Is your drive for wealth and success leading your life?
Real wealth doesn’t leave us wondering, “What’s next? Is that all there is?” Jason Wachob, the founder, and CEO of mindbodygreen defines it as a balance of mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, and environmental well-being.
He also calls it “Wellth.” It’s a different way to measure success. It values purpose, happiness, health, and joy. The plan to achieve “wellth” includes exercise, proper nutrition, laughter, relationships, spirituality, gratitude, and time in nature.
Frat Boy to Wellness Entrepreneur
Jason was an Ivy League graduate and an equities trader. He realized that there were limits to the happiness that money and parties could bring.
At the same time, he was experiencing this existential crisis, he was also suffering from bad back pain. He rejected the advice of two surgeons to have back surgery and did his healing with yoga.
He got the entrepreneurial bug and tried out a couple of businesses before founding mindbodygreen. He approached this endeavor cautiously and had it in beta for two years.
From hard-partying college kid to high-living trader to living with his Mom, to wellness entrepreneur. He wants you to learn from his experience and seek balance and wellth.
Balance
You can pursue happiness and gratitude and still set goals, pursue excellence, and seek financial success. Finding balance is the key. You don’t need always to be in balance. In fact, the advice of Aikido’s founder, O Sensei Morihei Ueshiba, can be useful:
“After observing O Sensei sparring with an accomplished fighter, a young student said to the master, ‘You never lose your balance. What is your secret?’
‘You are wrong,’ O Sensei replied. ‘I am constantly losing my balance. My skill lies in my ability to regain it.’”
Finding balance will involve different paths for each of us.
Too often, we ignore our intuition and put spirituality to the side as we pursue more “concrete” goals. Ironically, moving deeper into our intuition and spirituality can also make us more productive.
You may not be able to live your dream life right away. Jason’s book is not a manual for quitting your job and working on the beach. What you can do is place what he calls “passion points” around your core job. Ideally, whatever, you’re doing, you will seek flow. Jason uses the following quoteto explain the concept:
“A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both.”
― Lawrence Pearsall Jacks
How should you seek balance?
- Develop a gratitude practice.
- Uncover the things that make you come alive.
- Spend a little time every day in Nature – even if it’s the city’s local park.
- Learn how to breathe the right way and make the time to do it.
- Exercise – the right fitness plan is the one that you’ll commit to. If you’re at a loss, start with yoga.
- Surround yourself with people who support your efforts at balance.
- Eat a diet that’s right for you.
- Laugh more – Have you heard of “Laughing Yoga”?
You can find his book here:
“Wellth: How I Learned To Build A Life, Not A Resume”
Original story with transcripts can be found at www.theurbanmonk.com
