My short answer is – no, but working towards life balance does. Let me explain…
I joined the workforce in my chosen profession in 1980. I learned binary in the late 1960s from my Dad, who was one of the first ‘programmers’, and I have a degree in Computation from the University of Manchester. I have been known to half-joke that I worked with computers, so I could turn them off if I needed to. I moved to the US from England in 1981, working in Silicon Valley at a few companies you’ve probably heard of and quite a few you haven’t.
My career followed the then traditional software developer arc. The ladder is something like software developer, senior software developer, project lead, manager, Director, and VP. As my responsibilities and organizational size grew, I received some training in people skills; charm school, if you will, but the very little emphasis was placed on the nurturing aspect of working in teams.
In the early 2000s, disillusioned with corporate life, I followed a long-term dream and spent five years as a professional pilot. What I loved about this time was being part of an intimate team and having a role that was well-aligned with who I am. But still, the job and the relationships were missing something. I began a search for my spiritual path, exploring the wide variety of available spiritual belief systems and practices.
Professionally, I noticed that a focus on improvement at work led to situations where people’s lives were out of balance. Too much time spent at work, not enough time spent at home with friends and family, a lack of community interaction both at work and in our daily lives. Cynically, there was more focus on improving people’s ability to succeed at work without attempting to improve people’s ability to succeed at home.
The goal of having a work-life balance became a primary driver for many, with calls for reduced work hours and more family-oriented company conditions. The grim reality is that a more efficient company will probably be more successful than an inefficient one. When striving for a work-life balance, it is a requirement to have a company at which to work. Positioning work and life as a competition requiring balance lead to incomplete and even damaging solutions. It occurred to me that we can refocus the drive for work-life balance to aim for ‘life balance’. Therefore, the challenge is to combine life balance with effective work products, and there’s a lot more to life balance than just working shorter hours.
I have worked with people that deliberately and explicitly separate their work persona from their home persona. While that seemed to work for them, the work environment would always be separate, I believe to the detriment of everyone. If going home to the family is an escape from work, then true life balance will never be achieved, and it will always remain work-life.
I believe that we should establish a life balance that includes both work and not-work together, holistically. It is important to emphasize that holistic wellness includes physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. If one’s spirit isn’t nurtured at the same time as one’s physical and mental health, how is that holistic?
Certainly, not everyone is ready to focus on every aspect of the holistic approach, but are there ways to achieve better balance and more wholeness?
In 2008, my wife, Susan Bennett Fisher, introduced me to the understanding that there are nine physiologically different kinds of human beings. Nine fundamentally different physio-spiritual ways people experience the world. We are each unique because our life experiences influence our beliefs and behaviours from the ‘nurturing’ we receive. Yet, the unique ways each of the nine Natural Numbers experience the world are remarkably consistent by Natural Number.
We went to Burning Man in 2012 for the first time. It was there that I realized my life’s calling is to work, with Susan, We have worked with individuals, families, and organizations all over the world. Our research has uncovered a number of surprises:
- Around half of the world’s population are more body-aware than they are aware of non-physical spirituality. The other half are more aware of non-physical spirituality and less influenced by body-based signals.
- The timing of spiritual growth is not constant throughout our lives. There are distinct age ranges where spirituality becomes more important than others.
- Each of the nine Natural Numbers defines, values, and experiences spirituality differently.
- Natural Numbers don’t repeat in nuclear families, specifically, and importantly our parents and siblings don’t have the same Natural Number as we do.
- Our Natural Number shapes our orientation to life. It is seen in our bodies, our facial features, how we move, interact with others, what we care about, and interpret what our senses tell us.
- People of a particular Natural Number will share the traits of that Natural Number no matter their race, gender, or culture.
How does this discovery relate to my premise that working towards life balance encourages spirituality?
When your Natural Number is identified, holistic integration begins unconsciously in those not working on themselves. For people already on their journey, the integration becomes stronger and more vibrant. Avoiding active disbelief and staying open becomes easier when the holistic connections between mind-body-spirit are strengthened. Spirituality has an element of acceptance of the sometimes unprovable. Each of the nine Natural Numbers has its own elements of spiritual magic if you remain open to the possibilities presented to you.
Once your Natural Number is identified, the ego becomes a supporter, not a protector and the artificial separation of any aspect of one’s life becomes obvious and a candidate for change. A surprising number of people have changed their living environments, careers, and/or partners when they realized, after having their Natural Number identified, that they were not being true to themselves. Identification is truly an awakening step and reinforces the understanding that there is no real separation of work and life, physical and spiritual, and of our mind/body/spirit.
Reconnecting to our inner magic, to the awareness and connection to the ‘more’ than we knew in childhood, makes it impossible to deny that we are whole beings and need to consider ourselves as such. Finding your life balance includes spirituality, and work-life, in many cases, denies spirituality, asking you to pretend for a portion of your reality that it doesn’t mix, or matter. We believe it does, and to try to separate these parts of our wholeness is not in service of who we are, the gifts we offer, the skills we have, and the impact and performance attainable in the workplace or life.
Choose Love. Choose to know Yourself!
Martin Fisher
Martin Fisher is a Co-Founder and Teacher of Body of 9. Body of 9 is an innovative, body-based personality assessment that, through your posture, body type, and how you physically move - identifies your Natural Number. This gives you an experience of your innate self, taking your understanding of who you are to a new level.
