Business and Family, Family and Business: Neither do They Meet

After almost 6 years hiatus (F-ck Covid and the brain dead bureaucrats who shut down the world), I was so happy to meet up with an old friend and Yahoo! colleague who was one of my best mentors and patrons. It was so wonderful to catch up on business and family life. And also to know that I was not the only one with major family challenges. Like myself and many others, Covid lockdowns exacerbated many family issues which we still struggle to fix so many years later. 

I’ve long struggled with my so-called work life balance. One of the problems of growing up poor and being an insecure type A with a massive chip on his shoulder. I threw myself into work because it was simple. The scorecard of status and far more importantly, money. So easy to measure how you are doing and in comparison with others. So more work, more money. 

The problem with family is there is no clear score card like money or status. You can’t quantify how well you are doing. And if you are a parent, those small issues and traumas of your child could seep into major ones. Ones that you unintentionally exacerbate. 

It’s doubly frustrating for someone who used to have the reputation of an effective operator, trouble shooter and fixer in his business career. I’m MR GSD aka “Get Sh-t Done.” Being so focused aka super mission or objective-oriented, that you ignore everything and anything that does that doesn’t help you with hitting your goal. 

But you can’t use these tactics and strategies for your home life. In fact, it tends to make things worse as I’ve learned over the last 2 years. It took me a lot of time on the road to hide from family and to process it. Also took a lot of therapy to understand this. 

My big lesson: if you want to repair your home life, you have to unlearn all your business thinking, training & instincts. You have to have deep reserves of patience. And you also have to learn to ask good questions and listen deeply. The answers usually aren’t what you want to hear, especially from an angry teen. They say some pretty harsh and painful things I can tell you. It hurts especially bad as you do everything for them and love them so much. 

But If you genuinely want to make things right and for them to heal, you have to take responsibility and face up to it.  As Ryan Holiday wrote: “Ego is the Enemy.” So crush your ego and focus on improving your family life. Your kid is more than worth it. If you do help your kid, ultimately it’s your second chance to resolve some personal issues of your inner kid too.