Leading A Balanced Life: Good Relationships + Good Career + Good Money
November 24, 2007
(Photo by adesigna)
I started this blog with the intention to provide my insights on living a balanced life through personal development. Over time, I have crystallized this mission into the three-legged stool concept.
The diagram shows a three-legged stool: my depiction of a balanced life. Each leg of the stool is a key pillar needed for life fulfillment as follows:
MANAGE MONEY, OR IT’LL MANAGE YOUR LIFE
Many pursue money blindly, and ended up disappointed because they think:
More money = Getting more things or Desires fulfilled = More happiness
Obviously, this is not true; but many are living a wild goose chase because of a wrong money mindset. I am not saying it’s not good to have more money; having more money to spend certainly brings more enjoyment and comfort, which is fine. What I’m saying is that you don’t need to be really rich to be truly happy. That’s a subtle but very important distinction.
You only need a certain amount of money to be happy - enough money to ensure that your life functions without negative interruptions: paying bills, filling our stomaches, having a home to sleep in etc… Having this minimum amount of money allows you to pursue other areas of life which are more important than money (see other two pillars below). Of course, the actual amount required will vary from people to people.
Having the right money management and mindset has far reaching impacts on other areas of your life: relationships and career. Poor money management usually means that you have to sacrifice the quality of your relationships and/or career. As such, it only makes sense that we pay attention to money matters.
HAVE RICH AND MEANINGFUL RELATIONSHIPS
God did not make men (and women) to be alone. We desire companionship, love, understanding, respect… all these are fulfillment that we seek through quality relationships with another human being: family, friends and including colleagues.
Negative relationships result in unfulfilled life. Just take a look at those high-flying executives, rich-and-famous celebrities with failed marriages/families, and you’ll agree with me. Ultimately, fame, status and money are the last things that we think about on our deathbed. Sorry to sound so morbid, but death does have the unique ability to put the truly important things into proper perspective: one of which are the relationships in our life.
As such, good relationships are the second pillar to a balanced life.
CAREER - DO MEANINGFUL WORK
Most of us would have asked the question:
What is my purpose in life?
It’s a profound question but it’s worth some good examinations. In his Hierarchy of Needs, Maslow stated self-actualization as the highest form of life fulfillment. It means we will find fulfillment when we contribute our time and energy to an endeavor that we find meaningful. A large portion of our life is spent at work and as such, it only makes sense that our career choice enables us to produce meaningful work.
On the other hand, the demands of the modern workplace is increasingly high; I have seen many accounts of personal sacrifices to live up to work demands and people who are not satisfied with their job. Worklife balance is now a real, yet common challenge. This is aggravated by the fact that there is a tendency to pursue career choices based on how high the paycheck is. With this mentality, worklife balance will forever be a fanciful ideal that is out of reach.
In my opinion, worklife balance is NOT only about getting a high paycheck and knocking off on time everyday. Instead, it has very much to do with the sense of satisfaction that we derive out of our work. The reason why so many people find worklife balance a challenge is because they have overlooked the importance of meaningful work.
The satisfactions we derive from our work is the third pillar to a balanced life.
A BALANCED LIFE
As a three-legged stool, each pillar is equally important towards a balanced life. A life with a critical weakness in any of these 3 areas will topple, like a three-legged stool with one leg missing.
My aim is to provide practical tips to improve and strengthen all three legs of your stool. As such, you will see the latest tagline of the blog “Tips to Improve Your Career, Relationships and Money.”
If you are concern about striking the right balance in your life, you may like to subscribe to this blog for more tips concerning career, relationships and money.
You may also like to check out my about page where I share my story which drives me to pursue this endeavor - this is meaningful work to me.
Interesting article, Lawrence. I think healthy financial resources, fulfilling relationships and meaningful work are certainly necessary elements to a balanced life. At the same time, they are all merely external expressions of inner balance and our Soul’s purpose. It’s interesting … we can work from the outside in or from the inside out. In the end, though, our inner and outer life are reflections of each other, and we cannot ignore either one!
I love how your perspective gets my brain going …
Blessings,
Andrea
Andrea, thanks for highlighting this.
You are right, sustainable life changes and improvements have to come from inside-out. The three-legged stools merely identifies 3 areas of our life that needs to be balanced, it doesn’t state the approach to make this change happen.
