The Vitality Principle: Balancing Achievement with Quality of Life

The calendar notification rang.

New appointment: Mary Read (not a real name).

I smiled to myself — not for the novelty, but the normalcy. Mary was not a new client; I wouldn't even call her an old one. She is one of the rare ones who lives in a state of new and old.

She, like some of you reading this, I suspect, is what I would call high-functioning asymmetrical: in that she is highly successful at creating and completing things and ideas, yet ultimately terrible as it applies to those things having any benefit on her overall life. Her actions are asymmetrical as they apply to her intention in life.

The Awareness Advantage

What makes her rare is not this behavior, which is all too common. What makes her rare is her awareness.

Our relationship looks a lot like this: We meet and discuss a new idea and need in her life. Generally, it's the juxtaposition of new opportunity against the freedom she’s after. She has a new product, idea, investment, or opportunity that's made available to her, but she also knows that to achieve it, she will have to sacrifice some degree of the quality of life she has built.

Together, we work on balancing those two to the best of her ability. Which generally goes quite well. She's able to seize the opportunity and also preserve her vitality. How? Well, that's a matter of keeping what's important and intentional at the forefront, and what seems necessary as secondary.

What lands her back on my calendar is not self-destruction per se, but more so repeating successful actions.

Beyond the Retirement Myth

When most people consider the idea of help from someone like me — someone who can help them maintain trajectory while also pursuing opportunity — they have this escapist notion that by working with me, they will ultimately arrive at a situation where they are just "done." We will call this the retirement concept.

But the human condition is one of generative drive. Retirement, sadly, is not a reality. We are not designed to not contribute. Retirement is a construct made available to us to accommodate the trade most often asked of us: Give me 40 of your best years, and you can spend your last 20 how you wish. That seems more like prison.

Because what no one tells you in that narrative is what so many experience within it. Retirement lands like a nuclear bomb of lack of purpose. When you have given your life to an identity and pursuit, no matter how happy you are to be done with it, you find yourself missing something.

Humans are meant to advance. We do not sit still well.

The Art of the Quality Life

Mary has, in many ways, mastered this. She is quite successful, she pursues notable opportunities, and (at least to my knowledge) she says no to even more. Because what she values most is her quality of life. A rarity for most entrepreneurs and business owners. The point of all we do (all humans) is to improve our quality of life, not trade it.

This might seem whimsical or irresponsible, but that's your conditioning interpreting that.

Mary landed back on my calendar because she wanted to hedge her bets on herself. She knew she had a great opportunity, but she also knew she's human — and because of that humanity, she has the proclivity of working out of alignment. She knows that having a coach is not simply necessary when things are bad, it's most valuable when things are good — so that they don't go bad.

The 8-Week Transformation

Ultimately, we built a new project. One designed around what was going to be necessary to launch this new division while also ensuring she continued to focus on her quality of life alongside it. We deemed it would take about eight weeks start to finish. And, I'm happy to say, she crushed it. Not only did this prove a formidable advancement in her company, she did almost all of it while continuing to hit milestones in her personal life.

I know, it seems like a fairy tale.

The truth is, to her, it once was.

From Reaction to Intention

When Mary first came to me, she was referred to me by another client. She was full-on type A. She had no shortage of intensity but ultimately lacked any intentionality. Her life and business were a treasure trove of reaction. Life ultimately was happening to her, not for her. And at any given turn, she had something she could point at as a problem.

Over the course of a dozen or so weeks, we began to dismantle the complexity. We systematically broke all the houses of cards down into root issues and patterns. Solved for those. Simultaneously, we got crystal clear not on what she wanted to fix, but what and where she wanted to get to instead. Armed with that, I was able to contrast her every action and decision against this ideal, and we began to eliminate what wasn't necessary and double down on what was. She became twice as productive and half as busy. A win in any book.

The Grinding Fallacy

How this work made it into the blog is a topic of belief.

The collective societal ideal, especially perpetuated by social media, is one of grinding. There's a belief, a will, an inspiration, that if you trade your time, your life, your energy, for success, the backside will reward you.

I don't need to tell you the stats on that fallacy, do I? Look to your left and right — how many success stories do you see? Now ask yourself: Are those people not grinding? Are they not trading, sacrificing, trying? Of course they are.

But, like most, we explain the discomfort away. "Maybe they could work harder.”

In a study, participants were asked to rank themselves on how attractive they were. The average response? A seven. Additionally, they were asked to rank other people. The average response they gave others? A four. As a species, we tend to overestimate what we are and underestimate others. This same exercise was tested with ranking perceived capability as well.

And in that belief dichotomy lives the root of all our struggles. We overestimate what we can accomplish and underestimate its costs.

The Paradigm Shift

There is a separate way, one in which balance is attainable. One where you can work incredibly hard and purposefully on something while also building your quality of life rather than trading it.

This is a paradigm shift, it's what we do here, and it's something we are proud of.

I, too, believe work-life balance is a myth sold to the masses. But if you balance intention with reaction, you can get traction. That's what we focus on.

That's why Mary is back on my calendar. Because it is the magic of a life well-lived.

Your Own Mary Principle

Are you caught in the asymmetrical trap, achieving in your business or career while sacrificing the very quality of life you're working toward? At Paradigm Collective, we specialize in helping high achievers like you implement what we call "The Mary Principle": the art of pursuing opportunity while simultaneously enhancing your vitality.

Our signature "Intentional Achievement" program doesn't teach you to grind harder or sacrifice more. Instead, we help you dismantle the complexity, identify your true priorities, and create systems that allow you to be twice as productive and half as busy.

Ready to transform your approach? Schedule an Intentionality Assessment where we'll examine your current achievement-to-vitality ratio and develop a customized framework that allows you to pursue new opportunities without sacrificing what matters most.

Apply the Vitality Principle →