Just say no!

Work vs family…. The struggle continues.  

Work often becomes addictive.  You don’t even realize it.  You may be one of those folks who can hardly wait to get to your computer to see all those e-mails that someone stayed up all night writing and sending to you to make your day.  You may be one of those folks who complain about the excessive number of e-mails you get every day.  But you sit at your desk all day, watching with great anticipation, as they come up.  You may even get perturbed when you don’t get an e-mail for more than thirty minutes.  You even check your computer’s connections to make sure everything is intact!  “No e-mails?  Man, the server must be down.” 

If I asked you to choose what’s most important to you, work or family, there’s an extremely high probability that you’d choose family.  Yet, if I follow up with asking you where you spend most of your time, you’ll probably answer, “at work, or working.”  What’s up with that?  How can family be more important to you, yet you spend most of your time working?  Oh yes, I know your argument!  You work to support your family.  That’s partly true.   

Why do we work so hard or so much?  Because it’s easy!  “Wait a minute,” you say, “My work is tough!”  You want tough?  Try raising a family!  That’s tough!  Let me tell you why you spend most of your time at work, the real reason.  Again, it’s easy!  At work you know the rules.  You know when you’re supposed to be there.  You know what to do.  You know how to address people.  In fact, you were trained to do what you do at work.  Now, how much training did you get to be a parent or a spouse?  That’s tough!  The rules are made up as you go along, usually not by you, and they get tougher as time goes by.  Work is fun!  Come on, be honest. Yes, you have a lot of responsibilities, but you also have a lot more help than you do at home.

You’re going to have to take care of your family every once in a while, or you will lose them.  If you have kids, don’t blink because when you open your eyes they will have grown into people.  You’ll wonder what happened and the answer is that while you were busy saying yes to your work, they kept on growing and left you behind.

Work can become addictive.  Do what’s right for you and your family. That means going home when you should.  Not taking that work trip that seems like it will be so much fun.  Not going to that function when your son or daughter is graduating from karate school.  It also means taking time for yourself.  An Effective Leader ensures she grows on the inside as well as on the outside.  (I’m not talking about physical growth here.  That will come on its own.)  It’s tough, but so are you!  Your job is temporary.  You’ll always be Dad or Mom.  Effective Leadership is about doing what’s right at work and at home.  You have to strike the balance, which is almost never 50-50.  It will always be easier to say no to your family.  Take courage!  When someone asks you to do one more fun thing at work and you know your family is counting on you to be with them at the same time, just say no to the work.  You won’t regret it in the long term.

Until next time, Be GREAT! You ARE!

 

                                 ¡HEIRPOWER!

 

 

bob vásquez!