Oct

6

Create vs. Acquire

Filed Under Living your best life, Work life balance issues | Leave a Comment

At the Möbius Leadership forum session titled “Walking the Tight Wire: Family and Career, Finding the Balance,” moderator Robin Ely, a professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, suggested that “people focus in their lives on what it is that they want to create, and not necessarily on what it is that they want to acquire.”

“Work-family balance issues are often viewed as trade-offs implying deprivation or loss. Women struggle just as men do, she said, in figuring out what they want to create and what their platinum standards are.”

If there is any time when we can clearly see the manifestation of our inner conflict, the social battle of Create vs. Acquire, our time is as good as any. Driven by the desire to acquire, we can easily forget the kind of life we wanted to create for ourselves and our families.

It’s not easy, making the choices that serve our life’s priorities, goals, and values. Often, it feels like standing up to the good old “bully” archetype. Only this time around, we are not in the school yard. As adults, we are playing in a much larger playground. The “bully” takes the form of social pressure and the conflicting messages in our heads.

Making choices without deeply thinking how they can affect the quality of our lives and our relationships, is a lot like doing the same old thing and expecting different results. We have to be ever watchful of what motivates our actions.

If it sounds like a lot of work, well, that’s because it is. Our reward for this kind of inner work though is a life well lived. What is a life well lived worth to you?

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