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What's up guys? Welcome back to Build and today we are going to talk about balance. So sexy. This came up a lot and it's been something like very much on my mind since getting pregnant because I think as soon as I posted that I was pregnant and made the announcement, people everywhere and women messaging me, I'm so excited to see you do it all. I'm so excited to watch you like master your career and your family and your health and all this stuff. Like I just haven't figured it out yet.

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it really sent me down this

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path of thinking about balance and the fact that a lot of people are really unhappy. And it feels like what we tell ourselves is that when we get to this place where we have this thing that we call balance, that we will be happy, that we're finally going to feel okay about our career, our relationship, our kids, our friendships, our body, our health, our spiritual life, like everything.

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And then we're finally going to be like, I've made it. And I can be happy now and I can die in peace. And as I was thinking about it, I was asking myself, like, why is it that I don't have, like, I don't share in this feeling of discontent around my priorities and the things that I have in my life. And as I was thinking about it, I was like, oh, wow.

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really interesting. I think the reason why a lot of people are unhappy and want to find this place of balance to feel happy is because what they don't realize is that they've never picked. They've never actually decided what matters most to them. And so I think most people are happy, not because they have too many things, but because they haven't decided what matters most right now. Not necessarily because they picked wrong.

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And so as I started thinking about that, I was like, that makes so much sense to me because any time in my life that I've felt like,

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unhappy. It's usually been because I haven't had clarity around what the number one priority is, or I felt like I've had to balance like 17 things at once. And so because of that, I felt like I'm failing in all these other areas because I set myself up to fail because I didn't define my priorities. Like is the priority to score that goal, that goal, that goal, that goal? Which one do I score first?

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And so after realizing that, it was really helpful for me because I think, you know, in the season I'm going into, like I made it very clear to everybody, like my child will come before everything. Obviously there's myself because I take care of the child, but like my child will come first, especially in the first few months, probably first few years of its life because that's just the season I'm going to enter. And so I made the conscious choice of like, that's what life is going to look like. And that's something that me and my husband decided. You know, whereas like the last 10 years of my life,

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There were many times where it was like the business comes first or our marriage comes first or us improving something comes first. Alex and I always talked about what's coming first right now. And we're not afraid to force rank amongst all the things that we love because I think that's where things get tough is you feel like, oh, fuck. I don't want to say that like fuck.

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You know, not seeing family or not seeing friends, it's not a priority. It's like, okay, but is it more important than raising your child right now? Is it more important than making your business, you know, take off the ground right now when you're, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt? Like, it is whatever it is for your situation right now. So...

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I think the only question is whether you decide which is most important on purpose or whether you kind of like let it get decided for you. And as I was asking people a lot of questions, I was doing this on Dear Layla, talking to people about balance and priorities and stuff. And I just realized like most people never decide. They just kind of like drift in some kind of direction that, I don't know, they think they're supposed to go in or it's the easiest to go in or whatever it might be.

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you know, the work that you have in your life expands to fill the time that you have. People requesting things of you, your inbox, those all become how you prioritize, not like you actually prioritizing. I think even worse is like, I talked about this on my last podcast, but like guilt starts to kind of decide what you do. Like whatever you feel most bad about, it's like, I feel really bad that I'm a bad friend, I'm a bad wife, I'm a bad mom. And you start using the feel bads as how you set an agenda for your life and what you do and the priorities that you have.

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Rather than sitting down and actually saying, out of everything that matters to me, this matters the most right now in this moment.

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And I think it takes a decent amount of boldness to make that decision. But I think that it is so freeing once you do it, because the irony of it is that not deciding is still a decision. It's just one that you don't have to take credit for if it's not good. And I think that's why a lot of us want to just remain in the place of indecision is because...

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You feel like, well, if I don't decide, then at least when it doesn't work out, like, I'm not going to get blamed for it, right? And I think that a lot of people do that. And so it's okay. Like, I've done it before, too. And I think, you know, in the beginning, when I got pregnant, I was faced with a lot of these choices, which is like...

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oh shit, like it was not expected. It wasn't planned. I had this whole year planned out. I was going to like launch my book literally like in the next month or two. I was going to go on a tour. I was going to do all this stuff that I was like so excited to do that was so outside my comfort zone and like also really exciting for me and like a new adventure. And then I got pregnant and I was like, wow, what? How do I want to handle this? Because I had a lot of options because the reality is like when you do have means, you do have options. So I'm like, I could...

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continue with those plans. I could do this and I could do that. And like just trying out like the different types of lives that I could have was almost like what I was like thinking about. I was like, oh, I could have this life. I could have this life. I could be this type of mom, this type of mom. I could have this type of business. And it took a minute.

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for me to kind of get back to just realizing what I wanted. And that meant making a decision and then eliminating other options. So I committed to like how I'm gonna show up for my child and for myself during that season. And when I say committed, it means like I canceled my book launch, well, postponed. So I will be launching my book, just not for a little while. I changed.

