Bill Riddell

Rethinking Success & Life Balance

Many people have unhealthy views of success and what it means to be successful – myself included.

There was a time when I believed the measure of success was a high income, big house and a great car  - but those views slowly changed.

Over the last few years I have realised that money, while useful, is not a true measure of success.

Banish the Bling?

Expensive trappings don’t mean much when your job consumes.

You may be unable to enjoy those things now due to excessive workloads, while high stress levels mean you may not live long enough to enjoy them in retirement. Higher incomes often come with high costs.

Big houses are only nice if you have wonderful people to share them with and nice cars cannot be enjoyed on the stressful, traffic congested, daily commute.

Don’t get me wrong, it is possible to achieve these material trappings of success without the unwelcome side-effects. However it is not within realistic reach for all of us, some will achieve it many will miss out.

Success Built to Last

I recently looked back on how much my views of success have changed while reading Success Built to Last. The tomes tagline ‘Creating a life the matters’ aptly sums up what this thought provoking book is about.

The authors, who interviewed hundreds of successful people (from Richard Branson to Nelson Mandela) in their research, present the following tenets to creating a life that matters:

• Meaning – to follow your passion and pay attention to what is important to you.
• Thought – develop unique and useful ways of thinking – accountable, audacious, passionate, realistic, optimistic
• Action – take action repeatedly. Don’t overanalyse, do it, learn from it and go again.

Life Focus vs. Career Focus & The Balancing Act

“Making a life is as important as making a living. This is not an either-or decision … do both.” – Success Built to Last

We are increasingly trying to find meaning in our work, to solve our problems, create our identity, sense of self worth and to make us feel ’special’. While this is certainly possible for some, for many work is merely a means to an end, you trade your time in hours for money, simple as that. It is what I do at my day job, I get some job satisfaction from helping customers and giving great service but at the end of the day I’m in it for the money.

I think the true test of a fulfilling job is ‘would you do it for free?’ In the case of writing the unequivocal answer is yes. There is no hesitation, I write because I enjoy it immensely. I would not perform my day job for free day-in and day-out.

Life balance is not really a day to day equation, it is averaged out over months and years. It has taken me a while to understand that.

If you are building a career or a business perhaps you need to put in 12+ hours a day now, but realise that is not sustainable and plan to bring time spent back to a reasonable number. You may also need to let your career slide for a while to focus on your health, your family or another passion.