In this issue: How to live all four of your ‘lives’ in authenticity. And how to align your beliefs with your 95 productive hours each week.
What are our four ‘lives’?
Since 2017, I’ve seen my world as a series of concentric circles or ‘lives’:
Self – mental health, sleep, exercise, and diet.
Family – spouse, kids, extended family.
Community – friends, networks, and community groups.
Business – career, company, financial security.
Each year at this time, I reflect on how these ‘lives’ align with my values.
Experience
The Wake-Up Call
I used to be a workaholic, always prioritizing business. I worked at my wife’s hospital bedside, missed my kids' birthdays, and treated work as all-important.
In 2017, it hit me: I wasn’t living my values. Who I valued the most was my wife and our three daughters, but it was work that consumed me. My #1 value is authenticity, and it was painful to admit to myself that I was avoiding the truth. I was spending a huge proportion of my 95 productive hours a week on my Business ‘life’ and too few hours on my Self, Family, or Community ‘lives’. So I committed to making changes.
Progress So Far
Seven years later, I'm far from perfect, but I’m more aligned with my values and my ‘Fire in the Belly’:
Self: Solid mental health, regular exercise, and consistent therapy.
Family: A strong marriage, good relationships with my daughters.
Community: Close friendships, social connections.
Business: Engaging and fulfilling, and it still drives me intensely.
More of my 95 hours a week today, vs back in 2017, are invested in my Family, my Community, and my Self ‘lives’.
This re-alignment gives me a foundation for growth in 2025.
Reflection
What is ‘Fire in the Belly’?
At my firm, we use the term ‘Fire in the Belly’ to describe the passions that drive our time and energy. When we have a clear understanding of our individual ‘fire’, we can more authentically allocate our 95 waking and productive hours each week to what matters the most, right now.
If you’re in your late 20s and your ‘Fire in the Belly’ is earning $400,000 by your mid-40s, then you should be focusing heavily on your Business “life”, now. Invest 80% of your time on your career, in developing expertise, seeking mentorship, and building your network to be in the top 1% in your field.
Suppose you’re 50, like me, and motivated to lead a strong team and create value in a scalable and sustainable business. In that case, your time might be better spent mentoring and growing your direct reports, and working on business systems. Even if I continue to devote a great deal of attention to my Business ‘life’, my role definition has shifted from being a player on the field - to being a coach.
So rather than setting rigid goals for 2025 (aka “resolutions”), why not start by identifying what truly drives you, where your ‘fire’ is pointing – and then align how you spend those 95 waking and productive hours every week … to be authentic to your ‘fire’?
That way, each “life” leads to mapping a) the actions, to b) the beliefs.
Actions
Aligning Actions with Beliefs
(Btw, this framework follows my Return on Marketing Career post - yes, this RoMC framework isn’t just about Business ‘life’, it also directly relates to my Self, my Family and my Community ‘lives’, too.)
Here’s how we can all maximize the impact of our ‘Fire in the Belly’ in 2025, across our Self, Family, Community and Business ‘lives’:
Step Out of Your Comfort Zone: Be authentic and painfully vulnerable with yourself, and do an audit of the four ‘lives’:
What do you value most? What is your ‘Fire in the Belly’ about?
How do you spend your 95 ‘waking and productive’ hours every week?
Are those hours actually aligned with what you value the most?
Develop New Skills: What if you forgot about “New Year’s Resolutions”? Instead, STOP setting a ‘resolution’ (that none of us believe we are going to fulfill, anyway, right?), UNTIL you are clear about ‘what you value the most’, and ‘what your Fire in the Belly is REALLY fuelled by’.
Create More Value: Two steps that will help you move towards truly transformative change, and they are both critical:
Once you are clear about what matters the most, decide how that clarity about your ‘fire’, will change how you spend your time. Are you going to invest more time in mental – or physical – health? How do you strengthen bonds with your partner or children? How do you stay in touch with friends who you care about? And, how do you ‘move up faster’ on your career journey, how can you round out your experience or pursue a new challenge?
Then, what is the one thing, just one thing, that you will do differently in 2025, for your Self ‘life’, your Family ‘life’, your Community ‘life’ and your Business ‘life’ – just one small change in how you spend your time, in each ‘life’?
Move Up Faster: You’ve only got 95 productive hours a week. By prioritizing how you invest your time, you accelerate your progress, because ‘focus drives impact’.
References
Stephen R. Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People emphasizes the importance of a clear purpose, or "personal mission statement," to align time with true priorities.
Brené Brown’s Daring Greatly highlights how embracing vulnerability can help you achieve authenticity.
Greg McKeown’s Essentialism argues for a disciplined focus on what really matters, allowing us to allocate time to the areas that bring us true fulfillment.
All can help you understand how to find your true purpose and make sure your actions are always aligned with it, across all of your four ‘lives’.
If you’d like to discuss your career journey with me one-to-one, please feel free to email me at [email protected] or message me on LinkedIn.
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