Kevin W. McCarthy

The Professor of On-Purpose

Coaching

Do You Want More Balance in Your Life?

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Be sure to check out the free offer to download Kevin’s poem: A “Balanced” Life at the end of this post!

It seems that everyone wants more balance.

People want:

  • A higher checking account balance
  • A perfectly balanced body
  • A balanced diet

So doesn’t it make sense that one would ask, How do I find balance in my life? A balanced life flows logically and seems so attuned with the natural order. Life coaches, executive coaches, self-help gurus, counselors, and therapists galore teach the overwhelming benefits of having your life in balance. Being well intended doesn’t replace being well thought out about such a central concept of personal and leadership development.

Work–life balance is in high demand.

But do you have a true definition or image in your mind’s eye for what constitutes a proper work–life balance definition? Experience tells me that most people love the idea of work–life balance, and they’re seeking and investing in tips and techniques all too regularly but not getting the results they want. Let me save you some time!

Do not seek balance in your life. It will misdirect, confuse, and frustrate you. It doesn’t work, period. Instead, integrate your life with your purpose being the point of integration.

“So why, Kevin,” you may ask, “are you such a contrarian?” No, I didn’t wake up on the wrong side of the bed. I’ve studied, observed, and thought about this concept of living a balanced life for decades.

Balance is a physical concept that cannot adequately grasp or reconcile with spiritual realities.

Balance falls far short, yet it remains the popular culture ideal of enlightened living. In fact, it is hogwash!

A life in balance is a myth.

It is one of those feel good, happy distractions that just doesn’t work. People who are busy balancing their lives often miss it because they’re so busy thinking they have to have their life together before they can go forward. Not true! Another myth!

Doing life is learning life. Sitting on the sidelines waiting for the perfect moment of balance and harmonious happiness is wishful thinking, at best, and wasteful thinking most of the time.

Others will claim to be so busy, overworked, and stressed that they believe more balance will finally bring them the peace, comfort, and security they’re working so hard to achieve. Wrong! Today’s On-Purpose Minute points out the folly of that line of thinking.

In another On-Purpose Minute titled “Do You Want A Balanced Life?” I invite you to really consider what you are seeking. Below, you’ll find a link to download my poem titled A “Balanced” Life.

My hope is that you’ll find that striving for balance is a frustrating folly not worth the effort.

I’ve played the “balance your life game” in the past. No more!

Today when someone says “I want more balance in my life,” I actually hear an absurd statement. You might as well say, “I’m hoping to walk to the edge of the earth one day and be able to look over it to see what’s there.” No Virginia, the world is not flat.

The concept of balance in your life is equally flawed thinking despite being so broadly accepted.

So allow me to release you from the relentless pursuit of a vaporous standard that’s impossible to grasp yet seems so easily within reach. Why live in the unhealthy definition of stress, which is what pursuing a life of balance creates?

Instead of wanting more balance in your life, seek to integrate your life around your purpose, then live into your purpose, i.e. being on-purpose. This isn’t semantics; this is a seismic truth that provides order, focus, and clarity—and, thankfully, a healthy dose of “being out of balance.” You’ll learn to live with the joyful intensity where being “off balance” doesn’t matter and being true to yourself and more on-purpose does matter.

Replace your tiring, old concept of balance in life.

Change your “ideal” and you’ll transform your life for the better as you integrate your life rather than balance it.

To download my poem A “Balanced” Life, go to our shopping cart to get your free copy.

What Is the Meaning of Life?

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Did you make the choice today that your life is going to be meaningful? If so, please tell me about it in the comments area below. What do you anticipate the implications of your decision will be over the rest of your life?

 

“What is the meaning of life?”

Now there’s a tiny topic hardly worth pondering! The graphic and T-shirt design below by artist Aled Lewis (used with his permission)29_the_meaning_of_life_big may provide as good a sense of “clarity” on the topic as one can find.

Kidding aside, the value of asking, “What is the meaning of life?” may be less in the answer to one of life’s big questions, but more in the very act of the inquiry.

Asking this question is a positive sign that changes in life, ideally growth and maturity, are budding.

There’s an awareness that can lead to a new life with the potential to lead to a life of purpose and meaning. Engagement in a greater reality has begun.

Change is a part of life, but a change for life needs to be self-initiated—owned if you will. Those around may demand or encourage us by saying “Change your life,” but at the end of the day, it is our responsibility and challenge.

