Isn’t that what we hear nowadays? Keep everything balanced, make sure your work-life balance is okay. Work from 9 to 5. Go home and relax. You deserve it. You need to have some time off from work. How important is all of this? Is this fabricated or a real necessity?

Well, that depends. Do you feel fulfilled only working from 9 to 5, so after that you can eat a big fat hambuger, putting the kids to bed and sit down on the couch watching Netflix, drinking beer, eating nachos till midnight? Because you think you deserve that? That was me not so long ago and trust me when I looked in the mirror it was not very balanced. I will go in to detail in another article on how I broke this cycle.

I understood from a very young age that hard work pays off. At one point my dad owned five restaurants and built them up from nothing. He was an immigrant and was 24 when he came here. No starting capital, no money, not speaking the language. So how did he do this? It is a simple rule: Put in more work, get more results. There is no shortcut, no golden ticket, no secret! Did it all go smooth? No of course not it was a process of years, including a lot of failures. But did he quit? No he kept moving forward. Sometimes he started early in the morning to clean and prepare and was the last one to leave at midnight when everything was clean. He did this day in day out. The price he paid for that was that sometimes he would see his family less. Working on the weekends and holidays when everyone else was having fun. The plus side of that was the reason he did it, his motivation. It was that we could have a good life, could go on holiday every year, owned nice things, go to school all the things he didn’t have when he was young.

So going back to the point of balance. Indeed working 17 hours a day is not balanced within the standards of our culture. On the other hand, the same rule applies to the benefits. It equals what you put in.

So here comes my second question: When is it time for balance? I mentioned going on holiday every year. Did a lot of nice things as a family, able to go to school. Just having a good life. That was my fathers main goal and he got fullfilment out of that. Isn’t that balance? Or is the image of myself in the mirror I mentioned earlier called balance?

The balance will come eventually and what I’m trying to say is: Don’t fall into the “being comfortable” trap. From there you won’t grow and just stagnate. Make sure you are growing every single day towards the things that make you feel fullfilled! We all have the two voices in our heads. We have some beers and there is a nice show on Netflix I can watch. You worked all day you deserved it Why are sitting on the couch with your lazy ass? Go outside and run! Go study, Go read. Have a real conversation with your spouse. Do something useful!

The mind will always force the most comfortable option on us, it chooses the path of least resistance because it doesn’t require effort and energy.

But realize that the growth you seek is in that uncomfortable voice. You always know what you have to do!

And I won’t go in too much detail on this one, but where we seek relaxation nowadays on tv screens and phones doesn’t relax at all. It even activates the brain. Real relaxation is walking outside or doing some form of mediation. That’s where your mind gets to relax.

Don’t be afraid to grind a little harder now and than. Don’t be affraid to fail. When you love the process, the grind, you won’t even bother with the result. Read more about that in my article about consistency: The secret to success

It’s like the saying: You reap what you sow.