Would you rather…? (success or rest/passions/fun?)
Abstract:
Let’s play a game of “would you rather”, shall we?
Would you rather…
…be wildly successful in work or have lots of rest?
…have an abundance of money or time for your passions/hobbies?
…be respected or outrageously happy?
Spoiler alert: You don’t have to choose. Your mission today is to learn why and how.
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Background: We’re being set up for failure
Without going too much into lamenting the state of the world today, I have to acknowledge that not everything in it works in our favour. While we have amazing opportunities today we never had before, courtesy of the internet and high mobility, even internationally, the development has also left us scattered, stressed and burnt out.
The reason is, surprisingly, the unlimited opportunities. It sounds great, but just like eternal life, it’s not so easy in practice. All those options – what to do for a living, what to do for fun, where to live, who to be with – are great in theory, but rather overwhelming. Humans aren’t designed for such confusing abundance.
Mistakenly, we have so far chosen the option to try “as much as possible” or as many options as possible. People who do this well are celebrated. However, going for everything all at once has left us stressed, chasing impossible time-management goals and feeling like failures.
Task: How to have your cake and eat it
Then why do I say it’s possible to be successful and still have plenty of time, space, and joy? Because it is.
It’s rather counter-intuitive, but limiting your choices actually expands them. In other words: Doing five things properly makes you more fulfilled than doing 10 half-heartedly.
The magic word is priority. It’s absolutely possible to give time and energy to your career and create success there, without dedicating your whole life to it. In fact, people who are rested, balanced and happy tend to be more successful. I see it with my coaching clients all the time.
The second and third priorities in your life should therefore be rest/time for yourself and time for passions. Yes, that comes before your relationships, because they tend to take care of themselves if you’re otherwise secure, rested and happy. Quality time is better than (exhausted) quantity in terms of love or friendship as well.
Want to learn more? Check out my program The Magic of Purpose and schedule a free chat with me so we can explore your options.
Transcript
Here follows the exact transcript of everything that’s said in the video. The same text can be found as subtitles in the video itself, which can be activated using the icons on the bottom right.
Let's play a game of "Would you rather"!
Hello, welcome to this week's Wild Spirits News. I'm Sibylle, and I help women between 40 and 60 to make the second half of their lives wonderful and joyful and full of passions and their own unique life purpose. If that sounds interesting, check out my website, wildspiritscoaching.com.
Now, today, instead of the usual introduction to the video, I thought we'll play a little game of "Would you rather". I've written down the questions so I won't mess them up, and they are:
"Would you rather be wildly successful in work or have lots of rest?"
"Would you rather have an abundance of money or time for your passions and hobbies?"
"Would you rather be respected/admired or outrageously happy?"
Spoiler alert: You don't have to choose. Your mission today is to learn why and how.
Background
The background to this is 'We're being set up for failure'. Without going too much into lamenting our state of the world today, I do have to acknowledge that it doesn't always work in our favor. We have amazing opportunities today, more than we had, than we ever before had in history, courtesy of inventions like the internet or our increased mobility, even international mobility. However, these developments have also left us scattered, stressed and burnt out.
Surprisingly, it is the unlimited opportunities that have led to this state, that cause the problems, because they might sound great; just like immortality sounds great but is difficult in practice, this is also difficult to deal with and to handle in practice. It turns out humans are just not designed to to cope with such a confusing abundance of options, of choices, and our response so far has mostly been to try to do as much as possible, because we want to take advantage of all these amazing opportunities. It seems to make sense but, again, that has left us stressed and burnt out, it has left us pursuing unrealistic time-management goals and ended with us feeling like failures.
Task
The task is 'Have your cake and eat it'. Then why do I say it's possible to be successful and have rest and joy and time for the important things in life? Because it is.
It's rather counterintuitive, but limiting options actually enhances them. In other words: Doing five things properly will fulfill you more and will go deeper and will do more for your well-being and your happiness than doing 10 things in a rushed and hectic manner and half-heartedly. The magic word is priority. You can absolutely prioritize your job, your career, your business or whatever it is and be successful there, without it eating up the rest of your life. In fact, people who are balanced, who are happy, who have things that are important to them outside of their jobs, tend to be more successful. I see it all the time with my coaching clients. And don't say this is an exception - this is my job, this is my work. I've once calculated that 80% of my clients get either a promotion or are suggested for a promotion or a pay rise within the six months of that program, that they're with me. This is not the exception, it's the rule.
And what follows from that is that the second and third priorities in your life should be rest and time for yourself and time for things that light you up, your hobbies, passions, interests. And yes, that comes before your relationships because in my experience, your relationships tend to take care of themselves once the rest of it is in place, once you're secure, such as financially secure, and rested and happy because you have things in life like your hobbies that that give you joy. You will have the time and the headspace to have that difficult conversation with your teen or with your partner when that is necessary, rather than things always falling through the cracks because you have a hundred other things to think of and are are run off your feet all the time.
And if you would like to know a little more about this or work on this: Like I said, this is my work. Check out the link that I'll put in the-, below the video, to my program 'The Magic of Purpose', and on that page, if you scroll down you can arrange a free conversation with me. We'll have a chat and we'll check out your options. We'll talk about whether it would fit for you and how it would fit and basically have a talk about that. I would love to hear from you. And I have to say: It is really, really worth it to work on this.
Let me know
And that brings me to the last point which is as usual 'Let me know'. Leave a comment below the video or reply to the email that you got the link to the video with and tell me where you stand on this. Do you still struggle a little bit with priorities, with maybe work taking over or other other areas of your life not being in balance?
Trust me, I will never judge you on this. For a large part of my life, I was struggling with this myself, and I still sometimes do. It's like I said earlier, this is not you failing at something - we are being set up for failure in this respect. Our society profits in several ways from us being stressed and unhappy, but that's a whole other rant. So please don't feel bad about this. I would love to hear from you, and I'll reply to every comment.
And like I said, if you'd like some more, then check out my website, wildspiritscoaching.com, there you can also sign up for the Wild Spirits newsletter, 100% spam free, you will join the community of wild spirits, and I would absolutely love to have you. I'll talk to you soon. Take care, bye!