Although work/life balance is talked about a lot, it isn’t really what we seek. Instead, what we really want is more satisfaction in all areas of our lives.

Mass Readings Audio
http://ccc.usccb.org/cccradio/NABPodcasts/18_12_30.mp3

The Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph

Welcome to the fortieth episode of By Your Life. Thank you for joining me. If you haven’t already, please subscribe via iTunes, Stitcher, or on the right side of the page so I can send you notifications when each new episode is posted. And please forward to a friend you think would benefit from By Your Life.

My goal is to inspire, empower, support, challenge, and encourage you to connect Sunday, with Monday-Friday, in a secular, business world. It is my desire to help you live our Catholic faith in the marketplace and to trust that it is good for business. I hope to offer you practical ways to go forth and glorify the Lord by your life.

In this edition, we will reflect on the readings for the Feast of the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. First, there are several optional readings for this Holy Family Sunday, so depending on where you attended Mass, you may have heard the first reading from the Book of Sirach or from the First Book of Samuel; the psalm was either Psalm 84 or Psalm 128; and the second reading was from St. Paul’s Letter to the Colossians or the First Letter from St. John. The Gospel was according to St. Luke and as with all the optional readings, the focus in on the family.

The topic of family is important. How to balance work and family is a challenge and you, like me, may struggle to find a workable solution. Work is important to our family’s well-being, but work can also disrupt our family life. For some, work offers a sense of family, and for others like many of my clients who run family-owned businesses, it involves the entire family.

Regardless of your individual situation, one thing is certain: your personal and professional lives impact each other. A good home life can have a positive impact on your work and a good work life can positively impact your family. The opposite is also true. If you are having trouble at home—a sick child, financial difficulties, dysfunctional relationships—you can’t help but bring those problems to the office and your challenges at work will certainly make their way home with you.

We are whole people and our “lives” are integrated. Try as we might, we can’t completely compartmentalize our lives when we walk through the door at work or at home. Evidence of this problem can be found when you search on Amazon for books on “work-life balance.” The result is over 3,000 titles. One of the top 3 books listed is Matthew Kelly’s book, Off Balance: Getting beyond the Work-Life Balance Myth to Personal and Professional Satisfaction. As the subtitle suggests, “work-life balance” is a myth. Matthew Kelly says that people don’t really want work/life balance. Instead, he argues, people seek personal and professional satisfaction.

In this book, Matthew Kelly devotes a chapter to the question “Can You Have It All?” Spoiler Alert, the answer is no. Our lives are filled with trade-offs. If we say “yes” to something, we are by default saying “no” to something else. But we keep striving to have it all because we lack satisfaction either at work or at home, or both. Matthew Kelly says, “We all have dissatisfaction, and getting in touch with it is a good thing.” This way, we can better understand the things we are saying “yes” to that are getting in the way of what will truly satisfy.

The solution is to get your choices in alignment with what is most important. Matthew Kelly continues, “The very basis of satisfaction is a value structure, or a set of priorities, around which to live your life.” When you make decisions that are consistent with your values, you will be more satisfied. When you don’t, you won’t.

In Episode 005 of By Your Life, I shared that years ago, I did an assessment of my personal core values. I identified those things that were most important to me. This part of the assessment was not that difficult. I then had to prioritize the most important values so that I ranked them. This was a little more challenging, but still not that difficult. The eye-opening part of the assessment was when I considered decisions I’d made and whether they reflected my values. I had to honestly say that they didn’t. While I ranked God as #1, my family as #2, and health as #3, I had to acknowledge that my choices were based on work as #1, family as #2 and God a distant 3rd. I had it backward and I knew I had to make a conscious effort to get things in the right order in my life.

Because of that personal assessment process, I made many changes in my life to put God first and as a result, my family and my work have thrived. Instead of prioritizing my schedule, I now schedule my priorities—daily Mass, daily rosary, adoration, and regular Reconciliation—and yes, I care for my husband and 93½-year-old mom, I am a part-time mom to my adult daughters, I take classes with all the requisite reading and paper-writing, and still have time for work. My life is busy, but it is also very satisfying. When you are consistently living inconsistently with your values, your life can’t possibly be satisfying. But, when you get it right, all things are possible.

If you’ve never thought about and written down your personal core values, I recommend that you do. (To help, you can download a personal values assessment here.) This is the very important first step to creating the value structure that is the basis of satisfaction that Matthew Kelly is talking about.

