Work-Life Balance Myth Uncovered | Ep 25

Arjun: 00:00:01

Greatness comes with a price. You cannot achieve greatness.

You cannot reach the mountaintop or hit that pinnacle, whatever it is that you're trying to do in business, personal life, whatever it might be, without it coming at a major expense or without having to pay the toll along that way.

There are no shortages of books, seminars, YouTube videos, online courses, anything you can think of tied to work life balance and how you can achieve it. You can have it all and still accomplish everything you want in this lifetime.

And everything is going to just work out perfectly between your personal life, your professional life, your athletic life, whatever it might be. It's all just going to be fine and work optimally. You can have it all and be completely happy at the same time.

You can pursue your dreams and still keep your family completely happy and be present with them 100% of the time. You can build your business and make money every single step of the way and feel good about yourself in your personal life.

Sounds like a little bit of bs, right? Well, what I'm going to share with you today, and some of you may already know this, is that work life balance is actually work life bullshit.

It doesn't exist.

There's something close to it that exists, and we're going to get into that here in this episode on what it's actually called because it's not balanced, but rather something else.

But just remember guys, there is a multibillion dollar industry that backs up and tries to support getting people to spend money and continually subscribe to this premise or the fallacy that it is actually real and that you can actually accomplish this.

But if it was real, we would all have multiple friends, colleagues, or people that we know really well that have actually accomplished it and still have it. But the truth is that we don't have those friends or colleagues because they haven't achieved it. It doesn't exist. It's just not real.

So again, what I'm telling you is that work life balance is complete bs. But there is something else. Now, if you've listened to other episodes of my podcast, you know that this is all about achievement.

This is all about coming from a dark place or where the odds were against you, or your back was against the wall, and then ultimately breaking through, having that moment, having that clarity, and accomplishing something big for you, for your family, for your past self, your future self, your business, whatever it might be. But that's what the essence of LSG energy is. And to do it, it's always going to come at the expense of something else.

And this leads me into why work, life, balance doesn't actually exist and why it's complete bullshit.

Because anything that we are pursuing or anything that we are striving for, if it is great and it is a big task or a big ask of us, it is ultimately categorically and mathematically, and you can't disprove those things because math is math and science is science and energy is finite, but it is going to come at the expense of something else. We only have a limited amount of hours in a day. Everyone gets the same 24 hours, right? We're on the same playing field when it comes to that.

We might have different degrees of energy, but we have some control over that. Where if we harness it and protect it, we can unleash it during that 8, 10 or 12 hour workday or whatever we're putting in.

But ultimately we're all kind of playing with the same hand, which means that anything that we're striving or aiming to get out there and get after, it's going to happen at the expense of something else.

If you recall or think back to when you were trying to get into graduate school and you had to take your MCAT or your LSAT or once you were actually in graduate school, all the studying and the time that you were going to have to put into passing your board exams, or if you were an athlete, the time that you were going to have to commit to getting yourself in phenomenal shape to actually win that race, or go out there and do yourself proud, or if you're building a business, which so many of us know as entrepreneurs, where you have to go under the hood into those dark hours where you're by yourself and you're alone with your thoughts and your work and you have to see this thing actually through whenever you're doing that, it's coming at the expense of something else.

Time that could have been spent watching Netflix, time with your family, time socializing, catching up with your friends, time on your personal life and dating.

I know this from personal experience because every single time I would set out and flip the switch for that six month hardcore training, deeply immersed and focused process that I had to put myself through in order to win my World Championships, it came at the expense of my personal life every single time.

I might have foolishly thought during my first World Championships run that I could still have a social life, I could still date while actually training and getting myself ready. But I quickly learned that it's not going to happen because I was not fully present in my trainings.

I was not getting the most out of my trainings or practice sessions and staying mentally reliable and focused when my mind was elsewhere, either thinking about that girl that hadn't called me back or that person I need to follow up with because I don't want to come off as a flake, but I'm really busy. You guys get the point. Anything that we set out to do is going to come at the expense of something else.

And again, for me, when I was training, I couldn't have a personal life.

My friends didn't see me while they were out socializing and at happy hours on Friday nights, I was in a gym, sometimes all by myself because not many people are in a gym on a Friday night. During happy hour Sundays I would spend training.

