Slavery Today: What Are You A Slave To?
One of my friends recently committed herself to a healthier, fitter lifestyle. It started off as a very healthy change for her, but at some stage it turned into an obsession. She now spends hours a day training, documents and reviews everything she eats, yet is not training for anything specific.
In her life outside training, nothing has importance anymore. A dinner out cannot be enjoyed as she can’t control what the chef uses as ingredients. Movies are out of the question, “don’t you know how much calories are in the butter they put on popcorn!” and family outings get in the way of her training scedule. She’s lost sight of something.
I have another friend who used to be 100% dedicated to his wife. Everything he did was about their quality of life and the time they spent together.
One day, my friend was promoted. A worthy promotion as he really was the top performer at work, both in his own right and in the way he got the best out of all the people who reported to him. When he received this promotion, something changed. Quality of life stopped being his priority. Time with his wife stopped being his purpose. Rather, he started validating himself by furthering himself at work, by future promotions and by where he was placed on the corporate ladder.
To my mind, both these friends have lost their way. They have forgotten about the real things in their lives, the important things. They have gotten so caught up in an idea, they’ve lost all balance. They’ve became slaves to it.
With my first friend, she originally wanted to lose some weight and live a healthier, fuller and happier lifestyle. Losing sight of this, she now trains and eats to a regimen that excludes life outside this regimen. My second friend now sees time spent with his wife as a competing interest to time spent at the office, a constraint which gets in the way of his commitment to the job.
200 years ago, people did not do this. Life was about living, life was about family and work was about putting food on the table. The only people for whom work was the end, rather than the means, were slaves. And slavery has been outlawed. Yet today, people constantly get the means confused with the end, and then wonder why at retirement there is nothing else in their lives.
Ask yourself if there is work in your life which serves no purpose. It could be an exercise regime, a career, or even your perception on keeping your home overly clean.
If there is, you have possibly enslaved yourself to an idea. If this is the case, ask yourself what this work will bring you in 20 or 30 years time. Happiness? Family? Friends? Or 20 – 30 years of opportunity lost, which could have been spent with family, friends and happiness.
Typically we become slaves to ideas when we lose sight of the important things in life. We do this when we get so absorbed in the work we are doing, we forget to look at the broader picture. The quickest way to rectify this issue is to take a timeout. Spend a little time away from everything and get your head together again. Think about the things which are and will be really important over the course of your life, not just now. Forget about what everyone else is telling you, look into your heart and find your own perspective. Because once you find that perspective, you will throw the shackles of your self imposed slavery aside and get out of your rut.
If you do this exercise properly, you should end up with a list of things which are benefits of your toil, not part of the work itself. And they should be things that enhance your life. The goals of the company you work for should not be on your list. So a career goal could be early retirement, or an annual holiday to a remote part of the world. A fitness goal could be climbing to base camp Everest. Meeting a project deadline, or doing more repetitions at a higher weight are the type of thing which should NOT be on your list.
Once you get this right, you will have something we call perspective. You will be living your own life again. This will give you the ability to relegate work into a supporting role in your life, rather than the lead role. And from your position of vision, you will be able to see that there are better ways to achieve your life goals, rather than through your slavery of choice.
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