Out of balance
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View this email in your browser (|ARCHIVE|) “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.” —Parker Palmer
The next time you find yourself talking about how you need to find a better work-life balance, please stop.
That kind of thinking is rooted in a false dichotomy. And it’s one where most often one of those two elements gets sacrificed in the service of the other.
What you do informs who you are just as much as who you are shapes the kind of work you do.
You don’t balance these: you commit to them and that means taking on a task that has no ending. But you’re mistaken if you think all that happens in solitude.
I like poet David Whyte’s take on this problem. He says what’s really at stake is three marriages (https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B001Q8V6NA/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1) : one with the self, one with your livelihood and one with your relationships to others.
They don’t balance on a scale as much as they complement and support each other, much like a three-legged stool.
So how do you make that shift in your thinking?
Seneca’s 2,000 year-old advice gives us plenty of clues.
“Hold an audit of your life,” he says. By that, he means inspect it against loss.
Figure out how much of it you’ve already lost on what he calls groundless sorrows.
Take stock of the kinds of people you surround yourself with. You’re the average of the five people closest to you.
Are many of them conflict prone? Odds are that you are, too. Or as Seneca puts it more bluntly: “How many have plundered your life when you were unaware of your losses?”
Decide in your work what are the things you do because you care deeply about how they get done? That’s different from simply caring that they get done at all.
Decide which kinds of work give you a sense of deep accomplishment independent of the reward that money is presumed to bring.
When you’re ready to start asking yourself meaningful questions, your audit is ready.
Very best, Patrick
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