Last week I was feeling a little desperate for content and I asked folks what I should blog about.
Here was @jrforasteros’ suggestion:
“How do you recommend a person seek out balance between personal and professional life and circles? Especially when one works for a ‘Christian’ organization, when ministry and vocation can be so closely intertwined.”
It is a great question.
But candidly this is not something I have spent too much thinking about. I guess in this arena of my life, I just do, without a whole lot of thought.
Last year I read Marcus Buckingham’s Find Your Strongest Life and this really resonated:
“Having it all” doesn’t mean having everything, all at once, all the time. “Having it all” means taking yourself seriously. It means knowing yourself well enough to find your purpose in life. It means knowing what needs to change when you sense that you’ve lost that purpose. It means having the faith to believe that change is possible and having the courage to make those changes. It means drawing strength from the relationships in your life, and, if there’s no strength to be drawn, knowing when to cut those relationships out of your life.
It means mastering the skill of using life to fill you up. That is all you can do, and it is everything you need to do.
The conventional image of a successful woman today is that she’s a virtuoso juggler, somehow moving fast enough to keep all the many aspects of her busy life in the air at the same time. Conventional it may be, but it’s also quite sad. The core skill of juggling is throwing, not catching. To keep every object in the air, you have to get rid of each one as quickly as possible, barely allowing it to register on your fingertips before you toss it up and away, preparing for the next object to throw. A strong life is the opposite of juggling. Juggling requires you to keep everything at bay, up in the air, away from you. The secret to living a strong life lies in knowing how to draw a few things in toward you. It asks you to be discriminating, selective, intentional. You can find energizing moments in each aspect of your life, but to do so you must learn how to catch them, hold on to them, feel the pull of their weight, and allow yourself to follow where they lead.
So today I find myself looking at who and what give me energy. I am working at being “discriminating, selective, intentional” and investing in the things that fill me up, rather than the things that wear me out.
I love that I work for a company who has a powerful purpose, to inspire the world. I love that my work clearly lines up with where I feel like God is calling me. I love that I have a job a career that allows me flexibility (too much at times) to do what gives me strength and the opportunity to meet people who give me energy.
I love how my worlds collide. I love that my life is out of balance. And I love the lines between working and playing are often blurry.
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he’s always doing both.” James Michener
Curious what YOU think about this. How would you answer @jrforasteros’ question? How do you create balance between personal and professional?
Please note: I reserve the right to delete comments that are offensive or off-topic.