I Only Have One Life!
I know when you read that title that you may think this post was to refer to my “life” as my time on this earth, and that I can only live once so LIVE BIG! First, of all I would have to believe that I can only live once, which I don’t, to write that but I digress. I am certain one day I will write a post to explain that last sentence, just not today 
Actually what I am tackling is Part One of my blog manifesto. I think it makes sense that if this blog is all about CREATING and LIVING a BIG life then I should probably explain why at my core this is such a worthy pursuit? Aside from the obvious that if I am living a BIG life then I am likely living a fun, purposeful, and fulfilled life, I think it is even more important to do so.
photo credit: Julia Manzerova
First thing I need to establish to make my point is to debunk the myth of pursuing a healthy work/life balance. I achieved some real clarity on this thinking from my leadership mentor Phil Holcomb over at Extraordinary Learning as a side note, if you want to get real serious about owning your life then I highly recommend their full immersion leadership course called 21st Century Leadership. Tell them Greg sent you!
The idea that we try to achieve a healthy work and Life balance, which is of course all the rage, a simple google search of those three words returned 16,400,000 articles, means that we believe we somehow have two lives, a “work” life and a “personal” life and that our goal in our lives is to somehow achieve a balance between the two. I say again, but I only have one life?
For my whole working life I thought this exact way and in fact would routinely measure my “work/life balance”. I wonder if some of you have done this? When I was in a moment in my life where focussing on my work was really important I would often have feelings of guilt, sadness, regret or other negative emotions. I would tell myself “you should be at home”.
On the other side when I was spending some time away from work in my “personal life” usually on a vacation or other time when I was away from work on a GASP workday I would oddly get the same feelings of guilt, sadness, regret or other negative emotion. I would tell myself “you should be at work”.
Herein lies the rub. When I am trying to achieve a balance in anything, I must be willing to give up something on the other side. When I am giving up something, I think this will often come with negative feelings. Negative feelings will lead to negative actions, and actions that take me further away from the things I say I want in my life. This leads to a spiral of guilt, frustration, and often anger etc. It never ends well when I allow myself get in one of these spirals.
Ok, you might be asking at this time “I understand your point, but if I am not trying to achieve a balance between my work and my life then what should I do?”
photo credit: bitchcakesny
Remember that I said “I only have one life”? I think for me this is the starting point for healthier thinking. If I look at my life more like a pie chart, with each piece representing a different part of my active life then I see that it is all one life, my life, and that it may have some things that get more attention then others and, heres the big secret…that’s OK!!!! (by the way this chart does not represent my life, I can’t imagine I am so anal that I would measure “hairwashing” in my life LOL.)
Another important point is that my life is dynamic, as things change I may have different priorities and demands from different areas, it is more workable for me to achieve this when I think of my life as one, and consciously make the choice to give one area more attention, not “at the expense” of something else, rather because I want to.
I know that when things are not going well at work then often things are not going well in my personal life piece of the pie as well. Conversely I have seen or experienced that when things are not going well in my life piece, then things at work or going equally as poorly. When I was trapped in my “work/life balance” thinking then I thought the solution was to pour more time into the affected area. Sadly though I always determined the common affected area in both instances was my work. When things were not going well at work, then I would pour more time into work to make it better. Or, when things were not going well in my life I would drown myself more in work “to make me feel better”. Strike any chords for anyone? When I look back at the subtle damage I did with that thinking I am so thank-ful I have changed this thinking while I am still so young .
My new thinking, and consequently the purpose of this blog is that for me when things in one of my pie pieces are not going well, then I want to work solely on ME. I am the source of everything that happens to me. I know that when I am living on purpose, and I am fully congruent between what I say I am and what I truly am then my thoughts become clearer, my feelings shift to more positive feelings, and then I show up in all areas in my life BIGGER and more powerful.
To put this into practice for me, I am actively creating my BIG Life. To me this is more then just creating a “bucket list” as my bucket list became actually that, a list stored in a bucket that I rarely looked at 
. I took some time to really look deep inside me and find some BIG dreams I was suppressing. I am sure this list will continue to grow, and this is the point. Once I get confidence from achieving BIG dreams I have suppressed for such a long time then I think it is easier to try even bigger things.
My thinking is that when I find myself thinking negative thoughts about my work or my life then I will quickly go work on one of my items on the BIG life list. Alas, this will switch me into more positive thoughts because I will get a jolt of passion, perspective, and fulfillment from working on my BIG life list. Being shifted back up will allow me to show up in the other areas of my life in a BIG way.
Will you join me? I think stating publicly my dreams that I am working on seriously amp up the chances that I get them done. I think that increases the chance for everyone. Accountability is a seriously powerful force. Comment on this post a BIG dream you want to finally accomplish, tell all your friends and family, then keep reading along with me as I work on my BIG life dreams and write about all the strategies I think are helpful in living my BIG life.
Related articles
Comments
Powered by Facebook Comments