The Body Knows Balance Better Than I Do | by The Inner Lab | Nov, 2025

For the longest time, I thought balance meant control.

I believed that if I could just plan every hour, contain every emotion, and perfect every expectation, I would finally find that unmoving center — that static, quiet point where nothing wobbles.

But it never came.

Instead, my weeks became endless, frustrating tremors between too much and not enough: too many plans cluttering the calendar, too many thoughts crowding my head, too much noise drowning out clarity. Yet, at the same time, there was never enough confidence, never enough praise, never enough effort to feel truly secure.

No matter how tightly I organized my time, there was always a quiet hum of inadequacy beneath it, that I was falling just short of the version of myself I was supposed to become. The checklist grew longer, but satisfaction never arrived; every achievement dissolved almost instantly into the next demand for more. Compliments felt temporary, like warm air that slipped through my fingers the moment I tried to hold it.

I kept chasing calm as if it were a finish line, believing that if I could just fix one more flaw or complete one more task, I’d finally earn stillness. But when the silence did come — in those rare, empty weekends or long pauses between projects — it wasn’t the peace I imagined. The quiet felt foreign, almost uncomfortable, like standing in a room where the music had suddenly stopped.

The stillness felt less like peace and more like absence.