Running Away from What Actually Works – Why Are We Still Doing That?

Balance is a habit, not a short term cure

In a culture that prioritizes the high-stakes thrill of the "hustle," we often treat balance as a temporary emergency measure rather than a sustainable foundation. In this episode, we explore why we tend to abandon the very habits that make us feel human the moment we find our rhythm. We break down the necessity of maintenance and why running toward what works is the key to building a life you don't need a break from.

From “surviving” a sudden earthquake warning in California to navigating the pitfalls of being overly career-identified, this conversation shifts the focus from "curing" burnout to maintaining a consistent, satisfying hum. Whether you are tweaking your fitness routine or reassessing your professional identity, learn how to build guardrails that keep you balanced without losing the excitement of novelty.

Onward and Inward,

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CHAPTERS:

• (00:00) Why are we still doing that?

• (00:52) Mind Share: Surviving a California earthquake warning

• (03:41) Maintenance: The third pillar of balance

• (07:44) Chasing the thrill vs. embracing the "hum"

• (10:53) Novelty within a balanced baseline

• (12:10) Fitness evolution: From hiking to mobility

• (15:32) The trap of being career-identified

• (19:40) Worth the Time: Barre classes

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Habit over Cure: Balance should be treated as a daily baseline rather than a "snapback" recovery from burnout.

• The Power of the Hum: True satisfaction comes from the steady "hum" of maintenance, which provides the safety to experiment with new things.

• Self-Knowledge is Vital: You cannot determine what works for your life if you do not first understand how you work fundamentally.

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Kent: Most of us treat balance like a cure, not a habit. We push ourselves to the brink, finally find a rhythm that works, and then immediately stop doing it the second we feel human again. We’ve convinced ourselves that we can go back to the grind and be fine. But if we know deep down that this snapback is just setting us up for the next burnout, why do we stop doing what actually works?

Welcome to the No Vacation Required podcast, where we break down tired traditions and outdated thinking by asking the question, why are we still doing that? It’s all about building a life you don’t need a break from, being more present and fulfilled, and showing up in a complicated world that needs your voice and unique talents.

Caanan: All right, Kent, I’m going to have you do mindshare because I know what you’re going to talk about and I’m excited for you to say it.

Kent: Yeah, well, but I’m so obsessed with thinking about this that I actually think we’ve talked about this before. I think I maybe mentioned this before.

Caanan: I don’t think we did, but in case we did.

Kent: Well, I’m going to keep it short. In case you missed the last time, I may have talked about it. We were away a little while ago in California and all of a sudden we got—I wish I could pull it up and read it, but I don’t have time to do that. Like severe instant earthquake warning. Like, what did it say? Severe earthquake in your area. Immediately follow earthquake protocol. And we were in a five story building at the time, ran outside, but I found myself just like completely—not paralyzed.

Caanan: Right.

Kent: Certainly not physically paralyzed, but kind of mentally paralyzed. And here we have this great life and I have no regrets. Literally at peace going anytime at this point. So grateful for the good life that I’ve had and we’ve had. But in that moment, I completely freaked out. So. I think those exercises that we do where you envision these things—you know, we’ve done a really cool thing. We’ve written our obituaries. We do all that stuff. It’s the work we’re in. These are exercises we have our clients do, but those are not a waste of time because I had one of those moments and I had a lot running through my mind, not total peace.

Caanan: Yeah. So two things about that stick out for me. One, apparently people in Southern California are quite used to these because this was like, for those of you who have not gotten one, like an Amber Alert. And it was very scary. And we booked it out of the building we were in, but everybody else seemed very laissez faire about it, which I cannot wrap my brain around.

Kent: I don’t think everybody, but some people did. Yeah, it was strange.

Caanan: That was strange. But also to your point, Kent, I think imagining these things happening, doing emergency drills and the like, really are worth it. Like when you’re on a plane and they’re doing the look at where your nearest exit is, like actually look at where your nearest exit is. Because when this stuff comes up, you realize that, yeah, your fight, flight, freeze—

Kent: Yeah, whatever. Your body takes over.

Caanan: System takes over. And if you don’t have a little bit of a plan in the back of your mind, it can be really, really shocking.

Kent: In this series, we’re talking about balance. One of our favorite topics we’ve said in the last two episodes, this is the third episode in this series, that this is a core. This was a foundational kind of shared value of ours, a very important thing for us. And of course, balance, it’s a huge topic that comes up in the kind of work that we do. So it’s been fun to, in our first week, talk about energy management and how we are trying to lean into more intuitive energy management. That’s a Kent and Caanan work in progress moment.

In week two, we talked about prioritization. We asked, why are we still pretending everything is important? And this is an area where we excel.

Caanan: We’re solid here.

