Is bigger always better?
Is doing more always the answer?
Is working harder and constantly pushing ourselves to create more, have more, and make more always a good thing?
When do we start to take into account the impact the growth of our business or our company is having on our health, our relationships, our family?
Most of us are trained from the time we are very young to believe in the mantra, Bigger is Better.
We are told by our parents, by media, and by society at large, that you can’t be happy with just a modest income or a small business.
You have to build it big, grow it large, working harder and harder until that day when the big payoff comes.
The thing is, that big payoff doesn’t always come.
The fact is if you look at the statistics, the vast majority of the time we fail.
We get crushed by a competitor who has much deeper pockets than we do.
Someone else is hired who has a better degree or more advanced training and they become our boss instead of us moving ahead.
Rarely do we look at the impact working so hard is having on the other aspects of our life.
We don’t often evaluate how our relationships with those closest to us suffer from our focus on work.
We forget to take stock of all those times we missed being with our children.
And let’s forget about our health.
What about the toll are all those long days and the stress is taking on our bodies?
How much are we shortening our lifespan by not sleeping well over our worry over our work?
Perhaps there is another way. Perhaps we can have different values and different standards for our lives.
As the Dali Lama says, “The planet does not need more ‘successful people’. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds.”
So perhaps we can find a way to be a better healer and lover so we can be an example of how to live happily by a different standard.
~ Sam Liebowitz, The Conscious Consultant
