Loving your work is a gift, loving your work also makes it easy to neglect other parts of your life. As an entrepreneur, we decide where our time goes. This is freeing, but it’s also a tremendous responsibility. Time freedom and financial freedom are frequent words spoken in the entrepreneurial arena. The desire for this freedom will make us say yes a lot more than we should. Do you ever think, “If I could connect with the right person, launch this next big project, secure the next big deal then I can slow down?” The smoke in mirrors lies in the fact that we have replaced the term retirement with slowing down, being more present, etc..
When you work a J.O.B, the game is to hustle put in the time, effort and sacrifice so in 30 years or so you can retire, slow down and finally enjoy life. You’re your boss; you are creating your empire, you are an entrepreneur. But now you are saying “I will grind, hustle, work 20 hours a day, travel several times a month to events, be away from my family, and one day I will be able to slow down and finally enjoy life.”
Does that sound like freedom? Is that what the freedom that we desire looks like? Is that the freedom we post about on Facebook, that we pimp out to the world? The problem I see with this is there is always more. More deals, more connections, more events, more more more. We decide where our time goes, right? The responsibility for us to show up, to present to our friends and family a less frazzled stressed out version of ourselves is crucial.
Children have the inherent ability to know when they need to rest. I can find my kids anywhere in the house passed out at any given time of the day. As adults, we ignore ourselves; we ignore the little pulls from our inner voice. Loving what you do is amazing, but I think that striving for balance and taking care of ourselves is much more important that striving for freedom.
True freedom will come when life balance is achieved.
