Why diversifying life is important

(Reason for edit: Re formatted and added some stuff)

Imagine, investing all your money in a single place. You are going to be at highest risk. Your entire investment can take a massive hit at any moment. This is where diversification of investments comes from. As the saying goes by, don't put all your eggs in a single basket.

To reduce the overall risk, investments are generally made in wide range of things to make sure that even if some money is lost in one investment, those losses can always be offset by the gains made in other investments. This minimizes your losses and hence minimized your overall risk.

In life, the same principle applies. When you focus and care too much about something to a point where you neglect other things, it could become dangerous.

A person whose life is simply resolved around office and home would become devastated if he loses a job. He is going to feel that his entire life has collapsed and may take lot of time to recover from that. This is because the person doesn't have any life outside of his work life apart from his home. His job might be 80% of his life. When 80% of your life takes a hit, anyone would find it difficult to get out of it.

Imagine another person whose life has many things going on - work, home, family, friends and hobbies. When he loses his job, he might feel devastated but he will fare better because he has many things outside of his work life to care about - family, friends, hobbies etc. and his job might only be like 50% of his total life. He will become more resistant to failure and also recover faster from failures.

Does it mean one should not work hard or focus less on stuff?? Not necessarily. You can still work extremely hard on work days and you can still spend lot of time with your family or friends on weekends.

You could watch nice oscar winning movies, emmy winning tv shows or read literature, start a small web project, go for a run, meditate, organize a weekly meet with neighbors, start a club, participate in 5k run, organize a charity event, volunteer, go for events etc.

All this stuff enriches your life and adds meaning to it as opposed to playing video games or masturbating or day dreaming.

Having different facets of life not only makes you more resistant and resilient to failures but also makes you a well balanced individual. It also helps your brain work more effectively. When you participate in different things in life, different parts of the brain get activated. More we use our mind, sharper it gets. It also helps us to become more self-aware.

Inspired by Happiness is not enough
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