Slavery In The Modern World And Freeing Yourself Of Its Burdens

By Guest

Its funny how sometimes we start doing something to achieve a goal, but the actions end up taking on a life of their own. I have a friend for example, who made a new year’s resolution a few years back to lose a little bit of weight. She did this because she wanted to live a more robust and balanced lifestyle. Having lost the weight though, her training turned into an obsession. Everything now is about her training schedule and dietry regime.

In her life outside training, nothing has importance anymore. A dinner out cannot be enjoyed as she can’t control what the chef uses as ingredients. Movies are out of the question, “don’t you know how much calories are in the butter they put on popcorn!” and family outings get in the way of her training scedule. She’s lost sight of something.

One of my other friends was the ultimate husband. Everything he did was for the benefit of his wife and home life. His reward for a hard days work was going home to her. She was the reason he went to work, she was the reason for everything he did.

One day he got promoted. Of course he did, he was extremely motivated and professional at work, his wife was his inspiration and the reason for his success. But when he got promoted, something changed. Work wasn’t about providing for his family anymore, it grew a life of its own. All of a sudden, power and the career ladder were the only things he could see.

To my mind, both these friends have lost their way. They have forgotten about the real things in their lives, the important things. They have gotten so caught up in an idea, they’ve lost all balance. They’ve became slaves to it.

My first friend started her experience with the desire to live a healthier, fuller life. Today this desire has narrowed to a life that excludes anything not related to her training schedule. My other friend’s hunger for power and career success was so strong that it displaced his love for family as his number 1 priority. It became an end in its own right when previously it was simply a means to an end.

Historically, this has never been a normal way of living. Historically, people only ever did what they had to do to support themselves and their loved ones. What time was left was honoured as time to enjoy, time to share. There was only one group of people for whom work was the end game in life, and we called them slaves. Its interesting that today, despite slavery being outlawed, people still live in a similar manner.

What are you working on at the moment? What are you trying to achieve by this endeavour? This is something I ask myself all the time. If you find you are working on something for the sake of the work, why are you doing it? If you are not enjoying it, what do you expect to get out of it? Is there work in your life that now has a life of its own?

If there is, you have possibly enslaved yourself to an idea. If this is the case, ask yourself what this work will bring you in 20 or 30 years time. Happiness? Family? Friends? Or 20 – 30 years of opportunity lost, which could have been spent with family, friends and happiness.

If you have become a slave to something, its probably because you have lost sight of the important things in your life. So take a weekend off whatever you are working on and spend it reviewing what is important to you. While doing this, make sure you separate out the things that are important to your boss, or trainer, as their goals are not yours. They have vested interests in manipulating your goals to be in line with theirs.

If you do this exercise properly, you should end up with a list of things which are benefits of your toil, not part of the work itself. And they should be things that enhance your life. The goals of the company you work for should not be on your list. So a career goal could be early retirement, or an annual holiday to a remote part of the world. A fitness goal could be climbing to base camp Everest. Meeting a project deadline, or doing more repetitions at a higher weight are the type of thing which should NOT be on your list.

Going through this type of process, if done properly, will give you perspective. Once you have it, you will be in control of your life again. And being back in control, you’ll see work or training is there to support a higher purpose. And from here, you’ll have a vantage point from which you can recognise better methods, and oppotunities to find a better path to your goals. You won’t be stuck, trapped as a slave to your ideas.

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categories: career,work life balance,goals,goal setting,business,finance,investments,self improvement,family

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Tags: Business, career, family, Finance, goal setting, goals, Investments, Self Improvement, work life balance

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