The Goldilocks principle: Finding the "just right" balance for optimal work performance
By Sangheetha Parthasarathy
I'm a mom of two girls. I fondly remember the bedtime fairy tales of their younger years. I especially remember the classic story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. In the tale, Goldilocks tries three bowls of porridge—one too hot, one too cold, and one that's "just right." She has the same experience with the bears' beds, finding one too hard, one too soft, and one "just right."
This simple children's story is a powerful metaphor. It shows how our bodies and nerves work best. Just as Goldilocks sought balance. Our nervous system works best when it can switch between two states. These are sympathetic activation (our "doing" mode) and parasympathetic rest (our "being" mode).
Imagine your nervous system as a garden. The sympathetic branch is like the blazing sun, energizing and catalyzing growth. The parasympathetic branch is like cool, nourishing rain. It lets the soil absorb nutrients and the plants root deeply. For the garden to thrive, it needs both in balanced measure.
Too much sun and the earth bakes, the plants wither. Too much rain and the seeds rot, the leaves mold. The lushest gardens are in the Goldilocks zone. It has enough sunlight to stimulate growth and enough rain to sustain it. The rhythm allows for both activity and absorption.
This horticultural metaphor extends to our work and entrepreneurial lives. When we're stuck in overactive sympathy, we may feel productive briefly. But, it's a recipe for burnout. We become rigid, reactive, and unable to access our full creativity. On the flip side, if we linger too long in parasympathetic rest, we can stagnate and lose momentum.
The key to lasting success is finding the "just right" balance. It means making plenty of time for play and real rest. Think of play as the butterflies and bees in your work garden. They are the agents of cross-pollination. They spark innovation and breakthroughs. And the rest is the compost. It is a rich, quiet transformation. It turns experiences into fertile soil for new ideas to grow.
Like a master gardener, you must learn to read signs in soil and foliage. Doing this takes practice and self-awareness. It involves listening to your body's cues. You notice when you're veering into overwhelm or underactivity. Then, you gently guide yourself back to center. Over time, you can cultivate an internal ecosystem that is both dynamic and resilient.
So, my daughters may have outgrown bedtime stories. But, the wisdom of Goldilocks lives on. The secret to thriving, in work and in life, is embracing the "just right" zone. We can switch between doing and being, play and rest. This creates the best conditions for our unique gifts to blossom. And that's the kind of success that feeds the soul.
By Sangheetha Parthasarathy - an award-winning healthcare entrepreneur, a somatic experiencing practitioner who has created her own signature nervous system tuning program, the only kind which sits at the intersection of neuroscience and mental health, specifically focused on the Indian experience.
Sangheetha is an ex-strategy consultant, who became a doula and through that became a student of early attachment patterns and nervous system, she built her own body of work laser-focused on immigrant woman exec/CEOs patterns.
