Find Your Purpose and Make Your Work and Life Sing in Harmony

A lot of entrepreneurs talk about hustle as though it's a religion. They'll tell you that the only way to be successful is through constant hard work, making personal sacrifices at every opportunity to work on the business instead.

Hard work is important, of course, but "hustle" has just become an excuse for people to work so hard that they literally drop down dead.

And on the subject of death, have you ever heard of someone reaching the end of their life and saying, "I wish I'd worked more"? It just doesn't happen.

What we need is a different perspective. There are other things to think about above and beyond doing our job and being compensated for it. And if we don't take the time to find harmony between our personal and professional lives, we burn out – or worse.

Burnout is a real problem, and a lot of people focus too heavily on the rat race. In fact, that's a misnomer because "rat race" implies that there's a finish line. Instead, it's more like a hamster wheel, with people running faster and faster to spin the wheel around without actually going anywhere.

The statistics don't lie. Three quarters of people have felt burned out at work, and 40% have felt burned out specifically during the COVID-19 pandemic. Women aged 20 to 35 and over 55 are the most likely to be impacted by burnout, and people who work more than 40 hours a week are six times more likely to develop burnout.

69% of workers are experiencing burnout symptoms while working from home during COVID-19, a 35% increase since early May (51%).

– Source: Monster poll results, July 10–13, 2020

The good news is that you don't need to work yourself into the ground to be successful in life. There's a better way of doing things.

Being committed to your work is a good thing, but you also need to know where to draw the line and to get your head out of the office and into your happy place. It can be hard to do this, especially at the beginning of your career, but paradoxically you need to notice it early so that you can stop it from being a problem. If you don't, you can lose friends and relationships and even compromise your health.

The work that we do should make us feel good and line up with our core values as we navigate the difficult decisions in life. It shouldn’t leave us feeling overwhelmed and as though we can’t cope.

In my case, I realized that something wasn’t right after I burned out while raising a Series A round for my startup. I was trying to do everything while still finding time to spend with my family. That’s when I decided to look at how other entrepreneurs were able to find harmony between their work and personal lives.

“Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can't afford to lose.”

– Thomas Edison, Inventor

The good news is that I was able to find that balance and that the last three years at my startup were a joy. My partner gave birth to our second child and I was able to spend time with my family without compromising my vision for the business. Even today, I have a couple of businesses and I'm invested in a couple more, but I can still limit my working hours and be productive.

I enjoy what I do on a day-to-day basis and spend time on what matters to me, but I also know that there's more to life than the 9 to 5.

I talked to Dani Hart, digital strategist for the American Battlefield Trust, about exactly that. Check out what we talked about on our Podcast👇 .

(Credit to GrowthMentor for hosting the podcast)

It was a pleasure to work with Dani on this, because she’s a fellow mentor and advocate of mentorships as a way to hack learning and become the best possible version of yourself, whether as a mentor or a mentee.

When Dani realized her work and life weren’t singing in harmony, it was because she was starting to experience migraines. She’d never had them before, and yet suddenly they were overwhelming. She dealt with it using meditation, something that’s also worked for me.

Be sure to listen to the full episode in the player to find out more, or read on for some tools, tips and resources that will help you to find harmony in your personal and professional life.

Further Resources

During the podcast, we talked about a range of techniques that both Dani and I use to find harmony between our work and our personal lives. There's no magic bullet and not everything will work for everyone. The trick is to try a few things out and to see what works for you.

Here are some of the resources that have helped me to find balance throughout my career:

• A short audio guided meditation that poses the question, "What would new management do?" Super helpfull for proffessionals that are looking for a change.Credit to Michael Dearing

• A great book to get the first steps into Spirtuality:
  Conversations with God: An Uncommon Dialogue, Book 1 by Neale Donald Walsch

• My faviorite meditation app - Headspace.

• A Great book that has provided practical strategies and techniques to apply the changes. A must-read book on the power of habits and their enormous influence on our lives.
  The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
  By Charles Duhigg

• My favirote to-do list to organize work & life. This way you won't miss evrything you want to do specially in your personal life.