Christian Counselor Directory Blog

Summer is coming to an end and the new fall routines are starting. Now is the time to reflect on Main Things. These can be different depending on your family culture and values. Remember, don’t let the small stuff elevate to Main Things status. In families, as in the corporate world, you have to be aware of “scope creep”. This happens when things grow bigger and bigger and get more complicated until you lose sight of the original Main Things! For example, early in my married life the small thing of folding towels got elevated to Main Thing Status. Really?! I lost sight of the real Main Thing which was the towels were “folded” and put away by my husband so I didn’t have to do it. The Main Things were Kindness and Acts of Service. I had to let go of “my way of folding” and practice flexible thinking. To this day, we still don’t fold towels the same way…

For me and my family, the three Main Things are God, Family, and Service to others.
God

God

Whether we recognize God’s presence or not, He is around us. The work I do just can’t get done without focusing on this big Main Thing. I realize I am uniquely gifted with talents and learned skills to work with children, couples, and families.To maintain a balance, I keep my “spiritual cup” filled. I intentionally spending time reading, being still to reflect on blessings and being grateful for lessons I’m learning. This last one is particularly difficult for me. There are lessons to be learned when I mess up and I work hard on self-compassion and keeping things in perspective. Not everything is a crisis. I remind myself that my God still loves me despite the mistake. Do I like suffering the consequences of a mistake- NO! I do try to correct and do better next time- YES!

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King Solomon talks about the importance of leaving an inheritance for our children but remember that interference can mean so much more than money.

1. Shared Vision & Values: Regarding strategy, relationships, work ethic, money, and success

2. Shared Influence: Across generations, among spouses, and among siblings/cousins and geared to individual capabilities

3. Valued Traditions: That are characteristic of this family and set it apart from other families

4. Receptivity to Learning and Growing: Being open to new perspectives and new approaches; embodies a critical orientation that underlies mastering change and overcoming obstacles

5. Investment in Relationship Enhancement: The most robust families have traditions and mechanisms they use to play together and enjoy one another; these accumulated playful experiences serve as a buffer during difficult times

6. Demonstrative Caring: Open demonstrations of empathy for family members during good times and bad; making the clear statement, ”You are important to me.”

7. Mutual Admiration: Earned by building trust, based on a track record of being consistently accountable and true to your word.

8. Being There: Especially at times of grief, failure, or embarrassment; how a family interacts with a distressed family member is highly correlated with long-term family harmony and business success

9. Maintaining Space: Respect for individual privacy and for the privacy of each family unit within the extended family constellation

10. Circumscribed/Managed Conflicts: Feuding members all too frequently bring in ”reinforcements”. The family needs to know how to prevent members, who are tangential to a given conflict, out of the middle and then address the conflict with finesse.

How are you going to make sure that the heart of your original legacy is passed on to the next generation? How do you want to set them up for success? Pulling together this group of positive interventions with outside help can make so much of an important difference. Reaching out beyond the family can give you the leverage to steer all of you in the best direction.

Creating, building, and sustaining a family business is not only a fundamental American dream (over 20 million family businesses in the U.S.– 92% of all U.S. businesses), but is also a powerful dream in most other modern capitalist economies (for example, over 75% of all U.K. businesses are family owned). The benefits of family businesses are manifold, genuine, and in many cases psychologically profound. Remember, though as you read this, that Solomon tells us, "It is better to have a friend that is near than a brother that is far away" which means in families and business it's important to have relationships that are from the heart and not just based on role-obligation or expectation.

Consider WIIFF (What's in it for the family). A family business:

1. Creates a heritage for the family and serves as a medium for perpetuating a family's history, traditions, pride, and core values and belief

2. Serves as a powerful testimonial to the success and potency of a family

3. Provides the ultimate career and financial safety net one’s children and grandchildren

4. Offers participating family members greater independence and control of their fate than a more traditional career path

5. Establishes a very special glue (a bonding material, as it were) that can hold a family together around a common set of interests, activities, challenges, opportunities, threats, milestones, relationships, and daily schedules

6. Demonstrates to an entire community (and various sub-communities) that this is a family to be admired and respected

7. Makes it more certain that individual family members will have the fullest opportunities as adults to “stretch“ developmentally and to self-actualize

8. Improves the chances that family members will be able to involve themselves in meaningful philanthropic activities and become pillars of their communities

9. Makes it more likely that financial advantages, non-trivial net worth (a.k.a. wealth), and “security“ will accrue to the family

10. Provides greater stability and welfare for its employees and for the community in which it operates
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