Today I feel a certain sense of greater wholeness than the day before, and the day before that…and the month before…and the year before…and.

In fact, I’m discovering that becoming whole has been my life’s greatest work. It’s been my masterpiece, my Sistine Chapel, my greatest challenge and my greatest accomplishment.

But, what do I mean by becoming whole?

I believe it’s different things for different people. Yet consistently it represents a bringing into balance those fragmented pieces of self. The bringing into understanding those aspects of self we made ourselves believe merely because it felt good to believe and to convince others of the same. Then together with (feeling into) the sense of what our true gifts are and those things that genuinely bring us passion and fulfillment. It’s not about the story we’ve told ourselves, it’s the true self, the essence that we feel about who we are.

I think the “Work/Life Balance” thinkers are superficially touching on what it takes to truly be in balance when they talk about techniques, strategies and habits to form, with the intention of lessening our daily stress.

Stress comes from fear. Yes, fear. If we peel away the layers of thought processes and beliefs that underlie our stress we will find tiny, almost imperceptible fears. And, if we examine those fears I think you will find them to be mostly silly.

Becoming whole on the other hand is a life-long process of coming into a greater more true sense of self, that deeply authentic essence of who we are that doesn’t work to fit in, to comply with, agree with, to be amenable or ameliorative. Becoming whole is the reconciliation with that deeply hidden part of self that wants to bust out and say to the world, “Here I Am!”

Here I am, like it or not. I’m risking criticism and public humiliation by having the audacity to be me. This is who I am and I’m awesome, and by the way, I think you’re pretty awesome too!

It seems to me that this is the more authentic pathway to work/life balance, that when we live our lives exactly according to what is authentically us, without equivocation, then the little things don’t matter as much because we know with unwavering certainty that we’re on the right track, and knowing that we’re on the right track is about the single most comforting feeling we can have.