I felt Guilty At Work AND Home. Then I Stopped.

As a father, as a husband, as an entrepreneur, and as a sole provider for for our house. I've come to realize that working really hard and the business is neither a badge of honor nor something to feel really guilty about. It just is. If you own a business, there going to be periods of time where the the season that you're in, you're hiring a lot of people, you're growing really quickly.

There's a series of problems, whatever that is, that is going to require more of your time. And personally, what's happened during those periods of time is I start to feel really guilty. I start to feel guilty that I'm not spending more time with my kids, and I'm not spending more time with my wife, no matter how much I communicated and how much I'm proactively like, you know, making sure that they're aware of what's going on.

And what I've done historically was when I feel guilty, then I overcompensate. You know, I flip to the other side and I'm like, you know what? I've got a table, all this stuff. I've got to spend more time here. And I go do that. And by the way, I want to and I go do that. And then I feel guilty about the demands at work.

Right. Like, because there's, you know, something clients that are not happy or there's, you know, employees are like, hey, we we need more help. We need more access. We need more time, whatever it is. So, you know, you're constantly overcompensating one one way or the other, one way or the other. And the reason I say it's neither something to feel guilty about nor a badge of honor is I've come to accept the fact that it just is right when you, when you own the business, and the business is responsible for everything that that we have and what we do.

You know, I, I wear many hats as a, as a man. And some of those hats are the provider. Some of those hats are the husbands. Some of those hats are the, the the father. I've accepted. It just is. And, you know, I've got a good friend here in Cabo who says, you know, business is a lot like surfing. Like sometimes you're paddling your ass off and sometimes you're riding a wave.

And the key is knowing which season you're in is right. Like, the key is knowing that, hey, if I'm in a season of paddling, that you acknowledge it, you accept it, you embrace it, you paddle your ass off, you get to a point where you catch the wave and you ride that wave. But then the thing is recognizing that your job is to ride the wave, right?

Because as entrepreneurs, we think paddling got us here. We should keep paddling, right? Like that's this. This behavior is being rewarded. So we try to keep doing that behavior and we end up screwing shit up anyway, right? So the the really important piece is for, at least for me, is recognizing it just is like that's the reality.

As a business owner, you're going to go through, you know, different, different seasons. You're going to go through different phases. And some of those phases require paddling. Some of those require surfing required, just like riding the wave, recognizing that when you're riding the wave, the really important piece is to ride the wave.

Like not just for your personal sanity, but because oftentimes that is actually the best thing that you can do in the business is leave it alone. And acknowledging those times, as much as you acknowledge the times where you're paddling. And I have I have experienced in kind of this mindset of realization that when I look at it that way, I'm just in a season of paddling, not going to feel guilty about it.

I'm just going to do it. I'm going to roll up my sleeves, I'm going to get it done. And then when I'm in a season of riding the wave that I'm going to ride the wave, and I'm not going to feel bad about it. I feel less guilt. Everything seems to go, uh, go more smoothly, and more importantly, I'm more present in the thing that I'm supposed to be doing when I think it's always supposed to be 50, 50, or 75.

25. Name your name, your split. When I think that that's supposed to be the case, I got a day to day basis. I'm not present in any particular area. Right? So if it's a season of paddling and it's a heavy day and I've just got to like, I've got to put in 14 hours today, there's that much work. The work doesn't care, right?

The work just needs to get done. If I'm thinking to myself, why should we over here? I should be over here, I should be doing something else that I'm not fully present, which actually takes longer to do the thing that I'm doing. And then likewise, like the inverse is true, because then if I say, you know what, I'm stopping at seven.

Like that's that's the thing. Like I've got to stop at seven. I said I would do it, I'm not. Then when I go stop at seven and I spend try to spend time, I'm not truly spending time like I'm my head is somewhere else. I'm not present. I'm like, I'm here physically, but I'm really here. I know I got to be doing these other things.

I share this just as. As somebody who personally has recognized that the guilt. Way of thinking about it was a no win situation. And at the end of the day, my goal is that if I zoom out over the course of a week or over the course of a month or even a year, that I can feel like all of the jobs that I'm supposed to be doing and all of the hats that I'm supposed to be wearing, all of them are getting done.

Well, on the whole, maybe not on any given day, on a day to day basis. Perhaps I'm extreme on one side, extreme on another. Even on a week to week basis, I'm extreme on one side, extreme on the other. But when I zoom out over some intermediate period of time, I'm confident that I am being a good dad. I am being good husband, I am being a good business person and it's worked for me.

So if it's something that you struggle with, I hope it helps you. Audios.