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What You’re Really Sacrificing When You Try to Have It All
For years, we’ve been told what the American dream is — the house, family, a good job we actually enjoy, respect/fame, the ability to see the world and the opportunity to retire well before we physically break. And as the catalog of work-life balance articles grows, the debate over whether you really can have it all rages on.
There are dozens of examples of innovative, ambitious people who have put in enormous levels of work with great reward. We point to people like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos, for instance, as evidence that great things can come even out of a humble garage.
But not everyone buys the idea that these people are, in fact, entirely self-made. Bezos, for instance, got $245,573 from his parents to get Amazon going.
Even if these individuals didn’t have the help they often actually did, they are outliers to the majority of us.
There’s a reason for that.
Having it all and realizing all of our priorities truly on our own is hard. It often requires fantastic connections, great intelligence and/or the opportunity to hire those with great intelligence, investments from others, insane levels of organization, ruthless boundaries and more.
