I have spent years in the nine-to-five, trying to grow a career, in-between juggling full-time parenting, family relationships and being actively engaged in church and ministry activities, often working until early hours of the morning to try and keep everything on track. My life was revolved around my work and it consumed my entire existence.
The problem is, in today’s digital age is that the work — life balance has been skewed, with increasing pressure from employers and customers to be always on, and then friends and family having the same expectation,not having even a day where you can just switch off the phone and take it easy, because there is always someone trying to reach you — business or personal, and this is all in the name of success, as if building a career, making a wad of money and keeping in touch with your distant cousin you last saw as a child is the definition of success. NO.
The definition of success is not what the world has told us it is. The definition of success differs from person to person and what is success for you may not be for me, depending on what I esteem to be of the most value to me. Your success may mean a bigger house, a better car, and for me, the definition of success may be more freedom to spend time with the kids, rather than working a nine to five.
To find out what success means to you, you need to introspect and ask yourself, what in this life would bring me to optimal peace, joy and fulfilment and then make that your priority. For me, as a Christian, my joy is found in Jesus Christ, my peace and my fufilment is found in my relationship with Him, so my decisions go around that and I have had to ask myself questions, like How do I get more time to spend with Him? How can I be fulfilling the calling He has placed on my life? And for me, the answer was to step out of the nine-to-five, give up a stable salary and take a risk of venturing into the world of self-employment.
The step out has given me the opportunity to be at home more, spend more waking hours with my kids, enjoying this beautiful life that God has given me by being outdoors, soaking up the sun, being more available for my church and family and working at hours that are suitable to where I feel led to be in any given moment. For you, it may be completely different, you may be happy with your current employment circumstances, but may want to adjust other aspects of your life. At the end of the day, you should not allow the world and pressure from friends or family or anyone else to define what success means to you because success is not absolute, it is relative.