As we live our life on auto-pilot, we slowly try to change ourselves to what society wants us to be like.

• Hey son! It is probably time to let go of sports and be serious with your studies.
• You can pause your dance practice for a few years, and focus on your career.
• You are a mom now, that is a full time job. You should forget about writing that blog.

Little by little, life demands that we let go of small pebbles, to accommodate the big rocks and before you know it there are only big rocks left.

Last year I stumbled upon this concept of self-complexity, which has helped me develop a good mental model around balance.

Self-complexity

The concept is simple to grasp. We are what we do on a daily basis.

For simplicity, let’s say you spend 50% of your awake time at work, and the rest 50% with your family. Two big rocks.

When things are all rainbows and butterflies, it probably looks like you have a decent work-life balance. But when things go sideways at work, HALF of you takes a hit and probably some of it creeps into your personal life too.

With COVID, I realized how easy it was for someone to break into your bucket and snatch one of the rocks, and leave you with a big void.

Don’t let the rock outgrow the bucket.

An olympian giving all those years to practice day after day; finds it hard to cope up with normal life post-retirement because for the longest time they had just one rock and they made it the center of their universe.

In the prime years, this hustle might make sense or might look like the only way to go.

But over the years, as we gain more responsibility and maturity it demands a whole version of ourselves.

Self complexity is basically having multiple diverse things, that makes you - YOU.

Look beyond that one rock. You are a father to someone. A good friend. A story-teller. An NGO worker. A bad day at work is much easier to cope with if you have other dimensions in your life that makes you complete.

Allow smaller pebbles into your life

How do we make this shift?

By NOT being rigid about our identities.

For most of my life, I’ve had this belief that I’m a left-brained/logical person, hence I’m not cut out for artistic pursuits and this belief held me back from even attempting to be better at it.

When I let go of this identity, I allowed myself to grow in this space.

So go out there, and pick those smaller pebbles you dropped when you were young. Pick up other shiny pebbles along the way if you like them.

By striving for progress, and not perfection we morph our identity to become a better version of ourselves. A more stable version of ourselves.