Slavery In The Modern World And Freeing Yourself Of Its Burdens

One of my friends recently committed herself to a healthier, fitter lifestyle. It started off as a very healthy change for her, but at some stage it turned into an obsession. She now spends hours a day training, documents and reviews everything she eats, yet is not training for anything specific.

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.

I have another friend who used to be 100% dedicated to his wife. Everything he did was about their quality of life and the time they spent together.

One day, my friend was promoted. A worthy promotion as he really was the top performer at work, both in his own right and in the way he got the best out of all the people who reported to him. When he received this promotion, something changed. Quality of life stopped being his priority. Time with his wife stopped being his purpose. Rather, he started validating himself by furthering himself at work, by future promotions and by where he was placed on the corporate ladder.

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.

In the first case, an effort to live a healthier and fuller life twisted around and on top of itself, into a situation where there is no room for the life she originally wanted. In the second case, the family which were the inspiration for success ended up being regarded as a competing interest for the time which could have been spent in the office.

In the history of mankind, work for the sake of work was reserved to a societal underclass we call slaves. Other people only used to work to support themselves. Once they had achieved this, they enjoyed their lives with their family and friends. The concept of career is so new in the history of mankind, it can almost be called an aberration. Yet the majority of people we know get sucked into its myth, a myth where work is the end in its own right. As a result, people continue to confuse the means to an end, with the end itself.

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, have you become a slave to an idea? Are you toiling for no purpose. Remember you only have one life, so review this work and try to work out what it will bring you in 10 – 20 years? Will you look back on your toil and smile at the benefits it brought you? Or will you look back and see a landscape of opportunities missed?

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.

You’ll know you have done this well when the things that are important to you, are things that your work can “buy”, not measurements of your work. For example, a career oriented goal should not be completing the project on time and under budget, it should be affording that holiday in Tahiti. And a fitness goal should not be losing 20kg and improving your resting pulse to 68 beats per minute, it should be being competitive while playing tennis with a bunch of friends, which you will follow up with a guilt free meal and a couple of drinks.

Once you get this right, you will have something we call perspective. You will be living your own life again. This will give you the ability to relegate work into a supporting role in your life, rather than the lead role. And from your position of vision, you will be able to see that there are better ways to achieve your life goals, rather than through your slavery of choice.