Happy Sunday Everyone:
I did my class on life balance the week before last at our summit in Texas. I thought it went really well. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, me teaching a class on life balance is both ironic and great. I struggle with the subject and therefore put more time and energy into it, which I think makes me a good subject matter expert. Not to suggest I know anything about PTSD, but my strong suspicion is you’re much better speaking to others with PTSD when you struggle with it yourself, it makes you authentically relevant. I feel similar on the subject of life balance and my search for contentment. Whether the search is a struggle for me or not, I enjoy the journey very much.
I woke up early Friday Morning (day of class) and had a bit of an epiphany. The epiphany was that all the decisions I make at this stage of my life can be categorized into two buckets, one is ego, the other is joy. I think there is also a 3rd bucket which creates the crossroad of which bucket to turn toward, that bucket is necessity. There are absolutely things we need to do out of necessity. To say joy/ego for all decisions is almost arrogant i.e. we still have to show up to work everyday weather the job brings us joy or not, and one might argue we don’t go to work everyday to fill our ego (some of us might), so what is left? Necessity. For me, knowing something is a necessity today, I can still ask, is the end of this road moving me toward my ego bucket or my joy bucket.
This is not something I have figured out but being aware of it is starting to push me toward certain decisions vs. others. I make ego decisions all the time and watch others do the same. Its a short term fix to fill the “I’m important” bucket. The more times I’m trying to fill that bucket the worse it gets. The opposite is “you’re important to me” bucket. The more I’m trying to fill that bucket, the better it gets. This is one of those moments where I know I’m not being completely clear with what I’m saying but I can feel the clarity inside. We have to make decisions everyday, we have to move forward, we have to progress, but if I can just lay those two words down, ego vs. joy, as the initial thought of my decision tree, I’d make better decisions for my life.
I have a feeling this comes with age. I’m a huge fan of learning from those that have come before me as they always seem to be right, and at the same time we can’t fully appreciate something until we’ve gone through it ourselves. Ego decisions are temporary, joy decisions are ever lasting. You might say, how the hell does this have anything to do with life balance, I think the answer is the more we work toward joy decisions the less we need to worry about life balance as it all starts to fall into place on its own.
I’m sure you might be thinking “little deep there, Hunter”….everything hits you at different times, for me, this was a major “aha” moment.