Are you living a dead life? Living a dead life is what we call a person who is still alive yet they’re dead (lifeless) wasting all their time solely by working too hard aiming for career success and not enjoying all the other areas of life. They live life without balance in the four aspects of life, such as physical, mental, emotional/social, and spiritual. All they do with their time is either working or studying in order to get ahead in their career.
Living a dead life means a life without balance. It is evidenced by the following:
- Broken relationships due to unpleasant attitude, lack of time and priority.
- Following unhealthy habit or lifestyle by neglecting one’s health and well-being which causes stress, anxiety and illnesses.
- Unable to achieve peace of mind due to lack of reflection and meditation.
Don’t fear that you will die, fear that you have not lived your life.
Living a Dead Life
My work station in my previous work. This photo was taken when I was working alone in the office during weekend.
I once lived a dead life. I failed to live in all aspect or areas of life and just spent all my time working in order to succeed in the corporate ladder. I spent most of my time at work that even during weekends or holidays, I was alone working in the office. Because of my dedication and diligence, I got promoted early. At 22, I was already assigned to manage a team of people who are even older and have years of experienced compared to me. All was working according to what I want in my work-career until a twist happened. I started to get sick physically because I was abusing my physical body with lack of sleep and unhealthy lifestyle. Also, I got sick emotionally, I started to become irritable and hard to deal with probably because of fatigue and stress. I felt unhappy and unfulfilled despite the promising career ahead of me. But fortunately, such event changed me. By experiencing the consequences of unbalanced lifestyle, I was able to realize its importance. I learned how valuable it is to aim for a work-life balance in order to feel that we are living a well-lived life.
Work is a Means to an End, It’s Not The End
Many of us devote most of our time working because it is necessary to earn and sustain our daily needs (and wants). For that reason, working is important. However, don’t let work consume all of your life. Learn to control it, and not let it control you.
Make a conscious choice to live in all other areas and aspects of your life, such as physical, emotional/social, and spiritual. Set a schedule that tries to live a balanced lifestyle. By doing so, you eliminate the consequences of a hurried lifestyle like stress, fatigue, anxiety, depression, unhappiness and lack of fulfillment.
You don’t need to work yourself to death in order to succeed in life. Success does not come from abusing yourself by working too hard. Success comes from having a definite goal, proper management of time and priority, and working smart not hard. Learn to develop those in order to manage your work more efficiently so that you can have more time to spend in all the other areas of your life.
Remember that life is temporary to waste it and not living it to the fullest. Life is a one way journey. Don’t walk through life towards death without even enjoying it because we are too busy with working with wrong priorities.
For a final note, let me leave you this phrase from the movie, the good, the bad and the ugly:
If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?
I hope you were able to pick up useful insight from this post. You may have an experience or lesson you want to add, share them via comment box below.