I am going to start from the money pillar and will be posting a mini-series about the right money mindset needed for a balanced life. Look out for it in the coming days.
Hi Lawrence,
A very insightful reflection. I just like to add one pointer to your article.
1) Career/Work — Men and women are make and wired differently, since God created us differently. For men, our focus tend to be more driven toward goal and career is one area that enable us to achieve that. Women on the other hand tend to be more relationship-focus. Your article seem to be coming more from the male perspective side. (Prehaps you might like to have a link or comments from fellow ladies blogger)
Your BIL
Vincent Lee
Hi Vincent,
thanks for sharing your thoughts.
You are right, men and women are wired differently. As such, their goals are different.
Maslow’s point about self-actualization in career/work is a sense of satisfaction that we derive from our work. He didn’t state what will produce that satisfaction: as different individuals will have different things that’s meaningful for them.
Bringing that into the context of difference between men and women - men may generally derive self-actualization through career-oriented channels, while women may generally derive self-actualization through relationship-oriented channels e.g. family.
In the women’s case, raising and caring for the family is her “work”.
When I say work, I actually mean the activities that we devote our time and energy to. It may not be necessarily be a paid job (although it is in most cases).
Hope this clarifies a little.
Hi Lawrence,
Your three legs of a balanced life seem a bit arbitrary. Why relationships, career, and money? I am not saying that these are not important. They are indeed important, both to you and to many other people. I think there are other factors that we can consider part of a balanced life as well, such as: health, virtue, variety, and many other things.
This is also not to say that your life is unbalanced. This is just your view of a balanced life. I think that your view of a balanced life tells us what you value in life, which is a good thing to understand you. I would like to hear what others view as the components of a balanced life and see how they differ.
My components are usually:
- mental health
- physical health
- relationships
then again, I got this criteria in jr. high from a disney psa.
Hi DS,
Thanks for highlighting this, as this is something I had considered much before I posted this article.
Indeed, the three legged stool is arbitrary - like all personal improvement concepts. As an example, Stephen R. Covey states 4 areas of improvements:
1. Physical.
2. Mental.
3. Emotional.
4. Spiritual.
Napoleon Hill stated many more…
In any cases, the 3 legs are areas that I hope to focus readers’ attention on and where I can contribute based on my personal experiences and successes. I am not saying that this is “The Law”, if you get what I mean.
You can definitely add more areas, but these are the 3 that I like to focus this blog on.
For me, my aim is to provide practical tips to my readers. As such, I want to move away from abstract concepts. Career, Relationships and Money are aspects of life that people can easily relate to, and in my experience, have inter-relational influences on each other. Failing in one area usually mean the other areas suffer as well. So a balance is required between these three.
I’d wanted to add Physical Health as a fourth leg, but ruled it out because I have seen accounts of people who managed to live a balanced life despite being handicapped or life long illnesses. In any case, I don’t really consider myself having much experiences in physical fitness/health to be able to contribute much.
Hope this clears things up a little.
Yeah, this does help clear things up. I think it’s good that you’re trying to focus on practical things, because those are things that people can actually see change and not necessarily “feel change”.
On the topic of health, do you think that a person cannot be healthy if they are handicapped or have an illness? I think they can still be healthy or at least work towards better health.
Hello Lawrence, I just discovered your blog yesterday and you have a new subscriber.
You make some great points here, and I can appreciate your well written overview of the importance of money management in relation to balancing our lives. The importance of money management (regardless if it’s a little or a lot) is not only vital for grown ups, but vital that parents teach this to their children. I’ve written a post on that topic if you wish to check it out. Thanks for this great post!
http://www.tellinitlikeitis.net/2007/11/how-to-teach-your-children-about-money.html
Hi Lin,
Welcome to A Long Long Road!
I’m glad you like what you find here, and I love the way you advocate that parents hold the responsibility to their children’s financial education. Simply agree and love it.
Thanks for sharing a great post.
This is a great article…
Life is a big balance.
Hi Bibix,
Welcome to A Long Long Road.
Well said, life is indeed a big balance, and that’s what this blog is about. To help achieve that balance.
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Others link that to the amount of achievements. So, is there a definition for a hard-worker who works hard and still is able to keep his/her life balanced?