BY SUSAN TAYLOR
Editor’s note: At MeaningSphere, we believe that meaning at work matters and that it’s deeply personal. This series highlights diverse perspectives across the 10 core fulfillment areas from our Worklife Fulfillment Indicator. Each piece reflects the author’s own experience, with the goal of sparking reflection and dialogue.
“My work fits alongside other parts of my life, feeling like a natural extension of who I am.”
This statement from the Worklife Fulfillment Indicator is a bit of a litmus test. When I first read it, I found myself pausing longer than expected. Not because it described my life, but because it described the life I had spent years trying to create.
What I misunderstood about harmony
For a long time, I believed harmony was something I achieved through better planning. If I could organize my calendar more effectively, create firmer boundaries, and become more disciplined with my time, everything would eventually fall into place. Work would fit neatly alongside the rest of my life, and I would finally experience the peace I was looking for.
Instead, I often felt like I was living in compartments. There was the professional version of me. The spouse. The daughter. The friend. The caregiver. The woman trying to remember to take care of herself after taking care of everyone else.
From the outside, everything appeared to fit together. Inside, it often felt as though I was constantly moving from one role to the next, hoping that somehow all the pieces would add up to a whole. It wasn’t until much later that I began to realize I had been asking the wrong question. I wasn’t searching for a better way to organize my life. I was searching for a way to stop feeling divided within it.
For a long time, I moved between roles as though each required a different version of me. Founder. Mother. Caregiver. Facilitator. Each role carried its own expectations, and somewhere along the way, I began compartmentalizing parts of myself to meet them. Gradually, I realized I wasn’t longing for better balance. I was longing to feel whole within every role I inhabited. That realization changed how I think about harmony.
Harmony is about congruence, not perfect proportions
Today, I don’t see harmony as a perfectly balanced life where every area receives equal attention. Some seasons ask more of our work. Others ask more of our families, our health, or ourselves. Life has never unfolded in equal proportions, and I no longer expect it to.
Instead, harmony feels like congruence, the quiet sense that the person showing up at work is the same person who comes home at the end of the day. My values don’t change depending on the room I’m in, and my work doesn’t compete with the rest of my life because it grows from the same place, reflecting what matters to me rather than pulling me away from it.
Of course, I don’t always get this right. There are still moments when I move too fast, say yes when I should have paused, or allow the urgency of work to drown out the quieter parts of myself. The difference is that I notice those moments sooner now. They have become gentle reminders to reconnect with what matters instead of evidence that I’ve somehow failed.
The data backs this up
Research on well-being consistently points to the importance of living in alignment with our values. When our choices reflect what is genuinely meaningful to us, we experience greater satisfaction, resilience, and a stronger sense of fulfillment. While the research gives language to this experience, most of us have already felt it. We know the difference between a day that leaves us depleted because we’ve been performing and one that leaves us fulfilled because we’ve simply been ourselves.
For me, what harmony has come to mean is not about removing every tension from life. There will always be competing priorities, unexpected challenges, and seasons that require more from us than we’d planned.
Harmony is knowing that even in the middle of those seasons, I haven’t lost myself.
Do you experience harmony in your working life? Here’s a way to check
I’ve come to believe that work fits naturally alongside the rest of our lives when it grows from the same values, the same purpose, and the same person. In that connection, it becomes less about separating “work life” from “personal life” and more about living one integrated life with integrity.
Perhaps harmony is simply the experience of recognizing yourself wherever life finds you.
As you reflect on your own experience, here’s an invitation you might consider:
- When does your work feel most like a natural extension of who you are?
- Where, if anywhere, do you feel you’re living in separate compartments?
- What is one small change that would help your work support your life rather than compete with it?
Susan Taylor is the founder of TayloredWisdom, LLC. She serves as an executive leadership coach, strategic facilitator, and trusted partner to leaders who are seeking a more aligned, sustainable, and meaningful way of leading and living.
