We may think that life has compartments—where things are separated by clear edges. But that’s not the case. Life is a grand, unified, hodgepodge of things tending to run together—despite our best efforts to keep them from doing so.
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t have some borders between our work and our family, or between our adult activities and what we do with our kids. But those borders—like most borders—are porous. They allow, by their definition, for a flow both ways of one thing into another.
And no matter how much separation you place between different parts of our lives, you cannot escape the common denominator: you. You’re the one living your life. You’re the one deciding what needs to be done, along with how and when. And hopefully, you’re examining why the things need to be done—if at all. And hopefully, you’re not just doing this for one area of your life.
There’s an old saying that “how you do anything is how you do everything”. And while this may seem like hyperbole, I’m learning what it actually means.
Given that life is necessarily intertwined and integrated, your mindset and beliefs in one area can’t help but seep into others. How positive or negative you are, how collaborative or sequestered you tend to be—those things tend to be your overall way of doing things. And if you think about it, everything in one area of your life is practice for how you handle other areas. How you deal with your kids’ problems is training and education for how you handle your co-workers—and vice versa.
So don’t make the mistake of thinking that you’re only working on work at your job, or that your vacation time with family doesn’t involve your “work self”. What you do, and how you do it in one area of your life necessarily bleeds over into everything else. It’s just a matter of being aware of that, and leveraging it.
