From Balance to Harmony via Dissonance

A couple of weeks ago I delivered a masterclass to a room full of COOs on swapping work-life balance for harmony.

I talked about homeostasis. About how the body is always seeking its own kind of music — a living equilibrium where some parts play loudly, some play quietly, some rest in silence altogether. Not equal. In relationship. Shifting with the season, the transition, the thing that is happening in your life right now.

I talked about how harmony is more forgiving than balance. More generous. More true to how life actually moves.

I also introduced the concept of coherence — a litmus test I use for a different kind of knowing. Not the logical kind. The kind that tells you things are as they should be, even when externally they look a bit unusual. Even when they don't yet make rational sense. A felt sense from the body that says: this is right. Keep going.

And then I closed my laptop feeling lost.

Not because the session went badly. It didn't. But because there was something I hadn't said. A question I hadn't answered — not for them, and not for myself.

What does lost feel like inside this metaphor?

I know what harmony looks like when it's working. I know what balance looks like when it fails. But what do you call it when you have lost the thread of yourself? When the parts that should be playing quietly have gone silent, and the parts that should be playing loudly feel very far away?

In music, that's dissonance. A note that doesn't belong to the key. A chord that hasn't resolved yet. It isn't wrong. It is unfinished.

I think that's what lost is.

Unfinished. Not broken. Not off course. Not proof that you were wrong about any of it. Just a chord that hasn't found its resolution yet.

I've been lost before. More than once, and badly, if I am honest. And what I know from those times, and from the work I do now with the leaders I work with, is that lost doesn't usually mean you need a new map. It usually means something in the body hasn't been listened to for a while.

So I come back to the same questions I would give a client.

What is depleting me right now: sleep, nutrition, retreat, something I haven't named yet? What is pulling me away from where I am? What is pushing? And who are the saboteurs — the parts of me that are resisting the change I know is needed?

Not as a problem to solve. As an inquiry to stay in.

The discomfort of not knowing is not an obstacle. It is the beginning of the listening. You ride the wave rather than fight it. You let the feelings move through. You stay curious about what else is in the mix.

And then, always, I come back to the body.

Not as a metaphor. The body, physically, in this moment. The breath. The weight. The place where the dissonance is actually living.

Because what the body offers — when you actually stop and listen — is coherence. Not certainty. Not a roadmap. That quiet signal: this is as it should be. Even this. Even lost.

It doesn't start in your diary or your strategy or your recovery plan. It starts here. In this breath. In the willingness to let the chord stay unresolved a little longer, and trust that the resolution is already finding its way.

I don't have a resolution for you at the end of this one. I am still in the key change.

But I know that sitting honestly with it is the practice. And I know the body always knows the way back. Even when the mind has lost the thread entirely.

How would it be to stay with the dissonance a little longer, and see what it's trying to resolve into?

With much love and a chord finding its way home,
Dags