Your Personal and Professional Lives are Intertwined
“Keep your personal stuff at home.”
This advice (or advice to that effect) has been spewed by well-intentioned folks for so long that it has come to be held as conventional wisdom. Many will tell you that a true professional finds success when they are able to keep their lives compartmentalized in this fashion.
Insert “wrong answer buzzer sound” here. And an eye roll from me. Because it’s just not true.
Instead, the fact of the matter is that as human beings all aspects of our lives are interconnected. What happens in one area influences and impacts others. Always. The degree of influence can vary based on numerous factors. And, we are simply not compartmentalized beings. Any experience we have is had by our whole selves, not just a part of ourselves.
Are there steps we can take to minimize the overlap between supposedly separate aspects of our lives? Sure. At the very least we can take time to address issues in one area and find resolution before moving on to another area. And this isn’t always possible; some issues take a LONG time to resolve – waiting for such complete resolution could keep us irrevocably stuck in an area and wasting away.
So, the way forward is this: it’s time for us to stop pretending that we can somehow clearly separate one “area” from another. We need to abandon the notion that there is some magical barrier or threshold that prevents any experience in one area of life from coming along with us as we move through to another.
I bring this up because I see too many people trying to compartmentalize when such an approach is neither possible nor necessary. Trying to compartmentalize our lives is the energetic equivalent of trying to hold a rising tide at bay with a wooden fence masquerading as a dam. It’s not doable. Which means, because we are expending so much energy in this futile manner, we are depleting our energy stores. Which is why so many folks are walking around utterly exhausted.
What’s the solution?
It’s time to be real, to own all that is happening, to be transparent and to fully embrace the idea that all areas of our lives intersect and overlap.
Didn’t get a good night’s sleep? Let your colleagues know this.
Had a meeting at work that went sideways? Be sure to let your family in on this fact – even if you don’t provide specifics (professionalism does require confidentiality).
Just got a scary health diagnosis? Tell the folks around you – both colleagues and family – because trying to maintain a stiff upper lip and carry on as if nothing is wrong is just making things unnecessarily difficult.
When it comes right down to it, there’s a way that too many of us are trying to behave as though we are invincible, different from others, stronger than those around us. It’s time to stop. Just stop. Yes, we’ve all got super-powers that we need to own. And at the same time, we are all humans dealing with very real human challenges. Those challenges impact our whole selves. Pretending that they don’t is actually counter-productive to success in any form. Let yourself be human. And let those around you be human too.
Upcoming Event!
From Grief to Joy: A Necessary Conversation
I am so excited to be hosting this event in a few weeks! If you are feeling excited (or curious or anxious) about engaging with life more meaningfully once all this COVID-stuff is done, come join in the conversation! It will be fun, interactive, engaging and totally relevant. Registration is NOW OPEN -- click on the link, check out the details and JOIN US!!
https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/157698328947