How Productive are You at Work When You Are at Odds with Someone You Love?
Do you approach the day with a positive attitude? Are you dialed in and focused? Are you creative? Are you in a frame of mind to make good decisions? Are you a ray of sunshine?
No.
Not even close.
We all know this experience, and depending on the severity of the relationship issue, we could be a shell of ourselves for months if not longer.
I can remember years ago when I was getting this wrong. I would be at my desk, trying to work, make sales calls, follow up with customers, encourage my team…
And doing more harm than good. My words on the phone were flat. My thoughts were jumbled. Everything felt hard and heavy. I just couldn’t hide, or hide from, my low emotional energy and cloud cover over my brain.
The State of Our Personal (love) Relationships has a Significant Impact on our Business Effectiveness.
If we don’t give consistent time and attention to our personal relationships, then we are getting one of the most important things for a successful life (and business) WRONG.
Could you still be successful in business while getting this wrong?
Yes. Of course. There’s no shortage of people that do well in business, while living in a relationship wasteland.
But do they also have joy in their life? An abundance of happiness? Not very often.
What good is making a lot of money and achieving a high level of success in business if you are quietly miserable?
I Talk at Length in 3 Circles Living About How Getting This Right is Fuel for Your Success Fire.
So, I’m going in the other direction here, because I know that more people will act to avoid pain than they will to increase pleasure.
Change comes from being inspired and it comes from being desperate. If your relationship is struggling and you’re NOT desperate, you could be over-self-medicating with whatever you do it with, you could be ignoring the problem thinking it will go away or work itself out (yeah, that happens a lot doesn’t it?), you could have just quit already and accepted the chains of being in a relationship you don’t want to be in and deciding to co-exist, or you could just be too scared to face ending the relationship. I’m sure there are plenty other excuses…and that’s what they are.
None of those excuses (not reasons) will help you be better at what you do, and are likely holding you back in some way. (And just so you know, I realize the prior paragraph hits hard if it describes you at this moment. My purpose in life is to serve people in doing better, and sometimes that means being the bearer of some hard truth. If it helps one person to have this put right in front of them, then it’s worth the ten it ticks off.)
And sure, you might be successful in your business anyway, but not to the degree you would if you had love in your life.
And, (this is tough too), in your quiet moments you know that the success feels empty. It doesn’t fill the need to be in true relationship with others.
If you are reading this and you do not currently have a love interest, at least you aren’t being held back by the anvil on your back of having trouble in a love relationship. The reality too, is that you are probably looking for someone, and you’ll likely find them sooner or later. I have been around lots of places in this world and one thing is clear…there is definitely someone for everyone. In the meantime, work on yourself, and get your house in order so that when that person comes along, you’ll be able to BE in the relationship, and GIVE to the relationship.
In the book, I talk about some of the specific manifestations of relationship issues in your work, that are mostly related to presenteeism, poor emotional energy, poor attitude, and the like.
I’m not going to go into those now, instead I’ll just close with this add-on. Most sustainable business success is built on relationships. Not love of course, but relationships none the less. They certainly require time and attention consistently too. (Here is an article that talks about the balance of task and relationship.)
And they also require you to show up in a way that makes others feel good. You are going to have a very difficult time communicating and bringing the kind of positive and/or empathic energy needed to serve these relationships if you are not in a good head space.
This is why when I teach the process of investing in relationships, I go from love first, into friends, community, and then business. I do this because this order of energy investment in relationships fills you up every step of the way and allows you to have magnetic energy to pour into your business.
This is not theory. This is the way it is. It’s a human nature thing.
I hope this serves you either as a wake-up call, or as reinforcement, and helps you prioritize your time and attention for those you love.
You will never regret spending time with the people you love, but you will regret NOT doing it, should you neglect to.
I hope this is helpful for you.
Many Blessings, Todd
P.S. If you are in need of coaching or training for your organization, reach out to me.
P.S.S. Want to detox, rid yourself of extra body fat, and rachet up your health in a 21-day window? If that sounds at all appealing, shoot me an email and I’ll share a very unique and effective program that has been massively successful in Europe over the past seven years. I’ll send you a program guide that will allow you to learn the details, and a link where you can move forward if you choose to. As an aside, this program will require some discipline:-) but it’s a lot easier than what I do every day of my life!
