No sooner had I put one foot in the front door of my home before my roommate, Mark, slipped a Mojito in my hand.
While I appreciated the gesture of a handcrafted cocktail after a long day of work, this evening wasn’t the best night for me to get sloshed. I still had work to do for a big presentation early the next morning.
Mark looked deflated when I told him I couldn’t party (on a Tuesday night). But out of guilt for Mark’s hospitality, I said I’d have one — ok, maybe two — of his delightful libations.
“But after that, it’s back to work for me!”
A better life
As we sat in the kitchen, Mark told me about the planning he’d been doing for his trip to Cuba in the fall.
When I asked Mark if his new employer was ok with him taking off so soon after starting his new position, he rolled his eyes and said, “They’ll get over it!”
This carefree attitude was a prime example of how Mark and I differed. While he had fun traveling to exotic destinations, I focused on my career ambitions.
I envied Mark’s life. But Mark often told me how lucky I was to have a good-paying job and career I loved. While we both could’ve had more of the other’s lifestyle, we couldn’t seem to change our habitual natures.
Dear John
Halfway through my first Mojito, our other friend, John, showed up at the front door with his new girlfriend in one hand and a 12-pack of beer in the other.
“I didn’t know we were having guests,” I said, as Mark gave me a guilty shrug.
Before his new girlfriend arrived on the scene, John was engaged to another lady. But John was miserable, and his fiancé didn’t seem all too happy either. Yet, they still forged ahead.
One day, an overdue credit card bill arrived in the mail, and the entire relationship fell apart, as did John.
Mark and I spent time nursing John back to health — me with my words of encouragement and Mark with his cocktails. Both elixirs seemed to work their magic.
Once we got John back on his feet, he told us he wouldn’t get into another serious relationship for at least two years. Mark and I laughed about this statement because John was always in a relationship.
But John emphasized this time was different. “I want to travel and have fun!” he said.
No sooner had John gotten out of that relationship did he jump right back into a new one with the lady on my front porch. And much to Mark and I’s disbelief, they announced their engagement the week before.
John had a pattern. But to be fair — we all had our predictable behaviors.
The Three Amigos
In all the time I knew John, I never saw him single for more than six weeks at a time, but I was going on three years without being in a serious relationship.
But John yearned for freedom. Mark dreamed of a career he enjoyed. And I wanted to find love.
Here we were — The Workaholic, The Party Guy, and The Lover — secretly envying what the other had. We believed we were missing what the other had. But we didn’t realize that each of us had a particular way of stacking our priorities.
The more you understand why you stack your deck a certain way, the more insights you’ll have about what makes you tick. And why you make the decisions — and sacrifices — you do in life.
How does Life-Deck stacking work?
Based on the consumer behavior work I do, I’ve developed three broad categories for how people organize their life priorities. For the sake of brevity, let’s call them Work, Love, and Fun.
We all need some aspect of Work, Love, and Fun in our lives. But each person decides — conscious or not — about what priorities go on top. And what comes in second, and what falls to the bottom.
If you want to understand what drives you every day — whether that be my big client presentation or Mark’s vacation trip to Cuba, or John’s intimate relationships — you can start by looking at the top of your stack.
And if you want to understand more about why you feel you’re missing out on certain things in your life, you can look to the bottom of your deck.
While these broad categories can help provide insights into your decisions, they’re not permanent positions. People can re-stack their decks and rebalance their lives as they hit particular life-stages.
Photo: Holly Stratton on Unsplash
Work:
Some people define themselves by the work they do. These individuals usually have a calling in life — such as being a doctor, minister, teacher, or artist — they feel driven and compelled to pursue, sometimes at all costs.
And others fear being powerless and having no control of their life’s journey and destinations.
Many people want to determine how their life unfolds. And they’ll often do whatever it takes to get their art or message out to the world. They’re not content with doing average work, and they won’t accept failure or coming up short.
This decision to choose Work first doesn’t mean they can’t have fun or fall in love. But it requires some extra creativity and allowable tolerances. Why? Because most Work people struggle to let go of their drive and ambition to succeed.
Love:
Some people believe the purpose of life is to find their soul mate and be in love. To be part of a family and belong to a community.
These individuals derive a lot of their joy, meaning, and purpose by being in a relationship. And they’ll go to great lengths to protect and maintain it.
