Recently I had the opportunity to talk with Gordy Zacks about what big picture perspectives and day-to-day best practices have contributed to quality of life for him.
Gordy is the ultimate go getter. And he has accomplished so much for his family, businesses and non profit causes because of his amazing skills in getting things done. A lot of his quality of life comes from his passion for life and his fierce independence on creating a life that is based on his plan. He shared many best practices with me which can be found at BestLifePractices.org. For sure exercise and stretching contribute significantly to his quality of life and longevity for that matter. But before I digress let me focus this post on our discussion about happiness. Below is what Gordy shared:
A lot of people talk about happiness as the ultimate goal. I don’t believe that. Happiness is not a condition that causes one to feel the need to change. And the world needs a lot of help. I aspire to a fulfilling life. To feel that I am a part of something that is greater than myself. That I made a difference while I was here. We talked about balance. The insight I will share is that if you are living a fulfilling life, you are always out of balance.
Life is dynamic and changing. A moment will occur when the most important thing that has to be dealt with is your family and you better be there. My youngest daughter was in Israel and called me years ago and said me she needed me. I flew the next day and it was the most productive day of my life. I was out of balance with everything else but I was in harmony with my daughter. With business, I’ve had situations where if I didn’t let myself get pulled way out of balance, my business would have gone under. If you have clarity what your goals are, and you have good visibility of the subset of things that have to be dealt with, and you are honest and flexible, you will deal with things pretty good overall.
Gordy’s thoughts about the pursuit of happiness are well put. Perhaps a better aspiration for us is the achievement of “well being.” To feel fulfilled, to find meaning, to have fun as much as possible and to have a bedrock of perspective to overcome the daily stresses and unexpected challenges life throws at us.
And Gordy’s perspective on “balance” makes so much sense. Balance means different things to different people based on our personalities and our work/life compartmentalization preferences. For some of us, the best approach may be incorporating balance into our daily lives. For others, the most appropriate and productive pursuit may be a more compartmentalized approach where by design we have imbalanced for periods of time to help us get to a more balanced state later on. If Gordy had prioritized his family time over the needs of his business at such a critical time, his business may have gone under. And how much longer term personal flexibility and family time would that have contributed to?
For many of us, accomplishing things in our professional lives contributes to our quality of life in many ways. It allows flexibility. It builds confidence. Most importantly it pays the bills and hopefully allows us to avoid the taxing state of financial stress.
The point is there is no template idea of what work/life balance is or should be. It’s an artful choice each of us has to make.