When other people were out at sports bars watching football games or day drinking and brunching, I would have to spend time watching film and doing rehab work to prepare myself for all the physical toll that the week was going to have in store for me in that upcoming week.

Anybody who built a business, you look at Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or even mid level entrepreneurs that we sometimes don't, but should celebrate when they went under the hood to go work on their craft or to put their actual dream into focus and turn it into a reality and bring it out there to the marketplace for us.

I'm pretty sure they weren't at home getting enough great time with their kids, with their spouses, or if they didn't have a spouse, they weren't spending much time dating and they certainly weren't socializing and drinking during the week.

They had to do this and fully commit to seeing this thing through because anything big that you are setting out to achieve is going to come with its toll. Greatness comes at a price. That's an expression that I never lose sight of and you should all remember and write it down.

Greatness comes with a price. You cannot achieve greatness.

You cannot reach the mountaintop or hit that pinnacle of whatever it is that you're trying to do in business, personal life, whatever it might be, without it coming at a major expense or without having to pay the toll along that way.

If you look at Kobe and Michael and some of the other athletic greats, Roger Federer in tennis, Rafael Nadal, they did what they did, which is cementing themselves or cementing their legacies as the greatest, to have actually touched their sport or picked up that racket or touched that ball, but they did so at a major expense.

Many of these people ultimately lose their Families because they're so obsessed and consumed by the process of becoming great and the pursuit of being great and winning it all, that they ultimately don't even have time for anything else.

And if they started that pursuit while with other obligations, such as maybe another business or a family or children, whatever it might be, they may have lost those things along the way. Now I know a lot of you might be thinking, well, I actually know some people who have work life balance.

I might be related to one of those people, I might know them firsthand, I might work with one of them. It might actually be you that's listening to this and saying, I have work life balance.

I'm able to maintain a family life or a personal life, and I'm achieving what I need to achieve professionally or athletically or whatever it is in my own self development journey.

You don't have what's called work life balance because again, if you're experiencing what I just explained, you're doing so at probably multiple expenses, where this chemistry equation or this balancing act that you're trying to create is somehow low enough to where it actually can happen. So what you have instead of work life balance is what's called work life harmony. Harmony does not mean balance.

In fact, it actually is quite the opposite. Harmony respects the imbalance.

Harmony acknowledges that something is coming at the expense and still finds a way to make it all coexist, still finds a way for it to work functionally. Maybe not optimally, but it still works, works. And ultimately that's what we're all trying to achieve.

Because I think this all in and completely cutting things out or going so dark that you lose so many things in the wake of your accomplishment or your journey can be a little bit destructive. And I get it. For some maybe it is that. Maybe that's the expense that they have to actually pay to achieve greatness.

But if you don't want to lose everything in your life or leave a wake of damage or destruction in the pathway along your road, then you want that thing that we're talking about here, which is called work life harmony, which is finding a way for it to coexist. There's flow to it. It may not be imbalanced. In fact, again, it recognizes the imbalance, it respects the imbalance, but it still works functionally.

So if you're one of those people, whether you're a perfectionist or just someone who really tries to accomplish everything they set out to do, don't be so hard on yourself.

If you're not able to find this harmony because you are misperceiving it as balance that you're trying to attain or achieve, and it's been so difficult to do it thus far.

Just keep reminding yourself that greatness comes at a price and anything that I want is going to come at the expense of something else, because energy and hours in a day and output is only so finite. We can only put out and do so much in a given day, in a given week, in a given month. So be kind to yourself. Find harmony rather than balance.

Because again, balance, all you're doing is just contributing to that multibillion dollar industry that's taking your money for that course, for that book, for that seminar, for that time you're investing, watching that free YouTube video to ultimately keep drinking the Kool Aid for something that's not real. So pursue harmony in your life. Don't seek balance because it doesn't exist, because balance somehow mistakenly gets perceived as equilibrium.

And that's not going to happen, but rather find that harmony. I hope you got a lot out of this podcast and this is something that you can apply in your life today or in your business or your other pursuits.

I appreciate you subscribing to this podcast and investing the time to spend a few minutes with me each week, and I look forward to having you back on the next.