A Working Holiday

A working holiday is something of an oxymoron - particularly when said by a lifestyle consultant! Yeah I feel a bit guilty in admitting that I accepted a request to conduct a lifestyle management workshop for a CEO and his senior management team while I was on holidays in Perth. Well done! you might say - earning money to pay for the holiday or being able to put some of the holiday costs down as a business tax deduction. Hard to disagree with any of that.

Much as I often joke that I am like the landscape gardener who's got the worst garden in the street, I still feel it is not a good message to send to my clients and readers. So why am I making such a point of it here??

One, it helps you understand that, while I enjoy and passionately believe in all the words I write and things I say about work life harmony, I do live in the real world and experience all the pressures and temptations that you do. When asked if I am always a happy smiling laughing chap, I respond that we have to experience sadness and tragedy to truly appreciate the benefits of enjoyment. I am no different to anyone else in that regard.

Second, everything in life is a learning experience and this was a great one for me. The client's needs opened up fascinating new opportunities for me to better understand the minds of senior managers when it comes to lifestyle management issues - for them personally and for the staff they manage. Being outside of my home city of Adelaide added to the experience.

Third, it was in the city of my son - whom I only see a couple of times a year and who has seen little of the way his father has turned 30 years of professional recreation planning and development experience into a lifestyle management consultancy. This was indeed a wonderful way of maintaining and strengthening the father/son bonding when we live four hours flying time apart.

So yes, I look back with a large degree of satisfaction on my decision to make it a working holiday (well, just half a day out of a week). It demonstrated that work life harmony goes well beyond simply ensuring you break up your working life with enjoyable personal interests. This experience gave me another way of understanding how "getting the mix right" can add huge value to my personal growth and family relationships.