Work to live - Live to work?
Work can be extraordinary if you will it to be. It can broaden your horizons and be rewarding and fulfilling. Furthermore it can take you forward in new and exciting ways, helping you mould yourself to who and where you want to be.
Not only does it give you money to live, it shapes your most important life decisions: where you live, who your friends are, the time you spend with your family.
If you work full time you probably spend at least forty-five hours a week at work, more than ten hours preparing for and travelling to it, countless hours recovering from it…and weekends thinking about it.
Yet the much-used motto of the working populace is: ‘I don’t live to work, I work to live’. That doesn’t add up.
Surely, in order to live life to the full, you must love your work too? You have to create some impact, be yourself and live up to your true potential. Otherwise it could be a huge waste of time and you may just be keeping a seat warm.
It may be a cliché but it's important to remember that you create your future. The bottom line is: how do you want it to look? Does it look like the present?
If you persist with what you're doing now - whether in what you do for work or how you go about it - you can predict a linear existence.
You will shine no more or less brightly than you do now, you will be no more or less successful than you are now, and all that will change is everything around you.
How does it feel? What’s it like to be smaller than you can be, to achieve less than your potential, to accept today’s reality rather than be unreasonable with the world around you?
If you feel great – well done, you. Get yourself another bag of Doritos, switch on the TV and enjoy your life.
If, however, you know you’re here for a reason, and that reason is big and resonant and shiny, then make sure you take a huge bite out of this life regardless of what tries to slow you down. Buy a copy of SHINE: How to Survive and Thrive at Work and take a quick quiz to get your personalised action plan.
They'll remind you that you have everything you need to lead an exceptional life and to be a business exemplar. You just need to turn up the volume, take off that professional mask and put on your dancing shoes. Then the party can begin.
Work can be the best game in town. The question to ask yourself is: ‘How can I be better at playing that game?
Elvis lives in us all.
Go shine!
Chris Barez-Brown is the author of SHINE: How to Survive and Thrive at Work which is available now as a print book, kindle ebook and from the iBookstore, published by Portfolio Penguin.