Balancing and Juggling are Acts Best Left to Circus Performers: Health and Metaphors.

We often describe our lives as a juggling act. The metaphor shows up in conversation, social media, and even self-help advice: “You just have to keep the balls in the air.” But as behavior analysts, we know metaphors are more than just clever language, they function as verbal behavior shaped by our histories and used to evoke shared understanding.

And this one is due for a rewrite.

Juggling implies that dropping something is a failure. That if you were just more skilled, more coordinated, or more focused, you could keep it all going. And when something does fall, whether it’s a workout, a healthy meal, or a moment of rest, you feel like you’ve failed.

But you’re not dropping things because you’re bad at juggling. You’re not a circus performer. You’re a person with a full behavioral repertoire, competing contingencies, and a finite amount of time and energy.

Why Use a Metaphor at All?

In behavior analysis, metaphors aren’t just decorative language, they’re extended tacts. That means they’re verbal responses evoked by stimuli that share functional properties with a known situation, even if they don’t share physical features. We use them when they help listeners relate their own experiences to new behavioral concepts.

The plate metaphor works better than juggling because it doesn’t moralize dropped tasks or imply constant performance. Instead, it allows us to talk about capacity, prioritization, and environmental fit, concepts that are central to understanding health behavior from a behavioral lens.

You’re Carrying a Full Plate

Think of your time, energy, and behavioral bandwidth as a plate. Not a perfectly curated aesthetic plate. A regular, everyday, doing-the-best-you-can kind of plate. On it are the behaviors and responsibilities that make up your day: work, parenting, caregiving, errands, movement, food, rest.

The plate isn’t overflowing because you’re doing something wrong. It’s full because life is full. And when someone asks, “Can you add one more thing?” the answer isn’t always yes, and it shouldn’t have to be.

Recognizing that your plate is full could allow you to approach behavior change with intention instead of overload.

From a Behavioral Perspective, Plates Have Limits

In behavior analysis, we think in terms of response effort, reinforcement, and competing contingencies. Every item on your plate requires:

• Time

• Energy

• Space for reinforcement

• A cue or routine to prompt it

You only have so much of each to go around. And when the plate is at capacity, adding something new doesn’t just fail to stick, it disrupts the balance of everything else.

That’s not a moral problem. It’s a functional one. The system needs redesigning, not more grit.

Clearing Space Isn’t Failure, It’s Design

Here’s where the plate metaphor is useful. When we recognize that it’s full, not broken, not bad, just full, we can shift from reacting to redesigning.

• You can clear space intentionally: delegate, automate, defer.

• You can reduce response effort: make routines simpler, shorter, easier to cue.

• You can swap a low-reinforcement behavior for one with more immediate payoff.

• You can acknowledge competing contingencies and plan around them.

  
  

In ABA, we don’t ask whether a behavior is “right.” We ask whether it’s reinforced, whether the conditions support it, and whether it’s in alignment with your goals and values. You can do the same with your plate.

Health Behavior Doesn’t Belong on the Edge

When your plate is full, health behaviors like sleep, movement, nourishment, emotional regulation are often the first things pushed to the side. Not because they don’t matter, but because they require effort, planning, and reinforcement that’s often unavailable in the moment. They’re vulnerable to being deprioritized precisely because the payoff is delayed or subtle, and they compete with more immediate, pressing contingencies.

But the problem runs deeper than busy schedules or time management.

Some people are asked to maintain health routines within systems that were never built to support them.

If you're carrying the invisible weight of mental load (the constant juggling of schedules, anticipating needs, remembering details, and managing others' emotional states) then the space that might otherwise be used for preparing meals, going for a walk, or getting to bed on time is already consumed by unacknowledged labor. These private behaviors are real. They’re measurable, effortful, and competing with every observable routine you're trying to maintain.

And this load isn't distributed equally.

• Women, especially in dual-working households, carry a disproportionate share of cognitive and emotional labor.

• Caregivers, including parents, sandwich-generation adults, and those supporting loved ones with disabilities or chronic conditions often defer their own health in response to others’ needs.

• Individuals navigating economic constraints frequently face elevated response effort just to engage in basic wellness behaviors. "Healthier" food may require more time or cost. Exercise might not feel safe or accessible in one’s neighborhood. Work schedules may limit sleep, meal timing, or time for appointments. Reliable childcare, transportation, or healthcare access can’t be assumed.

  
  

These aren’t just stressors. They are environmental variables that shape the availability, reinforcement, and sustainability of health behavior.

From a behavior analytic perspective, this is not a matter of discipline or character. It’s a matter of contextual control. If a behavior consistently contacts high effort, delayed reinforcement, or punishing consequences, it will occur less often, even if it aligns with your values.

So when health routines get shoved to the edge of the plate, we shouldn't respond with guilt or shame. We should respond with design: rethinking the conditions, shifting contingencies, reducing effort, and increasing reinforcement in ways that make health behavior not just possible, but practical and sustainable.

That’s why health routines don’t belong on the edge of the plate. Not because they’re more important than everything else, but because they support everything else. They allow the plate to stay stable, and they deserve space by default, not just when everything else is done.

Behavior Is Cumulative, Not Performative

Juggling invites performance. The plate invites reflection.

Behavior doesn’t need to be optimized. It needs to be doable. It needs to fit within the actual conditions of your day—not an idealized version of it with unlimited time, energy, or support. That’s what sustainable health behavior looks like: small, repeatable actions that are designed to stay on the plate—even when everything else shifts.

And that plate? It’s shaped by more than just your schedule.

Mental load takes up space.Caregiving takes up space.Structural barriers like limited access to flexible time, safe spaces, or affordable resources take up space. Health behavior isn’t falling off the edge because it doesn’t matter. It’s falling off because the plate is already full.

So next time you hear “just juggle better,” pause. Look at your plate. Name what’s already there. Decide what stays because it supports your values or protects your well-being. Move what doesn’t, or find ways to offload, share, or redesign.

And instead of trying to juggle more, make room, on purpose.

Because circus acts are fun to watch,but your life isn’t a performance. It’s a system. And it deserves to work.