You are a holistic being with many facets to your being-ness, with 4 primary aspects, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Your essence or core is made of energy which is made of consciousness, of awareness.

My term for a leader who is holistically well-balanced is Loving Self-Advocate (LSA). Practicing the LSA principles means that you are aiming to live in alignment with your Higher Self, which you could call Sage, Expanded Self, God, Universe, etc

I’ve defined 9 attributes of the LSA that span each level of your being-ness, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. Each level symbolizes the leg of a 4-legged table. When one leg is not prioritized, the table is lop-sided, as you are if you ignore your holistic nature.

This wellness series explores the 9 attributes of the LSA and how to bring them into balance in your hectic life as a woman leader. At the end of the day, only YOU can do this for yourself.

Why Care About Your Holistic Nature?

As a leader, you want to have the best impact on your spouse, children, friends and family members, your employees, co-workers, clients, etc., right? In order to have the best impact, you need to honor and respect all aspects of yourself.

Balanced–Physical and Mental

Let’s pretend that you are a wife, mom of 2 kids in their mid-20’s, sister to 5 siblings, and you have elderly parents. On top of all that, you have an executive position in a corporation, working 50+ hours/week. You’re busy. You’re juggling a lot of balls in the air, and you don’t want to drop one.

But if you’re like many busy women, you may be lucky to focus on two of the four legs, physical and mental health. For you, this looks like working out 3 times/week and eating healthily most days. Whatsmore, you analyze your decisions thoughtfully. You’ve always valued education, being smart, and getting promoted.

Emotions Are Messy

However, when it comes to emotions, you find them inconvenient and messy. You’ve never been religious or spiritual. You just figure when it’s your time to go, that’s it. There will be no more of you. End of story. You honestly try not to think about it much because it’s depressing.

At this point in your life, you’re doing OK. You’re not unhappy, but you’re also not happy. Your relationships feel a little rocky, truth be told. You and your husband don’t make quality time for each other. Your kids feel brushed off by you because you’re always so busy.

In a recent review at work, you learned through an anonymous HR survey that your employees perceived you as uncaring. “Those ingrates,” you muttered under your breath, “I do so much for them.”

We already know you have zero relationship with a Higher Power.

Impact of Two-Legged Physical and Emotional Table

Your physical and mental health are pretty solid, but your emotional and spiritual health are not balanced. Those two legs of the table are uneven.

Placing low priority on the emotional realm affects two key areas of your life: your relationships and your career life.

Having spirituality as an afterthought is impacting you in a way that you’re probably not aware of–leaving you with a felt sense of unsafety and lack of support.

Having solid emotional and spiritual legs helps you to feel supported and securely connected in life. A Harvard study showed that the key to Happiness is Healthy Relationships. Full stop. It’s vital to feel safe and supported by others and by Life (God, Higher Power, etc.) to be happy.

Balanced–Emotional and Spiritual

Let’s assume that you have all of the same outer circumstances, the same family and job as in the above example, but you value emotions and God. You neglect your mental and physical health.

You’ve always been very emotional, highly sensitive, and in tune with other people’s emotions.

You like to write down your thoughts and feelings to connect to yourself. Yet when it comes to making decisions, you tend not to think things through and make compulsive choices that later bite you in the butt.

You don’t feel relaxed around “analytical, engineer” types as you like to say. They feel cold, distant and uncaring to you, always up in their head analyzing. So you tend to avoid relationships with such people.

You have always believed that God is looking out for you. You have a daily meditation practice that grounds you, and you like to hang out in nature.

Your Body Isn’t Your Priority

Your body and physical health have never been your priority. Aside from walking your dog and gardening, you’re not interested in working out or minding your carbs/calories. You’re not into cooking, and so you tend to eat out a lot. You stay up late and don’t sleep very well.

Though you have decent relationships and people tend to love you for your generosity, you tend to over-give and feel resentful. You lack energy and find it hard to be present with others.

Do you see how you need to consider all 4 legs to have a balanced, happy life? When two legs, or even one leg, gets out of balance, it negatively impacts even the balanced leg. For instance, in the second example, because you don’t have a lot of energy physically, it impacts your relationships and your ability to be present with others.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

Another way to categorize your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual selves is by looking at your needs. You have physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem and self-actualization needs, and they need to be met in that order of necessity.

