It doesn't have four letters, nor is it considered offensive -- but best-selling author Elizabeth Gilbert says there's one word we should eliminate from our vocabulary: Balance. During Oprah's The Life You Want Weekend Tour, Gilbert spoke to a live audience about why she'd rather be a "beautiful mess" than a perfectly balanced person.
"With no offense to the word balance, I feel that that is a word that we have to be careful of lately because I think it's become another tool in the arsenal that women especially are using against themselves as one more thing they're not doing right," she says in the above video. "I really do think it's become a weapon."
These days, Gilbert says you can't open up a magazine without being inundated by an article about finding balance. "You're supposed to have balance in your romantic life, in your work life, in your family life, in your health, in your business and everything's supposed to be all evened out, " she says.
Oprah agrees. "And then we get so unbalanced thinking we're not balanced," she adds.
Gilbert wants to know who these so-called "balanced" people are. "Is that anybody you have ever met in your entire life?" she asks. "And if it is, would you want to be their friend? Would that be a person you called in the middle of the night and you were like, 'I'm scared and I'm having a hard time'? And they'd be like, 'I'm sorry I'm just so balanced I can't really take this in right now.'"
Gilbert has a suggestion: let go of the word. "For me, peace comes when I … embrace the beautiful mess that I am," she says. "And embrace the beautiful mess that you all are, and that this world is, and just let it be that."
Also during Oprah's Tour, Gilbert fields questions from the audience. How she responds to people who say, "Your book changed my life."
Learn more about Oprah's The Life You Want Weekend Tour.
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