When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.
As with many high school students getting ready to graduate, my conversations with my high school friends revolved around discussing our plans after high school, including career choices. Our conversations centered around which careers would give us the greatest opportunity to be rich, sounded the most glamorous, and how those careers would eventually allow us to live the life of the rich and famous. Our conversations centered on what our careers can do for us. I don't recall many of our conversations being centered on what contributions we wanted to make in our careers.
Being a number of years removed from high school graduation, I have learned a few things about careers. I have learned, for example, that the market place is predominantly a lizard-brain, competitive, eat-or-be-eaten environment, and the structures and compensation systems are set up to perpetuate more of the same. I learned another important lesson early on in my career when I asked a wise mentor boss the definition of politics. He said politics is the art of self-preservation. I never forgot that definition. Much of the market place is a political environment that fosters more monkey-brain thinking of doing what is necessary to fit in even if it doesn't make sense—simply for the sake of self-preservation. These lizard-brain and monkey-brain systems would not exist if they didn't serve a useful purpose. However, they can go too far when such thinking dominates the work culture as it too often does.
It is not this way with every organization, team, or working person, however. Although success in the short run can be gained with a lizard-brain and monkey-brain mindset, work-life success in the long run will most likely be achieved with a divine-brain mindset of contribution. Such a divinative mindset will allow you to be successful in your work life, as well as simultaneously successful in your family life and personal life. You can't expect to have divine-brain thinking in the development of your character and your family while using predominantly lizard-brain and monkey-brain thinking at work. It will give you the sense that your life is misaligned.
One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.
If you see in your workplace a predominantly lizard-brain and monkey. brain thinking environment, and it makes you feel uneasy, be grateful for that feeling. It is a signal that you want to have your divine brain be your dominant brain at work. Nearly every profession has components of contribution that everyone can focus on, but too often the significant contribution that tan be made is blurred, and the point of focus is instead pointed in the direction of making money or playing internal politics. You may need to go in a different direction. A different direction might mean changing to a different industry, a different company, or it may mean you are in the right place, but you need to figure out how make your divine brain be more dominant at work through focusing on what contribution you would like to make in your chosen profession. Perhaps you have the positional power to make systemic changes and change the culture to one of contribution with less internal competition. Regardless of whichever change is appropriate for you, make the change—because piloting your life toward your life's mission depends on it.
The spirit of having the divine-brain mindset of contribution also applies in every role you may have outside of your work role, whether you are the soccer coach for your child's neighborhood team, a volunteer in your child's school, a leader in your church, or you are starting a part-time business. thing you do Focusing on contribution unleashes your creativity and passion for everything you do.
My object in living is to unite my avocation and my vocation as my two eyes make one in sight.
What do lifting your character, your capabilities, your family, and lifting by contributing in all your roles have to do with time management? Everything! This time management philosophy is not about making a long to-do list and seeing how many items you can check off your list in a day. This is about using your time with the intent to pilot your life to a culture of being more and not just doing more. This is about thinking like the most effective mothers and executives and discerning which activities, though they may be few in number, will have the greatest impact in your life. You have created your flight plan by creating your mission statement. By lifting and cultivating your character, your Capabilities, your family, and by lifting other people in your other roles through the spirit of contribution you will be on your way to realizing your mission and being the person you want to be.
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Nice article