Stewart D. Friedman: Strive For Work-Life Harmony, Not Balance

How many times have you heard a colleague preach about the importance of achieving a healthy work-life balance? For a lot of self-helpers, achieving an equilibrium between the personal and the professional is the definition of happiness. But doesn’t striking a balance between the two imply having to make trade-offs between them — sacrificing work ambitions to live a fuller life, or vice-versa?

For this reason, Big Think Mentor Stewart D. Friedman believes we should aspire to harmony or integration rather than a work-life balance. And he would know — he’s a busy man. Friedman is both a professor at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania as well as founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program and Wharton’s Work/Life Integration Project. He is also the author of the new book Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life.

Just as that title suggests, the key to happiness is to identify opportunities in which you can integrate different areas of your life rather than relying on a zero-sum contest between them. In his Big Think Mentor Workshop, Friedman explains how achieving a “Four-Way Win” between the areas of your life can help you do just that:

According to Friedman, a Four-Way Win is a decision that creates harmony between your self, family, community, and work/career and contributes to your goals in each domain. Finding opportunities to so so becomes much easier once you know how to seek them out. According to Friedman, there are three guiding principles to keep in mind:

Want to learn more about Four-Way Wins and? Check out Stewart Friedman’s workshop, Lead The Life Your Want, on Big Think Mentor.

Big Think Mentor, our paid subscription channel on YouTube, connects world-class mentors with a global community of smart, driven users to teach the habits of mind and people skills we need to live happier, healthier, more productive lives. 

Priced at only $9.99 a month/$99.99 a year, and with content updated regularly, Mentor teaches 21st century life skills such as achieving focus through meditation, dealing with feedback, raising children with a thirst for knowledge, and more.

You can sign up for a free trial of Big Think Mentor and watch more videos from Stewart D. Friedman here.