This issue of the Fulcrum is triggered by a question that has been repeatedly addressed to me in the course of the last year in different formats, by people of various ages and positions, from young entrepreneurs to senior executives.
The question often takes the following form: “I belong to a generation that wants to make a difference, where work is not just about the money. Working in ferociously competitive environments often means long hours and constant pressure to innovate and deliver to deadlines. How to achieve an effective work-life harmony, especially where it concerns the desire to engage in a spiritual pursuit?”
This is one of those questions to which there is no cookie-cutter answer. It is a matter of coming to grips with how life works and resolutely applying simple principles to accomplish what one wants.
Let’s turn our mind’s gaze to two fundamental approaches – the obvious and the less obvious – in addressing work-life balance and harmony. Note: Balance is a matter of the ratios between things. Harmony is how they live side by side.
The obvious approach, which I would assume is not foreign to you, concerns developing time-frame disciplines, with a preponderance upon the balancing dimensions. There is time for work and time for chilling out; time for family and friends and time for one’s spiritual pursuits (including shared like-minded pursuits); time for quiet reflections and time for engaging conversations; time for rest and sleep and time for exercise… The task is to develop clearly defined time-frame intactness disciplines, where each nature of activity is minimally invaded by and interrupted by issues that belong to another time-frame.
One way to develop time-frames intactness is by assigning qualities to a time-frame. Here are some examples: Creativity and reliability to work; care, support and warmth to family time; adventure, exploration and fun with friends; depth and concentration to spiritual-natured processes; consistency to exercising… Be creative with assigning qualities, being mindful that they change as you grow and evolve with the passage of time.
We cannot proceed without mentioning the perils of the little screens. Next to the necessity and benefits of owning ‘screen devices’, the mobile and cyber-space revolution is responsible for a tangible, wholesale brain-level derangement and new forms of stress in millions of people that will only worsen with time. Developing off-line disciplines – where the little ‘interferus nasticus’ is on flight mode and out of sight, especially when engaging in spiritual-natured processes, is vital to your development.
The ‘star actor’ in the process of achieving inner harmony and cohesion is the establishment of a center of gravity, in a way that engenders a clear self-ordering. This necessitates knowing with crystal clarity what one wants and one’s top priorities. Perhaps (re) read the recent Fulcrum issue.
Example of self-ordering: Two people are having a conversation. One person’s life is ordered to making money – lots and lots of money. The other person’s life is ordered to making the world around them a better place to be in by making a difference in some constructive way. Most such conversations are quite shallow because the two people’s center of gravity exist in different universes, thereby affording a narrow common denominator.
The higher a person’s center of gravity, the deeper the self-awareness and the greater the range and scope of one’s perception and subsequently, the ability to differentiate between the important and unimportant. So, one uses one’s time, energy and opportunity – the most precious currencies at one’s disposal – more wisely.
The term ‘higher’ is often being used in the Fulcrum writings in the context of the presence of a gradient of connections, possibilities, quality of engagement and opportunities that proposition a seeking person. Constructive ways are higher than not constructive ways because the powers and energies that live in the constructive option are vastly more refined, liberating, healing and empowering than the recycled, coarse energies and powers that live in the non-constructive wavelengths of human engagement.
Having a clearly written purpose determines one’s self-location and center of gravity. Example: A person’s self-declared purpose may be to experience, as much as possible, the incredible scope of the human potentiality in a way that is not governed by one’s local circumstance.
Having an enduring purpose and a high center of gravity is a profoundly instructive and revealing process due to the powers, energies, higher intelligence and pristine ideas that imbue the domains that one’s life becomes joined to. It also creates a unifying ‘plasma’ and a context for everything that one does, where things simply fall into their rightful place.
It then becomes not a matter of work-life balance or harmony, but rather a matter of being an occupant of the high ground of the human possibility, becoming one’s own person, and engaging in different aspects of life by seeking to invest the best of oneself in a variety of ways. The influences that live in these domains guide and take care of the person in curious and magical ways.
A high center of gravity is a creativity catalyst. In small measures and every so often, a left-field creativity jackpot event.
It’s an intuitive journey through the maze of living. The higher one’s center of gravity along the connective gradient of the human possibility, the simpler it becomes. The 21st century is impossibly complicated. One of the tasks is to simplify, to the point of being able to perceive with awe-inspiring clarity the very fact that life exists inside of a great purpose, that there is a reason, that there are greater causes and that humans have a meaningful part to play inside the wide-open window of opportunity.
I hope this helps in some way. Please do not hesitate to enquire further.
With best wishes,
David
David Gommé
World Copyright 2020© David Gommé