I love hiking and go whenever I can. And even though it’s hard and sometimes extremely exhausting, depending on how high I climb, there’s always a song my brain plays like a jukebox in my head: “Why am I doing this?” “I can’t go on.” “I’m going to die…” and so on.
As I climb, everything is loud, my body aches, and my mind works against me. But somehow, I always reach the summit. And then the world stops. Everything disappears at once. Pain. Fatigue. Thoughts. As if someone erased them with an eraser called nature.
Mountains have that something. Up there… everything quiets down. And you feel yourself the most.
Being in nature brings me back into balance. My children think I’m funny, a little quirky, talking to plants and animals. Maybe I am. Yet among the trees and stones, I feel everything. And maybe that’s why, as I walk among trees and rocks, I realize that what I feel isn’t just the nature around me, it’s also the elements within me. That’s where the outer world and inner world connect most clearly.
Perhaps the ancient philosophers were right. The old Mr. Empedocles believed that all substances are made of air, earth, fire, and water, and that all things in nature are formed by mixing these elements. Carl Jung was on the right track with his theory of psychological types, suggesting that everything begins from within. He identified four basic functions that shape how we experience the world: thinking, feeling, intuition, and sensing.
Thinking about it, maybe it’s not about what the world is made of. It’s about the fact that sometimes you need to step away from the noise to feel it again. And to feel yourself within it. To quiet your thoughts, emotions, senses, and intuition.
Nature simply removes everything that isn’t yours and leaves you. Because in the office, at work, wherever you are… we often forget this. We lose ourselves.
Sometimes we’re too much in fire, sometimes too much in thought, sometimes too much in feeling, sometimes too much in sensing. And sometimes there’s too little of all of it. That’s why it’s worth pausing and noticing: what is there too much of in us now, and what is too little?
At work, we’re not just businesswomen or businessmen. We are also mothers and fathers, friends and lovers, daughters and sons. We carry all these parts of ourselves with us — the joys, the pains, the things we hide, and the things we choose to show. Each layer shapes who we are in every moment, in every choice.
And maybe that’s why balance isn’t something you achieve once. It’s something you keep returning to.
“Balance is not something you find, it’s something you create.” Jana Kingsford
*Note: With this introduction, I’m launching a series of articles dedicated to the elements and their connection to leadership, personal development, and inner balance. Next in this series: Air – the element of thought, speed, and the art of slowing down.
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