Marriage and Career

Tips For Enjoying a Successful Career, Marriage and Family Life

1. Set Your Family and Business Goals
The first step to achieving anything important is to begin by identifying your goals. If you have not already done so, pull out a pad of paper and write down your career, marriage and family goals.

2. Get The Support From Your Spouse
The only way you are going to achieve these goals is with the support of your spouse. Just as it would be unwise to think you can build a successful business without the support of your business partner, you won’t build a successful marriage, family life and career without the support of your spouse.

 3. Create Blocks of Time For Work and Family
Delineate blocks of time to spend time with each of the children and together as a family. This one tip has made a HUGE difference in many families.

4. Review Schedule with Family
After you and your spouse have negotiated the blocks of time you will allocate for your career, spend together and be with your children, then review the schedule with your children and get their buy-in. After you have discussed the schedule, establish the boundaries.


5. Make Sure Your Work Time is Respected
During the blocks of time you have allocated to work, you are not to be interrupted unless there is an important reason. Of course, there will be exceptions when either your spouse or kids need to talk to you about something, but you must make those times the exceptions and not the norm.

6. Don’t Conduct Business During Family Time
This means not doing ANYTHING work related during family time. Respect and value your family time.

7. Make Your Family Time, Family Time For Everyone
No texts, no emails, no phone calls! This applies to you and your family members. Make your family time a sacred time that is valued by everyone.

8. Be Present
When you are with your family, try to stop thinking about everything going on in your life and focus on your family. Resist the temptation to talk about your work and instead concentrate on topics of interest to your family. Use your time together to ask questions and discuss what is going on in their lives.


9. Dates with Kids
If you have children, often block out times to spend with them on an individual basis. There is no better way to connect with someone than one-to-one. Whether it’s a bike ride, a one night camping trip, playing dolls, a cup of tea or whatever it is they enjoy doing, block out time each week to spend with each of your children.


10. Weekly Date With Spouse
This is the number one marriage tip I give to newlyweds.