Building lines of defense - Family
In my last article I wrote about lines of defense and the five I consider to be most critical in life. They have worked for me and are the ones I constantly build on. Over the coming few articles I will be taking each line of defense into more detail as to how I have built and keep on building them.
So, let’s start with family as that is where almost everything starts. Family is where we typically fall back or support ourselves on at one point or another of our lives and careers. However, like any other relationship, family also runs on an emotional bank account and to keep these checks in balance there are important and simple things that should be done. Here is what I do:
Make your free time theirs - when I get home, I always set aside my phone and my work gear so that I can dedicate my full attention to my wife and our children. I “create” alone time with each one by forming listening and conversation habits during specific moments in the day. Homework time, during and after dinner and at bed time, these should be moments when there are no parallel activities, no distractions, no other tasks to do but simply make use of the time together - ask, listen and reflect.
Reach out to those who are far away - being away from our home country, my wife and I make it a must to connect back home with our loved ones at least once a week. This keeps everyone up to speed and opens up opportunities to talk about what is happening, talk about the current challenges and celebrations, listen to useful advice and have interesting discussions. Many times, these “far away” perspectives provide a great balance to the day to day issues and situations we go through.
Find a project to work on - whether it is helping your brother to complete his thesis, helping out your children in a school project or involving your partner in the side business you want to setup, these projects provide a higher sense of meaning to a relationship. Having a common objective and goals, feeling the effects of the synergy from working together creates common learning and growth as well as stronger bonds for the present and for the future.
If you have different approaches to building your family line of defense, feel free to comment or reach out. I am always curious about new and different approaches.
You can find the original version of this article in portuguese at: www.mentoresparaportugal.pt