Blog
Bringing the “Both/And” Perspective
by Amy Riley
August 5, 2010
I think it’s easy to be cynical and think that it’s not possible to be completely satisfied in all areas of our lives at the same time. It’s easy to think: “If things are going well in my work, then there are going to be negative impacts in my personal life.” and “I don’t have time to be proactive and fully on top of everything at work, at home, with my friends, in my neighborhood, etc.”
I recently was dissatisfied with what was going on in a few areas of my life: I was getting sick too often and was very conscious of not getting enough sleep, I wanted to spend more time marketing and selling to get more business, I was looking to introduce regular cardio exercise into my life and wasn’t sure how to fit it in, and I didn’t want to spend any less time with my family. I had fallen into the trap of thinking that I had to sacrifice my satisfaction in one area in order to be fulfilled in another.
In fact, it doesn’t have to work that way. We’ve all probably had times in life where something shifted – in a positive way – in one area of life and then we began to notice related and possibly seemingly unrelated positive impacts in other areas of life.
For me, recently, the lynch pin was putting my cardio exercise in place and starting to run. I was nervous about doing this. It seemed if started running, I would have less time for the other things I wanted to do and that I might actually need more sleep as I’m shocking my body with this new activity. The concern was: Starting to run might make me more dissatisfied with some aspects of my life.
And the opposite phenomenon happened! I started running and I had more energy. I wasn’t necessarily sleeping more, yet I could tell I was sleeping deeply. I felt more energized. And a client I had worked with previously contacted me to start a couple of projects we had talked about months back. I was delighted with what was going on in these aspects of my life. Were the positive impacts all directly related to running? Not all of it perhaps, yet I had the experience that I didn’t have to sacrifice other areas in life in order to feel good about my physical fitness.
This experience is a nice reminder. It reminds me: We don’t have to relate to satisfaction in our life as an “either/or” situation. Instead we can bring a “both/and” perspective.
Where have you – or could you – bring the “both/and” perspective to your life?