How you go about embracing growth is up to you.

For me, my big shift change happened when I attended a Bible study of the book of Romans back in the spring of 1985. Like many, I had been searching for meaning in life. As a true student of self-help literature, I was well read in the classic and contemporary self-help writers. At some point, however, it all started to sound like the same stuff simply rehashed from a different point of view.

I was not a Christian, but I was curious and willing to give that “old and irrelevant book” and the institution of the Church a chance. The Bible, I discovered, had a ring of authenticity about it that none of my self-help books had. There were no lightning strikes or trumpets sounding.

It was mostly an intellectual pursuit to better understand

  • Who am I?
  • Why am I here?
  • What should I do with my life?
  • Is life meaningful?

The Bible was different because here was core wisdom instead of just knowledge.

What is the meaning of life?

It doesn’t matter what I say. You have to find your answer for yourself. What I will tell you, however, is this: life is meaningful!

Start with this basic assumption and go forward.

Is It Right To Pray For Business Success?

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Prayer Integrates

Many of us grew up with a compartmentalized view of life. The wisdom of the day went along these lines: “Your personal life is your personal life. Your business life is your business life. Don’t mix the two.”

While there is something to be said for keeping healthy boundaries and focusing appropriately, there is a dangerous downside risk to one’s ethics and behaviors. As we separate our spiritual life from any part of life, we’re dis-integrating.

The cost of being off-purpose in real dollars and human terms is incalculable.

As we advance from the agrarian age to the industrial age to the knowledge age and head into the age of purpose and meaning, integration—not disintegration—is the norm. Central to each individual’s personal life is their spiritual life or faith. If you are inclined to pray in your personal life, perhaps the role of prayer in your business life is a concept you’ve never considered.

Can I Pray for Business and Career Success?

  • Pray unceasingly.
  • Pray from your spiritual tradition for wise guidance, profitable relationships, and right decisions.
  • Pray for your co-workers, clients, team members, vendors, and competitors(!).
  • Pray before you go into a meeting or start on a sales call.

Just don’t pray as some sort of prosperity gospel or demand on God. To pray for business success isn’t really prayer. It is a demand and expectation for a result, not a relationship. Placing your agenda ahead of God’s agenda is akin to self-idolatry. It is the arrogance of telling God you know better. Pray, but trust God for the result that is best for your maturity and growth.

Formal and Informal Prayer

There’s formal prayer where you get down on your knees in a praying position clasping your hands together and perhaps using a book of common prayer or a guide. You may be in a service at a house of worship or next to your bed saying your prayers.

There’s also informal prayer. Invite prayer to be a casual part of your everyday walking about. Take one-minute prayer breaks. You’ll be amazed how much dead time opens on your schedule.

  • Do you wait for the hot water to come or the bath to fill? Pray.
  • Do you wait for a meeting to start? Pray.
  • Do you commute to work, drive to appointments, sit at your office desk, etc.? Pray!

Recognize these seemingly empty minutes and redeem the time with a prayer.

Our Unfair Advantage by Dr. Jim Harris
Click the book cover to buy it at amazon.com

“But Kevin, I don’t know how to pray for my business.” I hear that from time to time. A great resource for you is Our Unfair Advantage, written by my Christian friend and colleague, Dr. Jim Harris. Discover the why, what, how, and importance of getting counsel from your most important “silent partner”—the Holy Spirit.

Pray, Don’t Prey

Don’t, however, prey on people or use your faith as a means to excuse yourself from excellence, rationalize your mistakes, or create personal entitlement.

If integrity is an important value to you, then be sure to hold dear forgiveness as a complementary value. Master the art of being aware of your defensiveness, calming yourself, acknowledging your errors, asking for forgiveness, and giving thanks for the lesson learned.

You’ll become a more authentic and trusted leader when you can admit and right your wrongs within the scope of your control and authority.

This On-Purpose® Business Minute explores the power of being “on the job” and praying for owners and employees alike. What do you think? Is it right to pray for business success?

Are You Owning Your Mistakes?

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Mistakes are inevitable, yet the fixation on perfection in our society is debilitating.

Whether it be lawmakers, bakers, payroll makers, or homemakers, the fear of making a mistake can flatten one’s life into a “safe zone” of mediocrity. Risks and loss are inevitable when one ventures into life or work with a sense of wonder and discovery. You are better off to have a mistake than to miss-a-take at what could be.

