That was the job. Advertising doesn’t pay you for your own clarity; it pays you for theirs. I built strategy decks for companies with more care than I ever built a plan for my own life. I knew my clients’ five-year vision cold. I couldn’t have told you mine if you’d asked me at gunpoint. I was just following the plan, man… just climbing this ladder… (to where never even crossed my mind?)
I called that range. Some days I called it commitment. Looking back, it was just motion. A lot of it, mostly caffeine-induced, slightly manic, and pointed at nothing I’d actually chosen.
If this is the first time you’re reading me, here’s the short version: I spent four decades living life on high throttle, and I built By Way of Grey to help women rewrite the story once they notice the throttle isn’t actually taking them anywhere they picked.
But let’s get back to the balance conversation I promised in the title. It assumes the problem is proportion, that you just need less work and more rest, a slightly different split of the same pie. I don’t think that’s it. I think the actual problem is direction. You can have the pie split perfectly and still be building a life that isn’t yours, just very evenly.
You already know how to build a plan for things that aren’t you. You do it every quarter for the company. You do it for your family’s calendar, color-coded, even the dog accounted for. You ask your friends and kids real questions about what they love and fear and want, and you remember the answers. When did you turn that same attention back on yourself?
For most of us women... it’s never. We just kept moving, add in a splash of online yoga and a face mask, and call the motion balance, because that word makes the exhaustion sound like a skill instead of what it actually is: a life running without a map.
Photo Cred: @nathantwright
Here’s what changes the day you ask the direction question instead of the balance question. You stop measuring your worth by how much you got done, and start measuring it by how present you were for the parts that actually mattered. You stop performing a life that reads well from the outside, and start building one that holds up from the inside, with nobody watching.
And you finally forgive yourself for letting the things that don’t matter to you fall away. (And some of the people that show you that you don’t matter to them will, too). Finding yourself can be a lonely place at times, but this mission is critical.
None of that requires you to slow down, if slowing down isn’t actually what you want. And it also allows you to, unapologetically, if you do want that. (Even as just a short test run… long live the sabbatical!!!) It requires you to get honest about the direction, and then move, without asking anyone’s permission first. But for the love of god, stop moving just because you think you are supposed to.
This is it. This is your life. Not the one after the list is finally done... there is no after, the list regenerates - that’s what lists do. This one life, the one you’re already living, is the one worth pointing somewhere on purpose.
Your step this week
Here’s the actual thing to do, and it’s small on purpose.
One: answer this question honestly, out loud or on paper. If nobody was watching what would I actually build my days around?
Two: move one thing toward the answer this week. One block on your calendar. One “no” you’ve been owing yourself. One “yes” you keep postponing. Direction doesn’t start with a five-year plan, it starts with a single honest move you make on purpose.
That’s it. That’s the work this week.
And if you want to tell me what you came up with, hit reply. There is genuinely nothing I love more than watching someone say the true thing out loud for the first time. This isn’t a newsletter I write at you. It’s a conversation, and I’m really glad you’re in it.
From The Grey,
Laura
Your Life, Your Terms
By Way Of Grey is about helping ambitious women create sustainable success by aligning behavior, belief, and bandwidth through integrative, nervous system-aware coaching, behavior science, and values-based strategies for lasting change that feels balanced, not borrowed.
I’m Glad You’re Here
I’m Laura, an ex-advertising executive turned health coach. After navigating my own life transitions, I learned the power of embracing life between the black and white, loving the “messy middle” I call the grey space. Now, I help others find joy and fulfillment in their journeys, empowering them to break free from conventional expectations and love life, messy moments and all.