I have a friend who has recently been bitten by the "fitness bug" Its quite strange. She is not actually training for anything, yet trains hours every day. She pays $40 an hour, (which apparently is cheap) three times a week to a personal trainer. He now gets her to fill in a "food diary" so he can check what she eats everyday. She has stopped enjoying dinners out, popcorn at the movies and any social event which interferes with her training schedule or dietry regime.



I have another friend who used to be 100% dedicated to his wife. Everything he did was about their quality of life and the time they spent together. One day, my friend was promoted. A worthy promotion as he really was the top performer at work, both in his own right and in the way he got the best out of all the people who reported to him. When he received this promotion, something changed. Quality of life stopped being his priority. Time with his wife stopped being his purpose. Rather, he started validating himself by furthering himself at work, by future promotions and by where he was placed on the corporate ladder.

Both of these friends of mine have become slaves in today's world. They have become slaves because they have lost sight of the things they were working for. Having lost sight of these things, work is the only thing that is left for them. Work has become their lives. With my first friend, she originally wanted to lose some weight and live a healthier, fuller and happier lifestyle. Losing sight of this, she now trains and eats to a regimen that excludes life outside this regimen. My second friend now sees time spent with his wife as a competing interest to time spent at the office, a constraint which gets in the way of his commitment to the job.

200 years ago, people did not do this. Life was about living, life was about family and work was about putting food on the table. The only people for whom work was the end, rather than the means, were slaves. And slavery has been outlawed. Yet today, people constantly get the means confused with the end, and then wonder why at retirement there is nothing else in their lives.

Ask yourself if there is work in your life, which serves no purpose. It could be an exercise regime, a career, or even your perception on keeping your home overly clean. If there is, you have possibly enslaved yourself to an idea. If this is the case, ask yourself what this work will bring you in 20 or 30 years time. Happiness? Family? Friends? Or 20 - 30 years of opportunity lost, which could have been spent with family, friends and happiness.

If you have become a slave to something, its probably because you have lost sight of the important things in your life. So take a weekend off whatever you are working on and spend it reviewing what is important to you. While doing this, make sure you separate out the things that are important to your boss, or trainer, as their goals are not yours. They have vested interests in manipulating your goals to be in line with theirs.

You'l know you have done this well when the things that are important to you, are things that your work can "buy", not measurements of your work. For example, a career oriented goal should not be completing the project on time and under budget, it should be affording that holiday in Tahiti. And a fitness goal should not be losing 20kg and improving my resting pulse to 68 beats per minute, it should be being competitive while playing tennis with a bunch of friends, which we will follow up with a guilt free meal and a couple of drinks.

Once you get this right, you will have something we call perspective. You will be living your own life again. This will give you the ability to relegate work into a supporting role in your life, rather than the lead role. And from your position of vision, you will be able to see that there are better ways to achieve your life goals, rather than through your slavery of choice.

For example, you will see that your career, while supposedly looking after the financial needs of your life, only achieves 1 small part of this, cashflow. It does not help you manage your debt, its does not provide you with strategies to increase your cashflow during the times you need more money, and it does not help you invest for your future. In return, it expects all your time so you will find it hard to manage these things yourself. Thats the idea of slavery you see, to trap you so you cannot escape.

But now you have spent your weekend away. You have your perspective and you are focused on your life again. This is great, it means you can make plans and put your energy and attention into building the dreams that are important to you.