It is a mistake to view mistakes as merely mistakes.

Instead, mistakes can lead to retakes and become invaluable guideposts to life and growth of one’s personal growth and leadership. Mistakes open doors to learning or blaze new pathways that might otherwise go undiscovered.

  • “Mistakes” enabled Thomas Edison to discover 9,999 ways a light bulb couldn’t work. And in the process, he developed a reliable means of tracking research and increasing his knowledge of elements.
  • “Mistakes” created the Post-It® Note. “Mistakes” often open doors to new frontiers of thought, use, and development.

Just Say It!

“Yes, that’s my mistake.” These are the four magic words that when said sincerely are your path to a healthier and happier life without the stress and strain imposed by the pride of perfection and the need to be right. It will take practice and some hard swallowing, but you’ll be amazed at how much simpler life becomes.

Problem ownership is your best chance to open the door to mercy, grace, and forgiveness. The risk of owning up has a downside of consequences, but it also has the upside of building trust and rapport. In practical terms, when the mistake is out in the open versus covered-up, a solution or fix will happen sooner and with less cost.

Take Your Mistakes Like A Leader

When we make a mistake, our natural reaction is to be defensive. We retreat and distance ourselves from the mistake and then look to whom we can pass off the blame. Shedding responsibility for a mistake may momentarily soothe the psyche, but each pass of the buck creates a self-inflicted bite upon one’s soul.

Admittedly, most of us prefer to cover our mistakes under a blanket of embarrassment, shame, or self-pity. Stopping dead in our tracks at our mistakes to point fingers at people, circumstances, and systems invites a bitter and negative stronghold to enter our emotional and spiritual system. We’re stuck in a self-imposed unhealthy manner of living that taints every aspect of our lives. Now that’s a tragic and true mistake!

Compounding our initial mistake with another more sinister mistake knits a habit of ill-fitted denial into the fabric of our lives.

Do this too often and we live in a straitjacket of fear of failure and bitter close-minded defensiveness. In time, the fear of exposure arrests our maturity and so we become the very thing we fear most—a dull and ordinary blank slate of a person with no distinguishing quality. We live small (which is different from living humbly). Repeating these actions and circumstances reinforces a debilitating pattern and fuels a vicious cycle of defeat.

Lincoln memorial cent, with the S mintmark of ...Image via Wikipedia

A Penny For Your Thoughts

Life need not be this way. Instead, what if mistakes are friends in the form of hard lessons? They’re not roadblocks, per se, but guideposts revealing a better way to navigate life. Mistakes can help us know who we are and what we’re called to be about with our special gift of time on the planet.

Mistakes are an odd currency of redemption. Their true value comes with a cost in the form of a workout where we have to face ourselves. Throwing “good money after bad” is viscerally upsetting. We’ve been given an intellectual and spiritual capacity to rise higher and dig even deeper to strengthen our condition regardless of the proposed outcome. It only requires us to admit our mistake and gain the clarity and opportunity to set things right—stronger and better than before in some cases.

Wisdom is often the byproduct of mistakes, provided we invest in processing the lessons to be learned. Here’s where a mentor or coach can help us reflect and grow. If you’re seeking that mentor or coach, perhaps we can help you?

Is Your Career In The Midst of A Tough Shift™? (part 3)

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(Be sure to read to the end to learn how we’re helping good, willing-to-learn people start their own business.)

With the continuing changes in the economy, there seems to be this “tough shift class” of Corporate America employees—talented, experienced people—who are in transition every few years. Generally speaking, I see them as what used to be middle management in sales and service positions. They’re the new migratory workforce. In the past, they may have migrated from branch to branch within a company and had continuity of employment. Today, however, they’re migrating from company to company. These fits and starts in and out of jobs wear on one’s confidence.

Here are 3 smart reasons to start your own business in the midst of your job search:

  1. You’ll be a better employee when you do get your next job. You’ll be able to Think Inc!—a concept from The On-Purpose Business Person whereby every person thinks like the president of his or her own company.
  2. You’ll do a better job search because you’ll better understand yourself and what matters most to you. You’ll improve your marketability and odds for landing in a better, more on-purpose place.
  3. Your business venture might work! Join the ranks of being an independent business person whose only boss looking at them is staring them in the mirror. Who knows, maybe you’ll end up on Shark Tank!

