Family needs vs. personal achievement

Are your personal wants and needs conflicting with your family's wants and needs? If it is easy to separate your personal wants and needs from your families you will need to keep reading. This pattern of thinking automatically puts you at odds with what your family is wanting from you. Essentially, you highlight the differences in your goals and this keeps you focused on trying to bridge those differences rather than embracing the similarities.

Let's take it a little further... planning is then a most crucial task in carving out enough time for yourself personally to accomplish what you need to get done. Planning is hard enough without making it the focal point in your life to a degree where your personal happiness hinges on the schedule.

What is the quick fix, or the "million dollar" solution? There is not a quick fix, but there is a way to try and flip things around to emphasize the similarities in your personal goals and your family goals. Which in turn should put some fun back into planning (I am referring to the ole' "two birds with one stone" saying).

Step number 1 - Write down everything that you are trying to accomplish and write down what you want your family to do or accomplish. Note that it needs to have the same time frame. If a personal goal is to run a marathon this year then make sure your family goal has goal and timeframe that is similar.

Step number 2 - Write down what are the critical items that your family essentially needs to do.

Step number 3 - Analyze how a personal goal and a family goal or family want can be tied together. The example here is fairly simplified for explanation purposes real family planning can be a lot harder and more complex depending on your situation. If running a marathon is a goal and a family vacation is also a goal then why not combine them into one trip.

Step number 4 - Only attempt one change and try to make it a small one. Sometimes it takes a little time to identify similarities let alone try to incorporate a change that may change a family pattern. Once you successfully made one small change go back to step one and identify another item you want to tackle. Note that once you begin to incorporate change you also need to decide did it work for all that where involved. Also the change that you make may also bring out new dynamics that maybe pleasantly surprising.

At the end of the day it is about aligning your personal goals with your family, so that you and your family can benefit from learning about what it takes for a family member to achieve success in what they choose to do. It also helps bring a deeper understanding to your family about each member.

Credits

Run The Planet thanks Marathon Family (www.marathonfamily.com) for the permission to reprint the article "Family needs vs. personal achievement" by Scott Winter. For more information about how to support your runner, in all phases from getting started to training to race day and back again, please visit www.marathonfamily.com. Questions, comments and suggestions can be mailed to info(at)marathonfamily.com. Illustration copyright © by Run The Planet.