The Success Lie. Janelle Bruland
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4. Family & Friends
The relationships in our lives are so important to experience full and abundant living. This is also an area in which it is easy to coast on automatic and not realize the significance our relationships have on the trajectory of our lives. Jim Rohn said it well, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Are you spending time with people that lift you up, encourage you, and challenge you? Do they share your values and live a life you admire? Or are the main people you spend regular time with pulling you down and holding you back?
A great exercise is to get these relationships on paper and evaluate them one by one. As you look back over the last month, or last year, list the three to five individuals that you spend the most time with (in order of most time spent) personally, professionally, and socially. Once you have done this, review each name and ask yourself, Does this individual bring me up or bring me down?” Another way to look at it is after spending time with this individual do you leave the situation feeling better, more energized, and happy, or do you leave feeling uneasy, disappointed, and drained?
Once you have the list and have evaluated it, the next step is to determine if you should expand the relationship, create limits or boundaries around it, or end it altogether. Sometimes the toughest decision to make is to end a relationship that is harming you, but it will make an incredible difference in your life. Just because you have had that friend since grade school, doesn’t mean you have to keep them when they are not a positive and uplifting influence in your life. Remember, don’t walk with the wild, the broken, or the broke. This doesn’t mean you can’t support these people in your life. You just don’t want them in your inner circle.
5. Career/Business
This is such an important category for most of us, in fact, one that we too often perceive as being our main identity. Think of the most common question people ask when greeting others at a business event: “What do you do?”
For me, I have to guard this area of my life very carefully. Like many driven executives who are “all in” when it comes to growing our businesses, it is easy to get consumed with our businesses and careers to the detriment of the other important areas of life.
When it comes to your career, are you doing what you love and loving what you do? If an immediate YES doesn’t come to mind, this category is worth further study. We spend far too much time working to be in a place of work or type of work that is not suited to our unique passion, gifts and talents.
6. Financial
Our financial state is another area that easily slips into automatic, and where small, seemingly insignificant decisions can lead to large negative results over time. As you evaluate this area, ask yourself if you are comfortable with your current financial situation and plan for the future, or if this is an area in your life that creates anxiety, or sleepless nights.
If the latter is the case, simple money management tools can help get us on the right path and lead us to more secure financial futures.
7. Fun & Recreation
For many, taking the time for personal fun and recreation is last on the list, and often gets eliminated altogether due to so many demands in the other life areas.
Talk to a typical business owner or executive and they will tell you that they are working long and hard on their career goals and haven’t taken a real vacation in years, if ever. When they do, they don’t truly unplug as they feel it is necessary to stay connected with the office.
Society has made us feel guilty for taking time off, so much so that we wear a badge of honor for working the most hours of anyone else on the team. Think about the standard company handbook, where you earn vacation as a reward after a year of service. When it comes time to take it, there often seems to be so much work to do that it is not worth it to take the time off.
Declare time for rejuvenation. We have to fight against the part of our work ethic that tells us time off equals “slacker,” when it simply is not true. Research shows that downtime replenishes the brain’s stores of attention and motivation, enhances productivity and creativity, and is essential to achieve our highest levels of performance. When we take the time to rest, our brains are anything but idle. Instead downtime gives the brain an opportunity to make sense of the day and what it has recently learned; to surface unresolved tension; and to move from the external world to reflect within. 8
I will talk more about how we can train our brains for better focus later in the book. The bottom line is that all of us need to take proper time for rest and rejuvenation in order to operate at our optimum levels.
In order to transition to intentional living, and the full and abundant life we desire, we need to first understand where in our lives the unconscious, automatic living is hurting us. Then we can learn how to break the pattern and wake up, if you will. Once we’re awake, we can decide to live intentionally.
Challenge Questions
Automatic Living
As you think about your own life, answer the following questions:
1 In what areas are you running on automatic? Identify two to three gaps in your life where automatic living has held you back from where you want to be.
2 What kind of results has that automatic living produced?
3 Where would making a change have the potential to transform your life?
Chapter Exercise
The 7 Life Areas Wheel
Think of the 7 main areas of life described in this chapter as spokes on a wheel. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being best, evaluate the condition of each of these areas and chart it on the graph below. Then connect the dots around the circle. Where is your wheel full and round, and what areas need some help?
Chapter 4
Start with the End in Mind
“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Frederick Buechner
“All of us get just one exciting life to live here on this earth. How are we going to use it?” This was our speaker, Adria Libolt’s opening remark at my daughter’s graduation from high school. Although she was making a difference as a teacher, Adria felt called to another vocation as a Deputy Warden in the Michigan Department of Corrections, where she spent over 20 years in prisons. The concept of how are you going to use your life is certainly an important question for a high school senior to consider as they are making plans for their futures, but what about the rest of us?
I believe that we are here on earth for a purpose. Each of us has different gifts and talents, and when used to our greatest potential, these gifts will provide excitement and joy to our lives and to others around us. A recent statistic in Forbes Magazine stated that 74% of employees are dissatisfied with their work. If we are unhappy with where we currently stand in life, at work or at home, isn’t it only us who can make the choice to change it?
As we hire employees to join our team at MSNW, we seek those with the skills to do the work, but even more so, we seek the passion around the work. When we find the individual that loves what they do and is also very good at it, we are confident we have made a successful match.
Whatever stage we are at in life – a recent graduate, a busy Mom managing a household, in the height of a career, or enjoying retirement – we have an opportunity to provide great influence.
Whatever stage we are at in life – a recent graduate, a busy mom managing a household, in the height of a career, or enjoying retirement – we have an opportunity to provide great influence. This influence can be negative and destructive, or positive and life-building. It’s crucial to ask ourselves if we are making the choice to live our lives in such a way that we can have the most positive impact on our families and friends, our work, and our communities. The impact we leave over a lifetime becomes our legacy.