Prospects for this rising middle management migratory workforce are not necessarily improving. Technology is working against them. In the front end of the Knowledge Age, automation of systems and controls shrunk the middle management class. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) systems are replacing their decision making and oversight and decimating their numbers yet again.

Here’s how to find the job of your life.

Hedge your bets. 

Here’s the hard reality. Your working career is likely to be a series of tough shifts composed of company changes. Regardless of whether you’re looking for a corporate job or working in one now, you are in the midst of a tough shift or you will be soon!

The involuntary income gaps between “gigs” disrupt financial and retirement planning horizons. It can also wear on the soul.

Starting a business is the perfect hedge for job jumping.

When you get “re-organized out” of your old company you’ll immediately have something to look forward to investing more of your time into until you land again or your business replaces your income. It dampens the lows and lifts the spirits.

Pressure and risk are high when you’re in the midst of a tough shift. If your business isn’t ready to launch, then you have to keep looking for that job. However, if you’ve been working all along on your business and the career tough shift comes along then you’ve some involuntary freedom—Voila! What a perfect time to take your solo ownership opportunity to the next level.

Beat Your Drum

The continuing ups and downs of the economy and the growing ranks of the dis-incentivized non-working can be disheartening. Perhaps you fear falling into such government dependence. You have a choice and it can start today.

Let your life beat with the drum of being true to yourself by being on-purpose. The world will not necessarily or readily step to your new beat, so that’s why you want to ramp up your business adventure now.

You possess the power to transform your world and bring your dreams into being.

Are you asking yourself, “Am I ready for a tough shift … to a new job or business opportunity of my own?”

Everyone, yes everyone, needs to start a business at least once in their life. Aside from marriage, which I highly recommend, little else that you set out to do will challenge, educate, and mature you into a better person or even a better employee.

Starting a business is demanding.

It is also rewarding because you have the independence to pick and choose what you’ll do and whom you will serve as your clients or customers. Risks go with these rewards so be smart.

Chances are you’ve uttered the words more than a few times: “I should start a business.” So … what are you waiting for? Even if the business never opens its doors, the benefits of starting a business are far greater than you’ll ever know unless you’ve done it.

Need some help with starting your own business?

Consider On-Purpose Personal Leadership Coaching. Whether you are starting a business or wanting to improve a current one, this offering is a great way to get the help you need.

Selectively, my wife and I are also helping people to start businesses as independent health coaches. Email me with your interest and we’ll set up an interview. It is rewarding work on many levels.

Is Your Career In The Midst of A Tough Shift™?

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Job loss, underemployment, a part-time job instead of a full-time job, less pay for less rewarding work. Or perhaps you just don’t like the job you have. You are in the midst of or contemplating a Tough Shift™.

Don’t go through it alone! And, you’re not alone.

Stock market volatility, technology changes, and the gig economy might have you considering other career options.

When the U.S. economy catches a cold, the whole world sneezes! This unfortunate effect has many people spinning and caught in a round of chaos and confusion. Couple this with technology changes and the personal fallout from job loss and underemployment—it all amounts to a serious worldwide tough shift.

Change is never easy, but change under duress is even tougher.

Fear, worry, doubt, and anxiety creep into us. This affects us at some profound subconscious level and begins to be communicated. Our nervous vibe causes others to view us as desperate and risky. This perpetuates our greatest fears from the tough shift.

Is now the time to explore starting a business?

It can be an intimidating undertaking but there are many options to explore out there. For decades I’ve worked with business start-ups to design, advise, and guide the growth and development of the business plan and leader.

Don’t go it alone.

Find a business advisor or mentor who can see clearly into your blind spots. Yes, you’ll invest a few dollars, but you’ll gain time to market and create a more profitable and better working operation. There are no short-cuts to business creation, but why add unnecessary delays and detours out of your own inexperience?

So while you’re looking for a job you can be creating one, too … for yourself. Who knows, you may never have to go to work for someone else again!

This On-Purpose Business Minute offers some simple and calming insights.

Are you ready to tackle the underlying issues, so you’re tough shift proofed?

Do You Want A Balanced Life?

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Download A Balanced Life

Do you want balance in your life?

If you said “Yes!” then chances are you’re singing what I call the “Work-Life Balance Blues,” a sad song of addictive striving but never arriving.

In a previous blog post titled Striving for Balance, I shared my thoughts about this misguided yet pervasive notion that you can obtain balance your life.

It is hogwash and the sooner you come to understand this, the sooner you’ll be able to get on with your life.

