Opportunity cost is an interesting thing. It refers to the opportunity you miss out on whenever you make a choice. For example, if you’re at a store and your choices are to buy an apple or an orange. If you decide to go with an apple, your opportunity cost is the orange. You gain the benefit of the apple, but you miss out on the opportunity to eat an orange.

In our own personal life, it’s not as simple as an apple or an orange. The opportunity costs that we face are a bit more costly. Especially when it comes to juggling something like work/life balance. If you work more, yeah you get more money, but most of the time you end up sacrificing time with your family. And if you spend more time with your family and don’t work as much, you end up not making a whole lot of money. It’s hard to live on just love as much as you would love to.

Now I usually like to equate the life side of this work/life balance with mostly spending time with your family, but it’s actually deeper than that. It’s literally everything you do outside of work. Meaning not only quality family time, but also time for yourself and the goals you personally want to achieve. Whether it be getting in shape, learning a new trade, starting a business, whatever your individual aspirations are come with the opportunity cost of spending more time with your family. At least that’s what most family men think. That it’s hard to take up achieve a goal because after work you have to balance family and those goals you are trying to achieve.

And if you’re a devoted father, you’ll choose family every time at the expense of your personal goals. This is not always a good thing because over time there’s a bitterness that festers in which you start using your family as the excuse for not accomplishing something. I don’t want to see you end up in this position, so in this week’s post I’m gonna give you 4 strategies on how to achieve your goals without sacrificing your family in the process.

This week’s post involves figuring out how to achieve your goals without sacrificing that much needed quality time with your family. Yes, it is absolutely important to be a present father and involved with your kids, date night with the wife, you know the whole 9. I’m all for it, but at the end of the day the family experience, no matter how good it is, is not your overall purpose.

A lot of guys say that because it sounds good on paper. I’ve even said this too, “my family is my purpose.” “My kids are the reason I get up every day.” “You guys are my world.” Don’t we say that? I know, trust me, I’ve been there. Yet I’ve also seen examples in which men have good kids, and a great wife, and they still end up committing suicide. They’re still not happy or fulfilled in their life and I’ve always wondered why?

Well the truth is, that your purpose in life cannot be another person. Even if it is your family. Your reason for existing and living every day cannot be placed on another person. Because if that person leaves or God takes them before you, your purpose is now gone and without purpose, life is hard. Which is why I believe that your purpose needs to come from within in order for it to be sustainable. Your family can compliment and drive that purpose forward. They can be the motivation you need for you to accomplish your purpose, but it can’t just be them.

Now most of us don’t have the faintest idea what their purpose in life really is which is why we hold onto this idea of it being your family so tightly. If you don’t know what your purpose is, that’s ok. But I will tell you this, it involves you doing something. The Bible says, “you were made for good works.” Even if you’re not religious, you can agree with the fact that when you perform a “good work” in your life, there is a sense of accomplishment that comes with that. Maybe you build something with your hands from scratch, you solved a complicated problem, you got in shape and stuck to it, whatever the “good work” is, it felt good.

A man once told me that his purpose in life was “to serve others”. Period. That’s a pretty good purpose because the actual purpose is found in the service to others, not the people, but the actual work performed. I hope this is making sense. You see, before you can serve others effectively like this man, before you can show up for your family and serve them at the highest capacity, you need to be able to serve yourself first. You do that by setting goals that produce your personal growth and then you work towards achieving them.

So how do we do that with a family in tow?
Well you start with strategy number 1 which is…

1. Make Uninterrupted Time

Have you ever told yourself that you’re gonna do something and you didn’t follow through? “I’m gonna work out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday every week.” Monday night comes along and you haven’t done squat, it’s 10pm and the last thing you wanna do is workout. So you say to yourself, “it’s all good I’ll just do it tomorrow. I just didn’t have enough time today.” You know it’s bullshit, because when you’re honest about how you spent your day. I guarantee you that there was a pocket of time in which you were on Social Media, playing a video game, watching Netflix, whatever you were doing with your time, it was not working out.

I say this because it happens to me every Monday, which is why I workout on Tuesdays. Nah, I’m just playing, maybe. The point is, we don’t have time, we make time. We all have 24 hrs in a day and if other men can become millionaires while still maintaining a great family life, guess what man, you can do it too. So you have to make time for your goals every day. Not only do you want to make time, you want to make uninterrupted time. Meaning you need to give yourself a window of time where your wife and kids will not be interrupting you.

