Never work a day in your life

I had a long extensive conversation with a client of mine recently, totally on billable hours of course, about how winning in business oft meant you lost in life. He told me that most the times how aggressive and single minded you were meant that you would succeed in your career but generally meant you lost on some other facet in your life, usually the personal side. 'Corporate America', 'The man'....call it what you will but at the end of the day all that dogged work approach meant was that you were working to make someone else money, someone else look good..someone else rich. Next in line to be promoted? Well you're only fifty percent the success story if it was at the expense of other areas of your life.
My client was raised by a single mom and very independent his entire life. She worked her whole life up until retirement age never taking any meaningful vacation. She retired at 65 and started to let herself think of all the things she had to look forward to - traveling, dance lessons, art classes, etc. She had a roof over her head and a son who was taken care of. It was almost as if that day was the beginning of the rest of her life. A time to reconnect with her estranged son with whom she was not very close to during those days. Sadly, shortly after her retirement my client's mom died. Never once getting to enjoy the true pleasures she was so looking forward to. My client told me that post settling her estate he held in his hand a check for the lump sum of $130K and thought to himself that this check represented her life in its entirety and it its import knocked the wind from him. He eventually donated the money and the reconnected with his grandmother who coincidentally has celebrated her 102nd birthday this year. He said that had he not had lost those 10 years of not taking advantage of time with his mother, he would not have had these times he's shared with his grandmother. These days they can be found every Friday morning sharing a long breakfast together before he heads off to work.

Everyone always says ~ find something you love to do and never work a day in your life.


Tran