In today’s On-Purpose Minute, I share “The Balanced Life,” a poem I wrote back in 2004. My hope is you’ll begin to see the folly in living the false ideal of a balanced life. At the top of this post, there is a link to download the poem.

Now, let’s touch on the alternative approach to living your life: integrating your life.

So just how does one integrate life? Integration needs a point of integration. Here is where knowing your 2-word personal purpose statement is essential. If you don’t know who you are, then any old you can show up anytime. A great place to start learning about your 2-word purpose statement is our newly launched online tool that helps you know your purpose. Visit ONPURPOSE.me for more information.

The absence of a unifying identity leaves us at risk of dis-integrating. Very simply, your life is either integrating or disintegrating—being pulled together or torn apart.

Beginning in the 1970s, people would talk about “getting my life together.” Implied in this fragmented existence is the longing to be whole and peaceful.

Balance is a devilish “ideal.” Balance pits two opposing forces against each other to create a fragile momentary emotional truce. Balance is marketed as being so sane and wholesome. Yet it is insanity and destructive.

Seeking balance avoids the deeper questions of life and leaves us thirsting to do more, earn more, and to “have it all.” Sadly, the risks of obtaining balance in one’s life produce just the opposite effect of the desired outcome. Instead, we’re running hard and fast, busy, burdened, always feeling behind, incomplete, and ragged mentally and physically. Unquenched, we press onward in a lost war of static attrition until finally we crash and burn out on the sidelines of life.

Integration is a divine gift, a workable progression rather than an unstable state of frenzied efforts. When you are approaching oneness of body, mind, and spirit, you’re moving toward a more productive and positive state of practical living. Your focus shifts from a fragile existence built on sandy soil to the solid bedrock of your inherent essence.

Integration demands a unifying core — a point that forms, informs, and transforms the realities of the world. This window on the world helps us to make sense of the senselessness and to find meaning in the otherwise absurd.

Purpose is your dynamic point of integration.

Integrate your life around your purpose so you can be on-purpose.

Cut yourself free from the balanced life mantra that kills your energy and spirit with a distracting illusion. You don’t want a balanced life because it can’t be had. Live your life integrated around your purpose, and you’ll inevitably be an on-purpose person in creation.

Do You Want to Grow into Maturity?

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What does it mean to be a grownup, to mature, or to assume adult behavior?

Sadly, far too many adult women and men haven’t a clue what it means to act, live, and be an adult. The process of growing into maturity eludes them.

We men, in particular, seem slow to grow into the responsibilities of manhood. It has less to do with the physiology of aging and more to do with psychology and social norms. Matters like avoidance of responsibilities and lack of clarity around modern male roles complicate it and make it that much easier to put off being a man.maturity is

Perhaps the story of Peter Pan is too taken to heart and we’ve decided to “Never Grow Up.”

Women suffer from lack of maturity as well. My mother is in a retirement living situation where the women outnumber the men probably 3 to 1. When I speak with the female staff about many of the senior women, they tell tales of a new man arriving on the scene and it is like junior high girls bickering and posturing.

What a loss!

We can’t really be a very fully engaged on-purpose player when we’re living below our maturity level.

When our identity is tied to something other than our purpose, we’re subject to the whims of the world or the mercurial nature of other people’s opinions about us.

Maturity, like anything worthwhile, begins with a decision to grow up.

Yes, it takes practice, often a mentor or coach, and the desire to keep at it. And work and emotional management! Practice does pay off. The rewards of maturity are to live into the life designed for us and to make a greater contribution with our life.

Seek out a mentor, life coach, or counselor with whom you can create a structured relationship for personal leadership growth and development. This intentional approach and relationship provide the benefits of accountability, fresh perspective, and experience.

On-Purpose Partners can help with On-Purpose Peace through Do-It-Yourself (DIY) or Do-It-Right (DIR) with one of our coaches.

If you want to learn something new, then invest in becoming a more mature and capable person.

Take one step toward being more responsible for yourself. Then another step, then another. Soon you’ll discover that growing up isn’t such a big deal if you take care of the small deals along the way.

On-Purpose Tip: The process within The On-Purpose Person provides a methodology to better answer some of Life’s Great Questions about our identity and place in the world. If you don’t know who you are, then you’ll likely overcompensate by living life either too small or too large. The posing can become a preoccupation instead of being about your true occupation.

Stop wasting your years! Decide to grow up.