The 24/7 Working Life — You Need to Change.
Here is the story for you to change.
It was 3 am. Steven Bartlett was awakened by some disturbing sound inside his house. Seemed like someone broke into his house in the middle of the night.
Why wouldn’t they? He was living in a luxury house along with his friend/Business partner Dominic.
The house was a six-bedroom mansion, with facilities like an electric gate, tennis court, cinema room, etc.
Too much for two 24-year-olds.
To face the thief, Steven took a wooden mop handle and switched on the lights.
There was no thief.
It was Dominic who sat alone, drinking his second bottle of wine at 3 am.
Steven became confused seeing him like this. Without saying a word, he pulled the bottle from him forcefully, poured the wine into the sink, pulled his body to his bedroom on the third floor, and left him there.
An hour later, he heard another disturbing sound. He ran upstairs to check on him and to his horror he saw Dom lying, covered with his pillow and bedsheets, wet with red wine. He was afraid it was blood.
He pulled the bedsheet and saw Dom holding another bottle of wine in his hand.
This was when Dominic began to show symptoms of his mental health problems. And for the first time Steven began to notice it.
Steven and Dominic were best friends. They dropped out of the university together, lived together, ran two businesses together, and traveled together. Steven thought he knew Dominic better than Dominic himself until then.
Dominic spoke about everything to Steven other than his Anxiety issues. Because he knew Steven was a tough guy, speaking about it would show him weak.
So instead of sharing his mental health problems with his best friend, he suppressed it with alcohol.
Steven began to see the consequences of over obsessive lifestyle
Steven and Dominic were so obsessed with being rich that they never spent time on their physical and psychological need.
From the age of 18, Steven isolated himself for 3 years from social life to build his business, which eventually failed. He then started another business where he spent most of his weekends staring at his computer screen, sleeping in the office, and working continuously for 16 hours.
He believed that the more he worked hard at the cost of everything, he eventually would become rich.
He would see people who gave priority to work-life balance and would think why they were not spending all their time in their business to make more money. Their balanced lifestyle made no sense to him.
He also inspired some of his friends to embrace this over-obsessed lifestyle. He thought they too got inspired and began to work rigorously like him until two of his best friends broke down in front of him.
He began to see the consequences of the life he was living, from one person after another.
Shortly after this, his other close friend, Anthony, called him on a random day and said he was having severe anxiety, panic attacks, and depression. He was going to therapy and taking medication for it.
Anthony was one of the toughest guys Steven had seen, who believed mental health issue was a myth. He has been working every waking hour for the last 4 years. And now he was facing a similar consequence.
A moment to rethink life.
Following all these incidents Steven took a moment to rethink everything.
He asked a very important question to himself.
How was he truly feeling?
The world may say he would be feeling great because of the successful image he built in public.
But how was he truly feeling inside of him?
How would he feel in the future if he continued his over-obsessive lifestyle?
One thing was clear to him. Something was missing in his life, and it had to change.
He always enjoyed working hard. He gets a lot of fulfillment, joy and a sense of accomplishment.
But at what cost?
Dominic and Anthony were working hard at the expense of their social and psychological needs.
They were winning over everything that didn’t matter and losing over everything that mattered.
We can’t build a meaningful life by not working hard in our life. Nor we can build a meaningful life by sacrificing everything for it.
There should be something in between called balance.
Balance is what holds the earth from not falling apart.
Reference: The book, “Happy Sexy Millionaire” by Steven Bartlett
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