Try looking at balance from another point of view. When you are making significant changes in your life, everything else has to respond to that change because our lives are integrated parts of a whole. The changes may not always be what you expected, and, yes, some of them may not be changes you thought you wanted, but they will occur. In fact, the more significant your shift, the more subsequent changes you can expect. The trick is to not fear change but flow with it. Recognize change as an affirmation that you are, indeed, doing significant work on your life.
Also recognize that you might need to get a support system around you to help you keep a sense of balance in what might be a very disorienting time in your life. You may find you need to set stronger, wider boundaries and maintain a strong commitment to self-care to keep yourself well during major transitions. You may have to ask for help that you didn’t need before (and get your Ego out of the way to let yourself do this). You may find yourself challenging a lot of beliefs and judgments you hold about many things — yourself included!
Keep clear about where you are heading and why. Major change can be tough, but consider this if you are tempted to sit back and let The Fates choose your path:
If you don't watch where you are going, you'll end up where you are headed.
Article comments
1 - Howard Dratch
Laura. Good advice and fair warning to people on the cusp of change. Still, the gain of change is worth the pain.
I left my secure job of 11 years for the vagaries of freelance writing and photography in 1981. Perhaps it was the raw clams at a wedding I shot (I hate weddings!) but I spent nearly 6 months with hepatitus. Accompanied by the need to learn how to photograph and to find clients. In the end I did and the pleasure of 18 years doing what I wanted was worth all the pain.
I, luckily or wisely, have a supportive wife who, along with her parents, never thought much of my being a social worker nor working for the State of New York. She starved with me and worked with me and together we carved out the life we wanted. It took work. It took support.
Good advice, Laura.
2 - Ron Reisman
I wish that I could take the leap to become self employed, although I do not see myself doing it full time until I am retired, I love to take photos and sell them on websites but I do not even clear $100 a month doing that so I still have a long ways to go..:)
3 - Laura Young
So think through the mode by which you are selling your wares. The internet is SOOOO image rich that I think selling photos this way (if that is the only way people can find you) is going to be a very uphill battle. You may be Ansel Adams but if you only showcase your work at flea markets (the web is a flea market of images, available for a song if not outright pirated), then no one will ever know you. Give your work the attention and venue that shows you respect it, then others will be more apt to take you seriously instead of thinking you are just one more guy with a digital camera trying to make a buck.
With me?