With the vacation season in the rear-view mirror, many of us are going to get back to the grind of working too much, not getting enough sleep, eating poorly and not getting enough exercise. The concept of work life balance to most is just a bunch of theoretical baloney espoused by a bunch of talking-head motivational speakers and organizational leaders. There’s simply no way out of the imbalance, right?
BZZZZZZZZZZZTTTTTTT. Wrong.
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Several years back I got into a conversation with a colleague about our kids. He told me of how he took his daughters to the circus. He wasn't able to afford it, but decided to go anyway. While they were at the circus, he looked over at his oldest daughter. The look on her face was one of utter contentment and delight. Seeing his daughter's face caused my colleague to get all choked up. The price of admission was redeemed through a priceless moment that my colleague shared with his daughter.
Recently Patty and I met up with our financial advisor to walk through our long-term finances. A key component of that discussion was about our net worth, defined as assets minus liabilities. While we had a very fruitful discussion that resulted in some great take-aways, it got me to thinking about how easy it is to focus on a single aspect of one's life and derive how good (or bad) one might be doing based on that aspect. Don't get me wrong; one's net worth is certainly an important measure that needs to be tended to. My point is that there is more to life than net worth when looking at your overall contentment. This hit home for me with the suicides of famous figures Robin Williams, Anthony Bourdain, Kate Spade, and others. These are people who appeared to have it all but to them something was so missing that it caused them to commit a horribly sad act. Lives ended too early; my prayers go to their loved ones. In thinking about contentment, I looked hard at what, to me, are the most important driving factors behind contentment. Keep in mind my analysis is not from a point of scientific expertise; rather it is from a point of practicality as to what I think are the most important drivers. I've honed my list to 8:
Now I completely realize that some of these above drivers are extremely important to some or not at all important. My point is not to second guess your importance level; what I do believe necessary is to decide how important each of the above drivers are to you. If something is not at all important to you then that is certainly your choice. Just be mindful of avoiding something that could adversely impact you later. As example, if you say financial contentment is not at all important and you decide not to financially plan for the future then you might be creating a problem for yourself later in life. So what now? I put together a simple excel spreadsheet which allows you to assess, for each of the contentment drivers, how important it is to you, what makes you content, and how you could be more content. I think it's important to articulate both what makes you content and how you could be more content for a couple of reasons. First, it allows you to celebrate things you are already happy with. Second, it enables you to improve on some things which you may already be doing well. If you find this helpful, you can download the excel template to help you self-assess yourself based on the 8 drivers. Download it here. As always, would love to hear what you think. let me know your thoughts in below comments. Lonnie Pacelli
Keynote Speaker | Board Director | Autism Advocate | Author | Project Management Expert | Microsoft/Accenture Veteran See his books on Amazon.
Some time back I did an interview on the importance of dinnertime. It reminded me of the importance of eating dinner as a family in the work/life balance equation so I thought I would post it here as well:
In your view, why aren't families sitting down to the dinner table like they did in the 1950s? Simple; families have allowed themselves to get so busy that they have come to accept that sitting down together for dinner isn't a necessity. It all starts with the parents; if they don't sit down together or enforce that the family will be eating together, the family won't do it. Make sitting down together the rule and not doing so the exception.
My name is Lonnie, and I'm a victim of identity theft.
So check this out. A buddy of mine wrote a Facebook post about how someone stole his daughter's Social Security number and filed for unemployment benefits with Washington State's Employment Security Division (ESD). Having never occurred to me, I decided to go to ESD and attempt to file an unemployment claim. After I entered the information I received the following message: The Social Security number (SSN) you entered already exists and is linked to this partly hidden email address: *****@fasternet.co The push-pull of achievements and stress apply to more than a person’s career or vocation. It can apply to elements such as family relationships, health, and finances. You can have high achievement/low stress in your career, but if you have low achievement/high stress in another area of your life, your overall contentment level is adversely impacted. It’s not enough to manage achievement and stress only in your career or vocation; it needs to be managed in other areas of your life as well. Click "Play" to start video.
What's good-enough contentment? Good-enough contentment is about intentionally looking at nine different elements in your life, deciding how important each is to you, what good-enough contentment looks like, and what you need to do to achieve good-enough contentment. The nine good-enough contentment elements:
Are you diving or merely surviving as a leader when it comes to good-enough contentment? See how a mystical train ride to Chicago teaches Ty about good-enough contentment in Behind Gold Doors-Nine Crucial Elements to Achieve Good-Enough Contentment.
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April 2024
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