The 100 Ball Theory

I dress in the dark these days – winter in South Africa.

Some mornings, my socks are upside down and inside out because I’m trying to beat the sun to the finish line. It’s a quiet, clumsy start to a day that I already know will feel like a race with untied shoes.

I used to think balance was a static thing—a scale that stayed perfectly level if you just put the right weights in the right places. But lately, my life feels less like a scale and more like a circus act. I am juggling 300 balls at once.

Work. Homework. The endless cycle of laundry. Deciding what’s for dinner. Deciding what to wear. Feeding the dogs. Feeding the spider. Filling the car. Making the appointments. Making sure everyone else has their medicine, their food, their lunch boxes.

I juggle the 300, I inevitably drop 200, and then I focus all my energy on the 100 left spiraling in the air, praying I don’t drop those too.

The messy reality of juggling is that we never choose to drop the “important” balls. We don’t drop the work meeting or the school run. The balls I drop are usually the ones labeled with my own name.

I forget to relax. I forget to moisturize. I forget to drink water.

Some days, everything feels like a chore. Even the things that are supposed to be “living”—driving to the supermarket, filling the car with fuel—feel like they are weighing down my pockets. It becomes too much. The big picture feels too large, a blurry landscape of responsibilities that I can’t quite navigate.

I’ve read somewhere that to keep your balance, you first have to know when you’ve lost it. For me, it’s that moment in the dark, staring at an inside-out sock, wondering when “me” became the lowest priority on the list.

There is a famous quote by Albert Einstein that says life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

It’s a lovely thought, but what happens when the bicycle stops? It falls over. And if we stay seated, we fall with it. To stop the fall, we have to move. We have to pedal.

But pedaling doesn’t mean sprinting. Maybe balance isn’t about perfectly still hands; maybe it’s about the “wobble”. It’s identifying which balls are made of glass and which are made of plastic.

Work and meetings? Important. Family and food? Important. Sleep? Very important.

But then there are the chores. They are important, sure, but I’ve started asking myself: Do I really have to do this today?. Sometimes, the answer is no. Sometimes, leaving the dishes in the sink is the only way to keep the “Self” ball in the air.

Regaining that center starts with focusing on what you can influence today rather than worrying about the vast, scary unknown. When the chaos shouts, we have to whisper back.

I’ve found that the easiest way to find my feet again is to strip my ambitions down to the smallest possible tasks. Instead of saying, “I want more balance with my family,” I set a goal to have ten minutes of real time with one special person.

We don’t have to do it alone, and we don’t have to do it perfectly.

Balance is leaning into the discomfort and accepting what we can’t control. It’s practicing a bit of emotional flexibility when life throws an obstacle our way. We might curse and frown while we navigate it, but we keep moving toward that place where comfort lies.

At the end of the day, balance looks less like a circus act and more like a quiet room.

It’s the glass of wine while reading a favorite book. It’s the few minutes of focused time with family. We work hard so that we can play—or simply breathe—at the end of the day.

This month, we are looking at balance in all its forms: work, finances, emotions, and relationships. We are going to figure out how to keep the bicycle going without exhausting the rider.

Maybe we’ll realize that we need to take care of ourselves before we try to carry all 300 balls. Or maybe we’ll just get better at picking up the ones we drop.

Tomorrow, I might still dress in the dark. My socks might still be inside out. But as long as I’m pedaling, I’m still upright. I might buy McDonalds for dinner because I simply don’t have the mindset to cook.

I think it counts as self-care too…

And as we navigate the wobble of the week, maybe the simplest thing to remember is that we aren’t so different from the greenery sitting on our windowsills. You are a house plant, really—you need your water, you need your sun, and you need the space to grow at your own pace. The only difference is that your feelings are a little more complicated and your “balls” are a little harder to catch. So, keep pedaling that bicycle, be kind to yourself when you drop a ball, and trust that even on the days you dress in the dark, you’re still moving forward.