Work-Life Balance
Work-Life Balance
Leadership guru Stephen Covey cites work-life imbalance as one of the biggest troubles facing the audiences he speaks to. When the demands on our lives outpace our energy or availability, we end up constantly stressed, chronically fatigued, or completely burnout. How can we strike balance in the midst of our hectic lives?
Covey gives the following recommendations about work-life balance:
1. Take responsibility by becoming the creative force of your life
2. Decide what’s most important in life and develop a vision and deep commitment to the “first things” of life
3. Put those ¬first things¬ first and organize your life around your priorities.
While the steps to life balance seem simple, as Covey writes, ¬It¬s remarkable how many of us struggle to translate our intellectual awareness into day-to-day practice and decision-making.¬ When it comes to balance, the chasm between knowing the solution and living the solution stretches wide.
As Covey observes, lack of discipline is not the full story as to why we struggle to find balance. In his words, ¬The problem is more often that the person has not yet sufficiently paid the price to get very clear about what matters most to them. Once you have a burning ¬yes¬ inside you about what¬s truly important, it¬s very easy to say ¬no¬ to the unimportant.¬ When absent of desire, discipline is rarely attainable. Without desires, we don¬t have an internal flame sustaining our decision-making. Without an inspiring purpose, making the right choices becomes a tedious, near-impossible task.
When we don¬t have a clear and compelling picture of our destination in life, our time gets squandered, our energy expended aimlessly, and our years exhausted for nothing. We¬re like Alice wandering through Wonderland:
Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?
The Cheshire Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to
Alice: I don’t much care where.
The Cheshire Cat: Then it doesn’t much matter which way you go.
As with Alice, searching for the road to a balanced life is pointless when we don¬t know our destination. Balance begins with purpose. Purpose lends us the clarity to order our priorities and the resolve to execute them.
On this day...
- Fear Not God?s Promise To Make You Holy - 2011
- Heaven is Taking Over. Yield. - 2011
- CHURCH HISTORY - 2008
- Found Wanting - 2008
- Luke 9:23-24 - 2008
- Speculative Thought - 2007
- Jeremiah 2:18 - 2007
- Ephesians 1:14 - 2007
- He Takes Care Of His Creation - 2007
- The Dry Rot of Nonexpectation - 2007
- Only The Lonely - 2007
November 5, 2010
Edit
PURPOSE LENDS US THE CLARITY TO ORDER OUR PRIORITIES AND THE RESOLVE TO EXECUTE THEM.
December 15, 2011