It’s your time to focus on what you have to get done. Your wife and kids sleep every day, so my recommendation either wake up 2 hrs before them or got to sleep 2 hrs after them, whatever you find works for you, just make it happen. I’m a night owl myself, so I tend to work on my goals in the evening. Even filming this podcast right now, my family is asleep and I’m in my office filming. No one in the house is making noise, so I’ve made this the time that I use to get this done. Figure out what works for you and stick to it. It doesn’t have to be 2 hrs, even if you could just start with 30 min a day. That will add up over time and get you closer to your goal without having a negative impact on your family.

2. Involve Your Family When Possible

When we’re aiming for a goal, oftentimes we think that our family will just get in the way of it if we involve them. Now of course there are some goals that you probably can’t really involve them in. Like if my goal is to write a sales page for my business, my 3 year old son ain’t really gonna be able to help me with that. He’ll press the keys on the keyboard and pretend like he’s helping me with that, but he’s only gonna get in the way. So I get the hesitation with involving family in some of your personal goals. However, when possible, I would recommend you do it.

For example, right now, something that I’m really working towards is getting a handle on my physical health. One of the things I always wanted was to have a home gym and now being in this new house, we have a dedicated gym room. And I’ve been working out at least 3 to 4 times a week, which is a big step up from what I was doing before which was literally nothing. When I workout during the day and my son sees me going to the gym room, he loves to come in there and workout with me. At first I was hesitant of letting him in there because I didn’t wanna get thrown off when I’m in that zone or be worried about him around the equipment. But over time I’ve allowed him to be a part of the workout when possible and I see him light up.

I realize that he is seeing an example of his father taking care of his health. He’s learning some of the things he needs to do to stay healthy as he gets older. And on top of this, it allows for some nice quality bonding time with my son, which is awesome. I’m accomplishing my goal of getting in shape and he’s by my side. On the other hand, with my wife. She’s now starting to help me curate content for this business. So that’s a way that I involve her in another goal that I’m trying to accomplish. Get creative about how you wanna involve your family. Again depending on the goals you have, you don’t have to do it all the time, but whenever possible, make them a part of the journey.

3. Fall In Love With The Process

The big issue with goals is that we get so fixated on the end result and if it doesn’t come fast enough, we drop our pursuit of it. It’s kinda like when you say you wanna lose 30 lbs by the summer and you work out frequently, but you don’t see big results, so your motivation for accomplishing that goal starts to go down. Little by little you take your foot off the gas just because the destination seems so far away that you’ll never get there.

Instead of being fixated on the big goal, it’s more important to learn how to fall in love with the process that gets you there. Those daily actions you have to take to get to the destination, you gotta show those some love and acknowledgment. Whatever the big goal is. Maybe one of your goals is to get completely out of debt. Ok so every day you can take an action that moves the needle forward towards that goal. Maybe in a few months you clear out 1 credit card balance. Cool that’s one down, just keep it going.

Don’t allow yourself to give up so easily, stick to the process every day. Even when you don’t feel like it, push past that voice trying to convince you to stop. Consistency is key and you’ll only be consistent if you learn how to fall in love with the process instead of being fixated on the outcome.

4. Family Benefit Perspective

This last tip has to do with how you view your goals. You see, I used to think that if I took time away from my family to accomplish some personal goal, that I was being selfish with my time. So I would always put my ambitions on the back burner because I had a faulty perspective. Until I came to the realization that most, if not all of my goals benefit my family in some way.

If I work out and get in shape, I become healthier giving me the energy I need to play with my kids and be around for a long time. I become more physically attractive to my wife which in turn ignites more passion and intimacy in our relationship. If my goal is to become wealthy by starting a successful business, then the time and effort I put towards that goal provides my family with a better life. My personal growth in any area benefits my family in the long run.

So having goals and working towards them is not a selfish act that detracts from your family. It’s more of a selfless act that has a great impact on them. Remember, within the family structure, you’re called to be the leader. Similar to when a Coach becomes more capable the team benefits. When a General improves himself, his soldiers grow with him. The only way this becomes selfish is if you do absolutely nothing to grow. If you set no goals or if you do set them, but don’t follow through. That’s when you’re truly being selfish because you’re depriving your family of having you lead them at your full potential. A lot of families end up broken just from this alone. So set some goals, get after it, and don’t let your family fall by the wayside, bring them along for the journey.

Until next time my fellow Alpha Dad,
- G. Vidal