Quality of Life
By
Richard Flint
How important is one's environment? How important is the
work environment to one's personal productivity? How important is the
business room to the personal fulfillment (or lack of) you feel when you go
to work?
How important is the home environment to the strength of
the relationships that happen there? Do you have the energy to invest
yourself in the family room? Do you make excuses for your lack of
participation? Is the truth that you are just too tired to be the person you
need to be?
How important is it that
individuals have time for self? Do you ever resent what others ask of you?
Do you get angry when no one seems to understand there needs to be some time
for you in this life? Do you excuse your emotions by telling yourself;
someday there will be time for me?
You know the answers to these questions. Environment is
critical to one bringing personal value to all they are involved in. Without
that sense of personal value there is a constant feeling of tiredness,
frustration and the nagging questions about the importance of your presence.
Without the quality of personal presence people tend to exist in what is,
while they talk about what they would really like to see happen.
As my marketing team and I have
been searching for the direction we want to take our marketing and my
program development, one theme has kept resurfacing. I hear it each day as I
interact with those who enter my life; she hears it each day as she visits
with people on the phone. That issue is lack of
quality personal time in their life.
Recently, I was talking with
one of my neighbors about this issue. He looked at me and said,
Know what? I get up each day and go to work. I do it
because I have to. It used to be fun, but not any more. I play the lottery
in hopes that I can win and walk away from this frustration. Yet, each
week that I don’t win, I feel a little more lost.
I don't think he is alone. How
sad to know that each day you take the most precious gift you have, time,
and spend it doing what you feel you have to do. I think there are millions
who would love to win the lottery and walk away
from this frustration. Yet, avoiding anything is
not the solution; it is just a circle that will bring you back to what you
were avoiding.
I am watching a young couple go through a divorce. They
have spent their time together drifting apart, rather than building a
relationship. They talk about how tired they are of all the struggles, the
fights, the lack of communication. The easiest thing, they believe, is to
end it through a divorce.
How sad to see lives that started a journey together with
a sparkle end with anger and pain. How sad to see the punishment they have
and are putting themselves and each other through. Their love actually died
from a lack of participation.
Reality is, this is not about the job; it is not about
the marriage going south. These are simply visible symptoms of a much larger
fact.
THE MISSING INGREDIENT
People today are missing personal quality time in their
life. They work to pay bills; they get married to have someone in their
life; they get up each day hoping things will be different, only to repeat
what they were hoping to avoid. The environment just feeds their
frustrations. Their life has become a closet filled with incomplete dreams;
ideas they are too tired to complete; relationships they don't have time
for; conversations they don't know how to finish. No wonder they feel
exhausted; no wonder they are tired; no wonder they simply survive, hoping
tomorrow will find them hitting the jackpot.
The real answer to this is to design environments that
are quality driven. There aren't many business environments that are quality
driven. Most are staring at the bottom line, rather than supporting the
people who work in their environment. Too many in leadership don't have the
energy or the understanding to work with the changing internal customer.
They want things to remain the way they are, rather than pushing themselves
to grow into the leader.
There are not many quality driven home environments. Too
many families are just trying to survive each other. Too many married people
are more interested in their whims, rather than working to blend their
personalities. Many parents are just too tired to really be parents. It is
much easier to let “things” raise their children.
The mission must be to overcome this tiredness that is
taking over people's lives and get back to a sense of living with abundance
and quality. How do we do that? It will mean taking an honest look at what
is and an internal discipline that is committed to not walking away because
things don't operate on your timetable. It will demand the following agenda:
> quit avoiding the issues that are exhausting you
> unravel the emotions that feed your fears
> address issues with the people involved
> let go of the fear of what might happen
> invest in honest communication
> take control of your life
> yearnings become your daily focus
The challenge is having the
strength to get beyond the emotional fatigue that makes up your life. Each
day you design your life to accomplish one of two things --
feed the confusion or find resolution.
Which are you better at? Which do you spend your time
seeking to achieve?
Richard Flint, for ten years,
Richard has been working as a coach to many of North America’s
leading companies, leaders and salespeople. His coaching
approach is different than most. It is more about the behavior
of people and/or organization, rather than the wrongs. His
belief is behavior never lies. He teaches that the essence of
who a person is, is demonstrated through their behavior and not
their words. Richard is a master at examining behavior and
taking people from contradiction to consistency.
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