9 Holistic Practices to Balance Your Life

Abraham Maslow was an American psychologist (1908 to 1970) who created Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a theory of psychological health predicated on fulfilling innate human needs in priority, culminating in self-actualization.

Maslow stated that people are motivated to achieve certain needs and that some needs take precedence over others. Your most basic need is for physical survival, and this will be the first thing that motivates your behavior. Once that level is fulfilled the next level up is what motivates you, and so on.

I use Maslow’s heirarchy of needs to figure out where to start with a client. It’s important to get your physical safety needs met solidly (about 80%), before focusing on the emotional realm of Love, Belonging and Self-Esteem. Once your emotional needs are met, you can focus on self-actualization in the upper part of the pyramid.

Loving Self-Advocate

I created the term Loving Self-Advocate (LSA) to represent a path to a desired transformational destination of feeling whole, worthy and in harmony with life. So what is a LSA? She is holistically balanced with the 4 legs of physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health. She practices the 9 attributes of the LSA, which is presented in a general outline below.

The LSA values courage, authenticity and kindness when relating to themselves and others. She knows how to get her needs met so that she…

Feels safe in her skin/nervous system and lovingly parents herself the way her inner child perhaps never was.
Stops tolerating doormat behaviors (taking over-responsibility for others, trying to be perfect, trying to gain others’ love and approval) that came about because she felt the need to please others.
Sees her worth and receives support.
Gives herself the benefit of the doubt, knowing “I AM Enough!”

Preview of the 9 Loving Self-Advocate Attributes

In order to become a Loving Self-Advocate, you need to be able to see yourself through clear, loving lenses.

I developed this content through my own personal experience of life, and I used Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as the foundation to organize it.

The first three attributes pertain to safety in the physical realm, the next three to trust in the emotional realm, and the last three to creativity in the spiritual realm. The mental realm is incorporated throughout as you have beliefs about all three aspects of life.

1. (Safety) Balanced Self-Discipline

I implement self-imposed disciplined boundaries around food, drink, work, and overall life choices.

2. (Safety) Enough, Not Overly Reliant

I am open to being an active, responsible participant in the providing of my needs because I believe I’m worthy of getting them met. I begin by asking myself, “How can I lovingly provide this need for myself?” If it makes sense to ask for help, I will.

3. (Safety) Organized, not Rigid

I gracefully maintain a well-organized environment without having to rigidly control it and exhaust myself. I’m really not attached to how it looks and would be okay no matter what.

4. (Trust) Humble, not a Doormat

I have healthy relationships because I honor MY values and I respect theirs. I know how to set loving boundaries that bless me and still keep loving connection with others even when we want and value different things.

5. (Trust) Responsible, not Righteous

I take responsibility for my choices, thoughts, and feelings without harsh self-judgment and therefore have greater impact and influence. No one is making me feel a certain way. “I’m in charge of how I perceive things, and I choose to respond in a way that honors my values.”

6. (Trust) Expressive, not Aggressive

I humbly ask for what I want without over-the-top drama or aggression.

7. (Creativity) Worthy, not Entitled

I realize life owes me no particular favors, and I’m grateful for all I currently have and am. I keep a daily gratitude journal.

8. (Creativity) Loving, not Controlling

I’m okay if people disagree with my outlooks and beliefs about life because I don’t take their views as a personal attack against me. I still love and accept them.

9. (Creativity), Creative, not Chaotic

I do my best to take actions to move me forward (implementing imperfectly), and I welcome mistakes because that means I’m learning and improving. Having errors in judgment is a normal process of life and part of the creative process; it doesn’t mean that I am bad, wrong or a mistake.

Do you relate to these 9 attributes? Over the next 9 blogs, I will break each one down further and show you the extremes on the spectrum and how to get your needs met in a healthy, balanced, holisitic way.

I’d love to support you in feeling whole, complete and worthy as a Loving Self-Advocate. Checkout the Heal Your Heart Retreat and register today.

Much Love,

Angie Monko,

Life Coach for Intuitive Women Leaders

9 Holistic Practices to Balance Your Life