Remembering Our Purpose in Life
Family First
When my days are up, if there is to be any judgement about why I’ve been here, I want the most important reason to have been about family; what I’ve achieved as a husband, father, grandfather (but not just yet thanks very much!!), son, brother and all other extended family roles. In the end that is why we are here on this earth.
Unfortunately, I see far too many examples of business owners losing sight of this purpose in life. The pressures of work somehow manage to get in the way and we lose that essential focus on why we are even at work; to provide for the family. Unchecked, the risk here is that business owners allow work to come first with the justification being that, ultimately, this will provide a better life for the family.
Let me explain this justification in the form of a sentence I often use to paraphrase how I see overworked business owners behaving:
‘When I HAVE more money I will DO great things with my family and will BE a great Wife / Husband or Mother / Father.
I just need to work a bit harder first, get my business sorted, deal with these clients, finish these projects and then everything will be fine.’
In other words ‘HAVE, DO, BE’.
The Family First core value ensures that the way we work goes more like this:
‘In order to BE a great Wife / Husband or Mother / Father, I need to DO things like working smarter so I can HAVE more time with my family.’
This doesn’t mean I’ll let down my clients; on the contrary, I may even be able to share my smarter way of working with my clients so they too can BE who they want to be too.’
In other words ‘BE, DO, HAVE.’
When we bring the focus back onto who we need to BE first, we immediately start to act in a way consistent with that role (DO). The things we HAVE become the bi-product of who we are being as opposed to the things we have to DO before we can BE who we want to BE.
Family First is then the filter that reminds us who we need to BE first as opposed to what we have to HAVE first before we can become the people we really want to be.
‘The family is at the heart of what really matters to all of us. If things aren’t well at home, every other area of life is affected.’ – Nancy Leigh DeMoss.