Kent: We’re solid in knowing what is worthwhile. And Caanan talked a lot in that episode about knowing yourself and once again, how important that is, how pivotal that is to building a no vacation required life. So here we are in week three, maintenance. We’re asking, why are we running away from what actually works? Maintenance is such a big thing that comes up. Of course, it’s a huge part of, you know, coaching and therapy. Once you’ve gotten there, wherever "there" is in healing or in growing, you want to maintain or you want to continue growing, but so many people, especially as it relates to balance—how many people do we know who are just hanging on or freewheeling it, beating themselves up, stretching themselves so thin until they get through X.

We were with some friends recently who are in the midst of that mindset and it’s just so unhealthy. I mean, we all have times where we have to push through and we’re surging or we’ve got a creative energy, so we’re working to finish the project or the chapter or the book or the whatever. That’s great, but not inviting balance in a way that’s maintained. Not learning from those previous surges and fallbacks and surges and fallbacks. I think I joked, was it last episode or the episode before about something that’s very real: people like going off kilter to the left one day and eating 3000, 4000 calories and then swerving the other direction the next day and eating 600 calories. This is what we’re talking about, your lived version of that balance that isn’t balance at all.

So we were talking before this episode about all the things that we do to maintain this very important place that balance has in the way we individually and as a couple operate. Because if there’s anything we’ve learned in these last, what, 10 years, especially, everything is fragile and you’ve gotta keep balance. You gotta keep it tight and always be paying attention to it. And if you’re gonna veer off, you have guardrails around that stuff. But I’m just so proud of all the different ways that we take this seriously, that we take maintenance seriously, that we don’t want to run away from what actually works. We want to run toward what actually works.

Caanan: Yeah, I think what you’re talking about is something that we’ve mentioned a couple of times and it’s this idea of—well, last episode we talked about "I’ll sleep when I’m dead," but there’s this whole hustle hard, rest later, but the rest later never comes. It’s like you’re hustling to achieve a point where you can maintain, but the maintenance part never actually comes because you’re always just hustling or a new crisis comes in or you’re not able to find the balance, so you’re just always going and achieving until you crash. And this is where we get the sort of sine wave situation where it’s like, push hard, crash, push hard, crash, run forward, fall back, run forward, fall back.

Kent: This is why I said that in the intro. That’s exactly what I was thinking when I wrote that intro. Most people treat balance like a cure, not a habit, right? So it’s like the bounce back from your having veered the other way. We don’t look at it as, wow, I want to feel balanced. I want this rest. You used that word rest. I want this rest incrementally in my life.

Caanan: I think people, they don’t understand how good the hum can feel, the hum of balance, the hum of maintenance.

Kent: Yes.

Caanan: Because there’s so much excitement and thrill in the hustle, in the push forward, in the surge forward, that they just start chasing that thrill and never get to the point where they get to recognize how satisfying the hum can be.

Kent: Listening to what you said, I’m thinking about maintenance and I’m thinking this pendulum swinging people do from being out of balance and then, you know, catching up and then being out of balance and catching up. So much of the work we do is centered around helping people feel like they have a system. You know, we get into this a lot in our book, No Vacation Required, where we share kind of the stories of our clients and we share our story about how you build a No Vacation Required life and then how you maintain and go through periods where you’re questioning. And I want to be sure to say here that building in balance—we talked about this in prior episodes—people are like, oh, balance. There’s this idea that it’s so boring and I need all the peaks and the valleys and all that. This is not—maintenance is not about avoiding that or staying stagnant.

Caanan: No.

Kent: Maintenance is about finding balance, not running away from what actually works, but novelty comes then in very exciting and enriching ways, and we’re very proud of how we roll novelty into the way we fashioned our life.

Caanan: Yeah, we’re always testing, learning, growing, trying new things, but the key for us and what we found to be so deeply satisfying—and this is what I want for everybody we touch with this podcast to have—the deeply satisfying feeling of balance as a baseline. So in the last segment, I used the word hum. This hum of satisfaction with how balanced your life is so that you can then try this new thing, try that new thing, tweak this, tweak that, get those little moments of thrill or growth or surge forward, but with this baseline of comfort and balance and the hum.

A perfect example for you and I is we are very committed to fitness. It’s how we achieve balance in our life. We, right?

Kent: One of the ways.

Caanan: One of the ways. Yeah. We know that if we’re not consistently doing something healthy for our bodies, we’re not going to feel great. So we’re always looking at new ways to tweak this, but that doesn’t mean we upend our baseline.

Kent: Yeah, or it doesn’t mean we find one thing and stick to it. And that’s it. And that’s balance.

Caanan: No, no, no. In fact, we find what works for us. We use that to create a baseline of balance. And then we start playing with little pieces of it. So for us now, we’ve realized that we need to start adding in some mobility workouts. We can’t just run and run and run. Actually, here’s where things get out.

Kent: Run and hike and weight. Yeah.

