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Welcome to Faithful Fatherhood

If this is your first article about family, faith, and business, welcome. You want to catch up after reading this, so here are the first two: Faith, fatherhood, and Business, and How Faith Shapes You Career.

If fatherhood is composed of three interlocking pieces, work (career), family, and faith, then consider how your home life is coming to work. In this article: I will outline three ways you bring home to work.

Remember that the whole goal of this project is to help you succeed in life. Since I am just starting out in this community, I need help from you. I need you to comment, like, and share, so I know which content to focus on. So after reading this article don’t just click the X to close it out. Comment for me which of the three most spoke to you today or maybe which one you need the most help with. 

If fatherhood is composed of three interlocking pieces, work (career), family, and faith, then consider how your home life is coming to work. Share on X

Relationships

Careers are made by relationships. Perhaps a mentor raised you up and trained you, or maybe you have an awesome partner in your start-up. Even just growing up the company latter, the relationships you make with clients and co-workers shape your career. You know you have a career because you have relationships.

Relational Weight

You know which relationships you end up caring about the most. The ones you spend the most time with which is usually your family. We spend ⅔ of our lives with our family, even if 8 hours of that is sleeping. When you occupy the same space as people eventually a relationship is formed. 

The weight of that relationship carries over into other relationships. For example, I don’t go out to the bar with the guys every night because I have a wife and children to come home too. That means my relationship with the guys is not as strong as it could be because I choose my wife. 

Similarly, if my wife and I are fighting at home, then I am more likely to explode at those same co-workers. 

Bringing Home to work: relationships

If you are struggling in your relationships at home, then that struggle translates. Yes, I know many of us compartmentalize. Few are better at compartmentalizing than me, but it still affects me. I still bring the stress of a fight or misbehaving child around with me. 

My family haunts me like a ghost. Everyone around me can tell when that ghost is friendly or in pain. Next time you have a big business deal on the line and it goes awry; check your home life. It is unconscious, but people notice. 

My family haunts me like a ghost. Everyone around me can tell when that ghost is friendly or in pain. Share on X

That doesn’t mean forcing your family into a holding pattern of emotion while you close the deal. That means prioritizing your family to get the deal done. Do the work, and give your family some love. See if people don’t like you better, to get that deal done.

Energy

Remember that whole 8 hours of sleep thing I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. Yeah, at the stage of like I am in I feel great if I have gotten 4.5 hours, consecutively. There are many nights I am not that fortunate. Each kid needs something and if it’s not one its the other or the spouse.

Do you know how much work I can get done when I have only gotten a broken 3 hours at night? Not much. You might be a stronger person than me, but I am willing to bet you do better work with a good night’s sleep too. 

Family Energy

Family life seems to be a constant interruption and drain on energy until it isn’t. Until there are those moments that make you full. It might be tiring, but those full moments make life worth living. Maybe it’s something as simple as a kiss and hug from your daughter. Maybe it’s your son having a dance party in the hallway, or maybe its snuggling and watching TV. Whatever it is that fullness carries over into work. 

When we are full we get creative. When we get creative we get successful. And when we get successful work is filling too, but where did it all start? At home with a kiss, a dance, or a snuggle, a simple thing that made life just function in that unexplainable way of love and family.

Family changes what kind of energy you bring to work. The cool part is that you have some control over that energy. Comment and like the article and we will keep exploring it.

And when we get successful work is filling too, but where did it all start? At home with a kiss, a dance, or a snuggle, a simple thing that made life just function in that unexplainable way of love and family. Share on X

Outlook

If your family life haunts you into work, it pours out in your relationships and can lead you to be energized or apathetic. While those are more temporary, this one takes a little longer to notice. Your outlook isn’t shaped in one day. It is continual stress or joy or neither. You can always say at least my family loves me. Or you can be bogged down by how much your family despises you or worse is completely apathetic toward you.

If you don’t think your pessimism or optimism pours out into your decision making, well then I don’t know if you understand the terms. They are both forms of decision making. How you see the world is how you do work because work is all about making decisions. Even the lowest rung employee can make the decision to be kind or spiteful to their co-workers, clients, or even their own selves. 

You can always say at least my family loves me. Or you can be bogged down by how much your family despises you or worse is completely apathetic toward you. Share on X

Over the Long Term

Outlook gets shaped by how life has treated you, and your family can be a source of positivity or negativity. Spending the time at home to have a positive outlook on life can not only improve your relationships or energy today it can alter the way you perceive your entire world. You can be the positive person who gives energy and life to people (and who doesn’t want to promote that person), or you can be the energy suck that everyone tolerates because they do good work.

Sustained Success

Sustaining success starts at home. We all understand the concept of returning to home base to restock, refuel and resupply. So we should treat our literal home and the people who live there with care. When we go home, then we actually restock, refuel, and resupply to have success at work. 

Sustained success sounds like quite a career to me. Let me know what you think, or if you would rather not post here. I send out weekly emails that I love getting responses from, here.