Healthy Tension, not Balance

The Autumn Equinox always reminds me of balance. That rare moment in the year when the sun rises due East and sets due West, when day and night hold equal sway. At least, that’s the idea. Here in London it’s not quite exact: 6:49am to 6:59pm, but near enough for me to pause and reflect.

Balance. It’s something we, as women leaders, are forever chasing. A balance between the endless demands of our work, the constant pressures of home life, the commitments to our loved ones. And, if we’re lucky, the space we carve out for ourselves. We want our work not to swallow our evenings, our families not to drain every last drop of energy, and our “me time” not to get pushed to the bottom of the list. The golden ideal of balance hovers before us, always just out of reach.

But lately I’ve been wondering: is balance really what we want?

Because the truth is, balance is fleeting. A perfect equilibrium where everything lines up neatly rarely lasts longer than a moment, like that precise minute of the Equinox. The rest of the time, life pulls us in different directions. Work surges. Family needs intensify. Our bodies demand rest. Friends tug at our sleeve. The tension is there, always. And instead of exhausting ourselves in the pursuit of balance, what if we learned to work with that tension? What if we reframed it as something not only inevitable, but healthy?

I think of it as healthy tension.

I’m reminded of a string on my cello. Too loose, and it produces nothing but a dull twang. Too tight, and it snaps. But tuned to the right tension, it sings. There’s energy, resonance, even beauty. That’s the kind of tension I’m talking about.  Not the suffocating stress of being pulled thin, but the enlivening energy that comes from recognising the different pulls on our lives and finding a way to tune them to our advantage.

For women leaders, this is especially important. We live in systems that are often unforgiving, that ask us to give endlessly while pretending that balance is attainable if only we try hard enough. But balance implies stasis, and leadership is anything but static. Leadership is dynamic, shifting, sometimes messy. Tension is part of the package.

When we acknowledge the tension, we can make conscious choices about where to dial it up and where to ease it off. Maybe this quarter the tension tips towards work because you’re leading a major transformation. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed at balance. It means you’ve tuned the strings of your life to play the music that matters most right now. Next month, you might consciously loosen the work string and tighten the one that sings of family, or health, or rest.

The tension never disappears, but it doesn’t have to overwhelm you either.

For my clients, this shift can be liberating. Instead of berating themselves for failing to achieve some mythical balance, they learn to engage with the reality of tension and use it as a creative force. It’s not about fighting the seesaw, endlessly tipping up and down. It’s about holding the strings in your hands, tuning them with intention, and letting them carry you forward with vitality.

So here’s my invitation to you: notice the tensions in your life right now. Don’t rush to eliminate them or force them into a rigid balance. Ask instead: how can I tune this tension so that it serves me? What would healthy tension look like for me this week, this season, this year?

Balance may be rare. But healthy tension is always available. And when we learn to embrace it, it can be the very thing that helps us lead with energy, integrity, and joy.