Caanan: Run, hike, weight. Well, actually, the weights were a change to our routine because we realized we were just running and hiking. Our bodies were getting beat because we were always on our feet. So that was our baseline and it felt good, but we needed to make some little tweaks to it. So we added in weights. Now we’re adding in some mobility workouts that are just about stretching. And this is a way for us to grow within our balanced routine and make little changes, make little tweaks, and it feels good, but it doesn’t mean we’re blowing it all up or saying, oh, our bodies hurt because we’re running and hiking too much. Let’s never run and hike again. We’re going to go, I don’t know, we’re going to start cycling and that’s all we’re going to do. Or we’re just going to stop altogether because we need to do something different. So we’re just, we’re not going to work out anymore.

Kent: Completely. Yeah. I love the way you put this. There’s this core hum. Because the last thing we want is the snapback. And snapbacks are okay every once in a while if we know we’re going to have a big night out or a late night out or a big travel day or a big event or whatever. I mean, that kind of snapback is great, but we’re talking about life snapback and the goal is to create a hum in your life so that every day feels like a day you don’t need a break from. And listening to you talk about even our baseline running and hiking, I think we’re always changing our routes and, you know, we’re doing different things and walking here and now let’s try this. And how would this be for a challenge? I mean, even in that core hum, to use your word again, even that’s pretty novel. So when we do these things, that’s true. Yeah, we do these things like you’re saying where it’s like, well, let’s try this. Maybe this is a new baseline activity. Oh yeah, this one definitely is. Okay, no, this one is not. There is no lack of novelty.

I’m thinking that this is why accountability coaching is so popular. People just needing an accountability coach to help them through the maintenance part. And we were just talking earlier about how much we saw maintenance problems with the last iteration of our work, which was heavy helping work groups and people with the career element of their makeup. Right. And, first of all, it’s a place that takes up way too much of a person, which is why we’ve moved over to the work we’re doing now, which focuses more on the whole you and not the roles you play, because so many people become career identified that that is a balance killer right from the get go.

So I wanted to say a few words about that, because if you’re listening to this, there’s a good chance that you’re very heavily career identified. And, you know, thinking about the people we’ve worked with who are, say, instantly in need of a new job, or they’re terminated or laid off, or they want a promotion and suddenly they’re trying to think, what is the worth I bring to a new job, to the job market, to a promotion? And it’s so sad to see people in this role that they lose themselves in.

Caanan: Yeah.

Kent: Side note, quit losing yourself in career. And they have a complete lack of confidence when the chips are down in that role because their contributions are, you know, well, did I really make that big of a difference? My coworkers did so much more.

Caanan: You know what? Flip side to that that we have also seen is people don’t plan to succeed. So then in this workspace, in the career space, an opportunity shows up and somebody isn’t prepared for it in the way that they should be if they’re always kind of ready for an opportunity to show up because they have the confidence in themselves that, you know, life is going to bring some opportunities. Of course, it’s also going to bring the firing and the backsliding things that you have to be prepared for, but you have to also plan to succeed. And this is where my mind goes with this conversation about maintenance. I think about a metaphor of taking medication for something, like a mental wellness medication, that once you start feeling better, you stop taking the medication because you start feeling better. Well, of course, the medication is what’s making you feel better, and then you backslide. That’s sort of a trope. But you have to have this plan when you start. Like, if this works for me, if I succeed, how am I going to maintain that success?

Kent: Yeah. Thinking of the habit, not the cure.

Caanan: So I have to baseline something too.

Kent: Yeah.

Caanan: Because we say it in every episode, and then I say in every episode that we say it in every episode. So I'm going to say that again.

Kent: No, it's important.

Caanan: But really, you can't find this hum in your life. You can't find what works and stick with it and then play around in that hum if you don't know how you work fundamentally. So you have to know yourself.

Kent: Yeah, if you don't know how you work, how do you know what works? You've got to know yourself. If you don't know how you work, you can't accurately tell what works.

Caanan: Well, I’ve got a "worth the time." That goes right back to what I was talking about earlier with the changes we’re making to our fitness routine.

Kent: That’s perfect.

Caanan: And this one, I’ve been cracking up about this for two weeks. I keep telling Kent, I can’t believe how wrong I had it when I was thinking that barre class, B-A-R-R-E, was somehow going to be simple. Something had me believing that barre class was going to be easy and it was brutal.

Kent: Yeah, especially after the fact. When you feel the after the fact.

Caanan: We were ruined by it. And it’s these tiny little movements and you’re tweaking tiny little muscles that you don’t even know you have, and then you can barely walk the next day.

Kent: So worth the time is a bar, huh?

Caanan: It’s absolutely worth the time. I thought it was incredible.

Kent: We want to send you into, yeah, like some pain, but in the hope of a great addition to your fitness routine.

Caanan: Yes, yes.

Kent: Thanks for listening to the No Vacation Required podcast. For more information, including services designed to help you build a life you don't need a break from, check out novacationrequired.com. And if you found this information helpful, please subscribe.