In today's society, people are confronted with increasingly heavy pressure from work. In order to achieve professional success, they tend to sacrifice important aspects of a fulfilling personal life. Although it seems hard to balance work and personal life when one focuses on career success, I believe a fulfilling personal life lays solid foundation for real success in work. Therefore, achieving professional success and leading a fulfilling personal life do not necessarily exclude each other.
Admittedly, tremendous pressure from work is depriving people more and more of their private time. In this era of fierce competition, people must exert themselves in work in order to make better professional achievements. Since every one of us only has 24 hours to spend in a day, additional loads from work inevitably encroach personal life. However, still I believe that for most people to succeed in work, a fulfilling personal life cannot be spared.
One of the most important aspects of one's personal life concerns one's family, which provides strong backup for one to achieve professional success in the long run. My father used to tell me that what motivates him to work so hard is the desire to make our family live better. Many people hold the same belief when they start working, but their later focus on mere work costs them tight family relations. Successful as they might be, they can still be much depressed and lose further incentive when they find that they no longer share happiness and joy with their families.
Moreover, a balanced family life may keep someone pursuing career success from being distracted by family problems rooted in alienation. When asked about the secret of his success, Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue answered without hesitation that it is to allow sufficient time for his family. Neeleman draws a distinct line between work and family and he spends as much time as possible with his children. As a result, the kids do not give him trouble when many of his friends are distracted from work by their family problems.
Another area essential in one’s personal life is related to personal hobbies. More often than not, people sacrifice their personal hobbies so that they can make use of the time spared to do more work. However, this is neither an effective nor an efficient way to contribute to one’s career success. In fact, people need some quality time to refresh themselves, communicate with others, and enlarge their visions through various recreational activities. If one realizes that many great figures manage to keep interesting hobbies, then balancing career success and personal life will not seem so difficult.
To conclude, while balancing work and personal life appears to be difficult, people should still try their best to maintain the balance. In order to be truly successful in their professional work in the long run, people need both indispensable support from their family and refreshment from individual hobbies.
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