And that brings me to our readings this Sunday. In the Gospel, Joseph, Mary and Jesus go up to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. When it was over, Jesus stays behind, but his parents didn’t know it. When they finally find him, after looking for over three days, he says to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” (Lk 2:49) There you go—God first! But the Gospel continues, “He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them.” (Lk 2:51) God is first, family is second. When we are in right relationship with God, we can have the right relationships with others in our families and at work.

This right relationship with God is of primary importance if we are to fight the sinful tendencies that come from putting ourselves first. Again, in Off Balance, Matthew Kelly describes three self-centered and self-destructive philosophies—individualism, hedonism, and minimalism—that destroy our body, heart, mind and soul, and bring down our relationships too.

Individualism, or a “What’s in it for me?” philosophy is reflected by greed, selfishness and exploitation. Hedonism, where pleasure is the ultimate goal in life, is an “If it feels good, do it” philosophy that produces people who are lazy, lustful, and gluttonous. Minimalism or a “What is the least I can do?” philosophy seeks minimum effort for the maximum reward. Minimalism is an enemy to excellence and the father of mediocrity. Think about it. What would happen to our families, our work teams, or our nation, if everyone adopted these philosophies? How much true satisfaction can you derive from adopting these philosophies for yourself? Not much.

What can we do to counter these destructive philosophies of life? Matthew Kelly is always speaking about becoming “the-best-version-of-yourself,” and in Off Balance, he repeats this mantra. Every decision we make will either take us closer to or further away from our best selves. In addition, our relationships with others, whether it is at work or in our families, will always improve if we focus on becoming that best version. This is our life’s purpose, and according to Kelly, regardless of how this specifically plays out for you and your life, this is the first principle, of living a life of satisfaction.

Virtue is Matthew Kelly’s second principle. In Sunday’s second reading from the Letter to the Colossians, St. Paul writes, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another.” (Col 3:12-13) Relationships between two people who are compassionate, kind, humble, gentle, and forgiving, are always going to be better than between two people who are unfeeling, cruel, arrogant, harsh, impatient or unforgiving. Think about the people you would rather work for or with. Would you prefer to be in a personal or professional relationship with someone who is kind or unkind, gentle or harsh, patient or impatient, forgiving or unforgiving? Be that person. Be a person of virtue.

Living in continuous pursuit of our best self and continuous development of virtuous lives, requires self-control, and this is the third principle that Matthew Kelly proposes for living a life filled with personal and professional satisfaction. We must be able to delay gratification if we are to be successful. I think he’s right. What kind of financial, relationship, health, or career success can you attain if you fail to delay gratification? Buy it now, do what feels good now, eat what I want to now, take it easy now, may offer a momentary pleasure, but will not bring sustainable satisfaction beyond now. Being able to delay what I want now, in order to choose what is virtuous and helps me become the-best-version-of-myself, is an essential skill that leads to becoming a person of good character.

But our lives are not just about us. Successful relationships not only require us to become the-best-version-of-ourselves, but to help others get there too. Again, in St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, he writes “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach and admonish one another.” (Col 3:16) Helping others to become the-best-versions-of-themselves is the essence of the second commandment, to love others as yourself. It is also immensely satisfying.

How this plays out in our lives will vary from day to day, week to week and during different stages of our lives. Helping others will have a different dynamic when we are single than when we are married, have small, teenaged, college-aged, or adult children, and so will the focus on our careers.

Friends, family, work, and the things that are important in our lives are not things to be balanced, they are more like things to keep in harmony. Like the instruments in an orchestra, they will not all take front and center stage all the time. Some will get more of our attention at times, while others are in the background. Imagine how awful music would sound if all the instruments played in equal force all the time. The same goes for all the various aspects of our lives. It is awful if we try to keep them all going full throttle all the time. Life is much more satisfying when our lives are in harmony.

So, whether you are seeking work-life balance, harmony in your life, or personal and professional satisfaction, Matthew Kelly says, “It is not an entitlement or a benefit. Your company cannot give it to you. You have to create it for yourself.”

You are responsible for the life you live. Psalm 128 says, “For you shall eat the fruit of your handiwork” (Ps 128:2) Your choices will determine the degree of satisfaction you experience. When you choose to put God first, and rightly order the other important parts of your life, as the psalm continues, “you will be blessed and prosper.” (Ps 128:2)

With God first, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, we can choose the things that take us closer to becoming the-best-version-of-ourselves, we can choose virtue, we can choose to delay gratification, and in effect, we can choose to be personally responsible for our lives. So, let us ask the Holy Spirit to help us.

Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, enkindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created, and You shall renew the face of the earth.

May God bless you abundantly in all areas of your life, so that glorify Him by your life at home and at work.  Amen

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