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the type of content I was going to be making. I had this new show that we were producing. It was so fucking cool. It was so, it was so cool. I had so much fun. Um, and we will bring it back at some point, but I got a few episodes in and I just said to myself, like, this is just not the season for this. It takes...

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a whole day to do one episode. It's very tedious in terms of like scheduling logistics, location logistics, the build out, the set, all those things. And I said, you know,

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A decision is not a decision unless you have to sacrifice. And so I canceled the show, lost a couple hundred thousand dollars in what we'd invested thus far. And there was just a lot of stuff that was really painful that I had to undo because I was now presented with this new decision. And with this new information, I'm pregnant and having a kid, I had different choices to make. And I think a choice by definition is when you choose one door and you close the others. And so I said, okay.

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I'm closing the others. And it doesn't mean forever, but it means not right now. Because could I do all of that right now while I'm pregnant? I'm about to have a kid. I could. But I've also wanted this other thing really badly. And it just happened to fall into a season where I also wanted something else. And I'm not going to fight the season I'm in.

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So I hope that helps someone here. I think that there's, I've spent different times in my life, like arguing with reality and fighting the season I was in.

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And I was just like, yeah, I'm not going to do that anymore. Like I'm in this season. I am pregnant for the first time. It is scary at times. It is unnerving. It is unpredictable. I have no idea what to expect. Everyone's pregnancy is different. I am not immune to all those things. Like just because I am who I am and I have succeeded in these other areas of life.

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It just doesn't change that. So it felt really good to me to say this is my decision and I'm sticking with it. Everything else comes second. And it felt freeing in a way. Really unnatural to me because that's just not how my life has worked. And that's not how I've set up my business. That's not how people know me to be in the business. But I feel good about my decision.

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I want that for everybody that's watching this. You know, a lot of people also message me and they're like, I'm sure as soon as you have the baby, you're going to get right back into shape. And I'm like, that sounds terrible because I probably want to have another. So like why, I don't know. The logic for me is like, I would rather just, you know, try as my best to just stay healthy during the pregnancy and then have another child as close to the one as possible. So it's just really interesting because we make all these assumptions and there's all these assumptions that society puts on us.

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And this is just, you know, one area that I'm experiencing right now, but this is in business, this is in life, this is everywhere. And you get to choose. That's the thing is like you get to choose. And you don't need to feel guilty for the fact that not everything is a fucking priority right now. I actually think there's something like really freeing about that because if everything's a priority, then nothing is. It's like, oh yeah, well, all these 10 areas of my life on the spinny wheel that I have here, they're all priority. And here's how I balance with one hour a day on each.

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That might work for like a few days. But guess what? Fucking kid gets sick. Something doesn't go right at your business. Someone fucking quits. The weather fucking blows up. Like there's a natural disaster. Something goes wrong in the economy. Like there's so many things that happen. But it's also like when if you're one of those people that tries to just fit absolutely everything in all the time, I think there's nothing wrong with that if you have the utmost flexibility.

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Because the most flexible system always wins. If you are rigid in the way that you stick with things and if not doing something and not completing an area of your life that day or fulfilling an area of your life is going to make you feel like a failure, you're going to feel like a failure every fucking day. You're going to set yourself up to fail. You're going to feel like shit all the time. So something else to think about. And that's why I think that

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like balance in general, fails as a fucking goal. It fails as a goal because it implies that everything is of the same weight at the same time.

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It is not. Something is always heavier than the other thing. Something is always lighter than the other thing. So to say that we're going to have our life balanced on this wheel, it is like fundamentally flawed. Something is heavier. It's not going to turn perfectly. It's not going to be this perfect balance wheel. And I think you just have to be really honest about what is heavy and what is light. What do you want to make heavier? What do you want to make lighter?

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Not what do your parents want, what does society want, what do people on social fucking media want, but like what do you want? So here's what I want to leave you guys with. I know this is a shorter one, but it was just a rant, so I don't want to keep reading if it's not good. If you feel like you are failing right now at balancing things in your life, I want you to ask yourself this really simple question. Have I actually decided...

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what matters most right now? Not what matters most to other people, not what matters most to your family or your spouse, but have you decided what matters most to you right now? Right now. What matters most to you right now? That doesn't mean it's going to be in a month or a year or two years.

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And it doesn't matter to me, it's to other people, but what matters most to you in this exact moment. If you can just make a choice about what matters most to you right now and accept that that means other things won't get as much time and attention or they will have less rather than none. I think a lot more people would be a lot happier. So let me know what you guys think in the comments. Can you relate to this? I feel like it's like the constant...

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constant fight that people are in, especially like in this modern age when everything is flashing at you all the time to pay attention to it. I think the best thing you can do is slow down and ask yourself what matters most to you right now.