As much as these people make Love their #1 priority, this doesn’t prevent them from feeling they’re missing out on the fun, freedom, and adventure they see others having. Or the career accomplishments their peers achieve.
However, this doesn’t mean that Lovers aren’t good at work or having fun. Instead, it just means they have to work around these competing interests to make sure their Love side doesn’t suffer.
As you would expect, many couples fight about how much time to allocate for Work, Fun, and Love.
Fun:
We all know those characters that take off work for a year to hike around the world. Or that call in sick several times a month, like Mark, to go surfing when the waves are big.
Photo: Matt Gross on Unsplash
These folks know how to live, laugh, party, travel and maintain an active social life. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s essential to recognize that the Fun life comes with some tradeoffs, as do the other two priorities.
Most people who make Fun their #1 priority often feel that they’re missing out on establishing their careers. These folks can also have challenges in relationships when their mates want them to “grow up.”
Hitting the wall
It’s easy to see how we can get at odds with our loved ones when they don’t understand our priorities. This confusion happens to many young people who assume their partners will “grow out” of the top part of their deck or change.
Individuals can struggle as well when they hit the cliche “mid-life crisis.” This intense period is when we feel like we’re missing something vital. But what sometimes feels like depression is your soul wanting to rebalance your priorities, which can be a healthy thing to do.
A unique stack
None of these categories are better or worse than the other. They all matter to people in different ways.
Most of us need to have some aspect of all three categories in our lives. In an ideal world, we’d have a perfect balance – 33.3% for each of them – without one of them taking priority. But that’s not how our passions work. Nor does it reflect what makes each of us unique.
There are critical points in life where we’ve had too much of one and not enough of the other. Or when we feel disassociated from living the life others seem to have. Pay attention to those moments, as they might help you to make some changes in your life.
How I Re-Stacked My Deck
For most of my adult life, I stacked my deck as Work-Fun-Love. I put everything I had into building the firm my business partner and I co-founded 30 years ago.
Whenever I got any time off from work, I usually spent it training in martial arts, traveling, and hanging out with friends. But what yearned for was love. Since Love was my third priority, I was not the wisest investment for my potential partners. Not yet, at least.
Although I’m embarrassed to admit it now, every other decision in my life took precedence above the Love category. No wonder I was single for so long.
But I would often look at my friend, John — who stacked his deck as Love-Work-Fun — and wonder why he always had love in his life.
But John made the sacrifices he needed to invest and maintain relationships. He put in the time to take good care of his mates, often sacrificing his Work and Fun sides.
When I hit my 40s, I’d had enough of a 110% Work-life. I was looking for more depth and dimensions. So I spent the next few years re-stacking my deck to make Love a priority. And that’s when things changed for me.
Once I reshuffled my deck to have more of a “Work-Love-Fun” prioritization, I had to cut back on my work obsession. I also had to stop packing all my free time with sport’s activities or going out with the boys.
And when I got married and had a beautiful baby girl, I was proud to re-stack my Life-Deck yet again to be Love-Work-Fun. Work moved back up to my #2 priority so I could take care of my family. But my long-term goal is to reach the point in my life where I can stack my desk as Love-Fun-Work.
Vacationing for work
As to my friend Mark, well, he’s still traveling the world and having lots of fun. I tell people he stacks his deck as Fun-Fun-Fun!
But Mark created an online business documenting his surfing adventures and offering sage advice on the world’s most exotic beaches.
And he’s built a successful career selling the fun and sun of the surf/beach lifestyle to adventure-seekers and those in need of a sea change.
While Mark’s deck still has Fun as the top priority, Work is now a close second. But Mark got married to a lovely woman from Bali and has a baby on the way. And I’ll be curious to see if his Life-Deck changes again.
Know Your Stack
By evaluating how you stack your Life-Deck, you can see how you prioritize some things over others. And why you’ve made sacrifices in some areas. Having this insight can help you reflect on the priorities you’ve made in the past that may not be working for you now.
This awareness can motivate you to re-stack your deck in the future.
While we can’t have it all in life, we can learn to get more comfortable with our Life-Deck and the sacrifices that come with it. But remember — it’s not permanent – because you’re in charge of your stack!
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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Photo credit: iStockPhoto.com