Phil has such an uplifting persona, I didn’t imagine that divorce would be part of his past. And, I think, it’s a perfect example of what we’re trying to show with this blog: everyone has their own trials; it’s what you learn from those trials and how you proceed from the trials that count.

The secret to successful supporting relationships

There’s an incredibly important lesson embedded in Phil’s story: It’s not enough to have supportive relationships; you have to nurture those supportive relationships. This is actually a crucial lesson embedded throughout many of our guest’s stories.

When you listen to people like Leo Babauta or Matt Cornell talk about their supporting relationships, they talk about the time they spend with their wives (their wives, in both cases, are their main source of support). Leo talked about the time he and his wife reserve for dates and Matt talked about he and his wife became certified massage therapists together (this may have been cut from the published version of the interview).

I think Phil sums it up nicely when he says, “Don’t put all of your passion into your work. The work will always be there.”

So true, yet it’s a lesson that many of us, including myself, struggle to learn. It’s not that we’re thick-headed or don’t understand it conceptually. (Well, I might be a little thick-headed.) It’s just hard to walk away from work when I’m so passionate about what I do – and there’s so much to do.

As you’re reading this (assuming you’re reading on the date this is published), the tension between my work-life balance is about to get a bit more joyously complicated. If all is going well, this post will be published on the day that my wife is having a C-Section, giving birth to our second child, a daughter we’re going to name “Emma Rose”.

I am ecstatic and nervous and terrified –basically a big ball of stress, right now. How do I juggle my own personal dream-chasing with raising my two kids, maintaining a strong relationship with my wife – all the while keeping my sanity? A great question and I can only imagine the increased complexity adding a second child to our already precariously balanced lives.

I think the answer is here – at least, the seeds of an answer that must be experienced to be fully understood.

Nurture your supportive relationships

I want to use Leo Babauta as an example here because he has divorced, remarried, and has six kids in the mix – making my situation look like a cake-walk. Through it all, Leo has managed to launch a blog, write a few books, run a marathon, as well as many other accomplishments and still has time to nurture his relationship with his wife.

No, that’s not right. It’s not that he has time to nurture the relationship. It’s that he makes the time. On Day 4, Leo says, “You have to have intimacy. You have to have that closeness and you have to put in the time to make that happen.”

Put in the time to make intimacy and closeness happen.

Make the time to make your relationships great

And maybe the secret to having the time for intimacy with your partner comes from another lesson that Phil says he’s still trying to learn: “It’s Parkinson’s Law. Work will expand to fit the size of the container you give it, so give it a very small container.”

Powerful stuff. Make the time to nurture your supporting relationships by keeping your work constrained to a small container.

Working for myself, in a start-up, the containers for my work have grown. It’s hard to walk away from the computer. Not only am I 10 times more passionate about my company than any other job I’ve had, but we have a limited runway to get our product launched – due to both limited time and budget. Every second I’m not working, is another second that the end of the runway is getting closer. Is it possible, in a startup, to work less and still be successful?

I don’t know the right answer to that question. I certainly don’t think I’m qualified to answer the question for you. I do know my answer, though. Actually, it’s the only answer I can accept. I want to be part of my children’s lives as much as possible and to do that, I have to make those work containers smaller.

Does that mean that my work will suffer? That the startup will implode? I certainly don’t have a crystal ball, but I don’t think so. I think Abe and I will find ways to produce something better than if we didn’t have these constraints and our success will be so much sweeter and our setbacks more easily overcome if we take the time to nurture our families – without whose support we wouldn’t be here in the first place.

So, here’s your question for this week: Are you properly nurturing your supporting relationships? What  have you done lately to nurture your support network?

Published Thursday, August, 13, 2009