Where Does Life Begin?

How you order your life makes all the difference.

In my last post, one where I reviewed lessons from 2024, one of the key learnings I highlighted was the idea of realms of impact. There are three of them: the self, your connections, the broader world.

All three are important, but it’s important we keep them in the right order, and that’s something that men specifically have a hard time doing, largely because it’s the exact opposite of what we’ve been taught to do.

Most of us men, when we craft our lives, focus on the outer realm, which is the domain of work and the things that impact work, like politics. We tend to see things filtering from out to in. So we go to work, earn money, and that money supports our connections, but it our partner, our kids, or time with friends. Then, if there’s something left, we can take care of ourselves.

But the point is, everything starts in the broader world, and at work specifically, and starting here has negative consequence both on ourselves and our connections. Let me expand.

The Approach to Life We Nurture

Whether we like it or not, in the United States, with very few exceptions, work starts and ends with the bottom line. Sure companies like to talk about seeking the corporate good and having some markers of conscious capitalism or some other shit, but this was just a marketing ploy developed in the 70’s as a way to make corporations feel more human.

So when we craft our lives around the realm of work, we craft our lives around doing. It’s about demonstrating how what you do bolsters the bottom line for the company. And because companies are always looking for ways to trim expenses and one of the most effective ways to do that is to cut the workforce, it puts you as a worker in a place of perpetual competition with everyone around you.

Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash

How do you get what you want? You do what the boss wants. You kiss ass (even as you try to make it look like you aren’t). You don’t take time to think or feel about the broader implications of your actions. You put in overtime. And if you do all that well enough, you get rewarded … or at least you get to keep your job (for now).

But when we bring that mindset into the other realms of life, trouble ensues. Let me offer a couple examples.

The Asshole on the Couch

So what happens when you bring the work mindset home? It doesn’t work, because your wife doesn’t want someone out to accomplish the necessary tasks to keep the home operational, she wants a partner to walk through the challenges of life with.

So while she’s seeking connection and relationship and intimacy, you’re treating her like a boss and asking for a to-do list, thinking if you just know the right things to do and do them in a timely manner then everything will be all right.

Naturally, she starts to feel alone in the relationship and simultaneously you never feel like you’re enough. Why wouldn’t you spend more time at work, at least there what’s expected of you is clear. This only makes her feel more alone and ultimately resentful. Never being able to please her, you decide to stop trying and spend your weekend parked on the couch watching sports or playing video game. Before long, she sees you as nothing more than the asshole on the couch.

But the problems go deeper.

The Illusion of Empowerment

There another level where beginning life at work creates trouble, and if you ask me, this one is even more problematic: It leaves you perpetually disempowered.

The irony is, that in the previous example, men often lean into work because that’s where we feel more empowered. After all, it’s where it feels like the expectation are clear. But unless you’re the boss, you are never the one in power at work (and with the number of companies that depend on investors, there are plenty of situations where even the boss isn’t in power).

You can do a great job, but if your supervisor doesn’t like you, you’re constantly living on the edge. Or maybe you’re rocking in your department but there’s a leadership change above you and the new hire wants to bring in their own people. Then again, with a single strategy meeting, the companies direction can change and what you do is no longer a priority.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work or that work is bad, it just means that when you craft your life around work, your sense of empowerment is at best uncertain and at worst an illusion. That’s another way of saying that your agency is limited.

Agency is about what you have influence over, and the further out you go in the realms, the less influence you have. The less influence you have, the less impact you have. So when we start at work or in the political realm, we are also starting where we have the least amount of impact.

So where do we have the most agency? Where are we capable of having the greatest impact? With ourselves.

Men, it’s time we start taking care of the guy in the mirror and living from the inside out.

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