I once did an exercise for a leadership coach where he asked me to write out a vivid description of my ideal life in the future. It was one of those visionary-things which is supposed to force you to come to grips with your enormous potential for achieving super-sized goals in life.
I obediently wrote it all down, and upon reading it he simply said, “It all sounds very nice, but where’s the fun in this?”
“Fun?” I was thinking. “You didn’t say anything about fun! My future is serious business, man!”
He caught me.
Apparently, I had been taking my career far too seriously. I had to go back and rewrite it with a greater emphasis on having fun in life.
“How would you define fun?” I asked him before he left. I wanted to make sure that I got it right.
This was not a good sign.
For some reason I tend to downplay the lighter side of life, spending far too much time thinking about all of my responsibilities, my work, and the infinite number of chores and errands that must get done. Whenever I try to relax and take it easy, there’s always that abusive little voice in my head telling me what a slacker I am.
“You can’t leave work already! It’s only been 10 hours today!”
“Don’t even think about taking a nap! Do you honestly think Jack Welsh ever took a nap? Now there was a real leader!”
“Put down that book! You could be working on your next blog post!”
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Photo by nAncY.
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