Does anyone else feel like they're in a season of life where everything is getting about a third of the attention it deserves? I sure do. Work projects, home maintenance, quality time with the kids, dating my husband, personal hobbies and goals, family events, enjoying downtime, etc. I'm juggling 15 balls at once, while trying to figure out which one is okay to let fall to the floor without causing the rest to. We frequently discuss this topic in our day-to-day business at ALPs. We all feel this juggling at different times; sometimes, there are weeks when we struggle together. And we’re always relying on each other. If you're anything like us, you're also trying to figure out how to improve in all of the above, not just check them off the list.
We all carry our own mental loads, whether at home, in the workplace, or in our personal activities. The mental load is traditionally attributed to Moms, those who are usually at home more and manage the children's schedule, activities, and the household. Often, those Moms have their own careers and lead teams in the workplace, and have to remember that the plumber is coming between 12:00 and 4:00 pm, Grandma needs flowers for her birthday next week, and the dogs’ annual vet appointment is coming up. However, the mental load isn't limited to Moms, or just parents for that matter.
I'll go out on a limb and say that if you're an empathetic, caring, high-performing person, you likely carry a heavy mental load, regardless of who you are. We're all doing our best, trying to improve, and constantly wondering if we're ever doing enough. We get ourselves worked up trying to stay calm amid everything that's going on, and wonder if we're “successful”.
What if the answer isn't in doing more, but in how we approach what we're already doing? At ALPs, we've seen organizations transform not by adding more initiatives or chasing the newest trend, but by deeply focusing on their most critical priorities. We’ve also seen the complete opposite. The same applies to our personal juggling acts. What if success isn't about catching every ball perfectly but about identifying the glass balls that cannot drop and handling the rest with more ease?
Effortless Effort
There is a concept of "effortless effort" that's been transforming my perspective lately. I’ve been a yoga teacher on the side for three years now, and one of the most important foundational texts of yoga philosophy is the Yoga Sutras by an Indian sage named Patanjali. While he is credited as the author, it is thought that four different philosophers compiled the text, completing it around 400 BC. Highly readable, it not only details the physical practice of yoga, but also concentration, meditation, ethics, ignorance, ego, and attachment. Yoga in Sanskrit means “union” or “connection” - not only with the highest version of your Self but with the Divine. Yoga actually comprises physical, mental, and spiritual practices, not just the typical idea of people doing specific physical postures wearing tight yoga pants….but that’s another blog for another day!
Yoga Sutra 1.2 discusses how any form of yoga is for “stilling the fluctuations of the mind”. When the mind is active with thoughts, emotions, and sensations, we mistakenly identify with these mental processes rather than our true essence. Everything that we have to do, becomes who we are. Our ability to have pure awareness is obscured by the mind's incessant activity. It’s just not our to-do lists that cause our mind chaos. It’s also the rest of the stuff we let clutter our minds - perceptions, assumptions, misconceptions, interpretations of words and events…all the “what ifs” of our lives.
We've become conditioned to believe that more effort equals better results. We push harder, stay up later, and squeeze in more activities. Should we add another product to our mix just to eek out a few more dollars, clean the dirty baseboards in our house that are driving us crazy, or sign up my kid for another afterschool activity? Then we wonder why we feel overwhelmed and disconnected from the very things we're working so hard to nurture.
The concept of “effortless effort” in the yoga world comes from B.K.S. Iyengar, one of the most influential teachers of the 20th century. He was instrumental in bringing yoga to the West, and his book Light on Yoga is considered the bible of modern yoga. Effortless effort was a fundamental concept in his teaching that he drew directly from Yoga Sutra 2.47, translated as "Perfection in an asana is achieved through relaxation of effort and meditation on the infinite." While this Sutra refers to asana, the physical poses of yoga, this concept goes beyond the yoga mat to any effort in our lives. Applied to everyday life, can we find the perfect balance between active engagement and letting go? Applying deliberate effort to getting things done, while maintaining a quality of ease. Too much effort creates tension and strain; too little leads to collapse and inattention.
Aim Small, Miss Small
There's something profoundly liberating about accepting that we cannot do it all – at least not all at once, and not all perfectly. The modern expectation that we should excel in every domain simultaneously—career, parenting, relationships, health, home management, community engagement, and personal development—is unrealistic; it's a recipe for perpetual dissatisfaction. What if we embraced the reality that some seasons of life will naturally emphasize certain areas over others? What if we trusted that the balls we temporarily set down could be picked up again when the time is right?
I had to set down some balls when I was gone for nearly 12 days last fall on a trip to Japan. My husband Matt held down the fort while I was on the other side of the world. He has his own mental load that I can only try to imagine. He’s the President and CEO of a privately held company where he carries the livelihoods of 250 employees, both management in the office and mariners working on tugboats 24/7/365 away from their families, shareholders, board members, and customers. Not to mention being a phenomenal husband and father to our three kids.
While I was gone, I did my best not to worry about whether our youngest daughter was eating chicken nuggets for every meal, if Matt had to miss important meetings he otherwise wouldn’t, or if Blayne and Brandon’s inboxes were filling up with my responsibilities. But something reassuring happened instead. Yes, tasks were waiting for me. Yes, some things had fallen through the cracks. But, my family had not only survived but found new rhythms in my absence, my work family had stepped up in ways I hadn't anticipated, and the chaos I expected was largely a creation of my mind.
I'm learning that this isn't about lowering standards or giving up on important priorities. It's about narrowing the scope of our finite energy and building systems that enable us to thrive even when we feel like we aren’t.
Creating Our Calm
Fostering a sense of calm in order to handle our mental load isn't something we can hope will work itself out all the time. It doesn’t come from outside sources, and we can’t count that it will. Calm is something we create. We can make our own calm when we're in the chaos, despite whatever is happening around us. And we can create calm by building resilient systems that can weather change and uncertainty, and trusting those systems when we need them.
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
In the workplace, these systems can look like project management tools, content calendars, and standing meetings to review schedules and responsibilities. The same can be done in our personal lives. Call us nerds, but Matt and I enjoy going over our calendars at dinner together! And do small things to plan for success, like preloading the coffee maker the night before to remove additional steps while hustling our daughter out the door in the morning.
We also create calm in our minds and bodies through sleep hygiene, movement, hydration, and nutrition. When our sleep isn’t optimal because we’re flying on a red-eye the next day or our kid is up all night sick, having our diet and hydration locked in can help balance out the fatigue. When we don’t have time to make it to the yoga studio or crush a garage WOD, we can get some extra steps in before that dinner with friends. And sometimes, every so often, we can allow ourselves that midday nap to catch up after those long flights and rough nights. The point is, we can choose to create calm in small ways when things aren’t going according to our best-laid plans.
Can we model this perspective for our teams and families, creating a culture where challenges become opportunities to go with the flow, rather than triggers for stress?
Perhaps the true art of "effortless effort" isn't about doing less, but about bringing a different quality to how we show up. It's about recognizing that even in the midst of our most overwhelming seasons, we have the capacity to center ourselves, to choose our response, and to find meaning in the effort itself, not just in the visible results.
We're learning that success isn't measured by perfect execution across all domains simultaneously. It's measured by our ability to move with intention, to create systems that support us when we falter, and to approach our whole lives with a spirit of gratitude rather than overwhelm. We may never achieve the perfect balance—perhaps that's not even the point. But, in embracing the principle of effortless effort, we might just find that elusive sense of calm amidst the beautiful chaos of our full, meaningful lives.
