Happy wife, happy life

Key takeaways:

• Relationships at home affect your performance at work;
• Your social life also affects your performance at work;
• Poor performance and productivity at work can be improved by better social relationships.

I have never seen a high-performing person in the industry who has a poor family or social life. Perhaps you have?

I am not the first one to realise this but I am lucky enough to realise it early in my career after my first child was born. It was a tough job to care for an infant and certainly tough for my wife and I because we were newbie parents at that time. I quickly realised that my family life quality depended on how ‘calm’ my wife was while she was caring for my new-born daughter. I would have a lovely dinner with my wife if my little one played ‘nicely’ with my wife during the day and the night before. If not, I would see “stormy clouds” hanging around the living room when I came home. I soon realised one old saying: “Happy wife, happy life.” That’s the best lesson I’ve learned for family life.

In my career coaching business, I mainly focus on improving the career opportunities and prospects of my clients. However, almost every coaching case involves ‘extended coaching’ on the areas of personal (family & social) life and health. Let’s talk about family life in this blog post.

The secret to achieve high performance at work is to have what it takes to do the job (i.e. qualifications and skills), and also sleep well during the night. To sleep well, one must be relaxed enough before bedtime. Some of my clients were troubled by family issues and this caused sleep problems, affecting both work performance and health. While I was coaching these clients on improving their work performance and productivity, I quickly realised that some of my clients couldn’t achieve goals not because clients couldn’t do it but because the negative effects flowing from relationships at home (and sometimes from clients’ social lives).

I’m not an expert in marital relationships but some simple advices could help improve relationships at home. The goal is to have ‘balanced happiness‘ for both the husband and wife. If the wife is happy but this comes with the expense of the husband, then the husband won’t perform well at work (trust me, this is almost certainly true!). Of course, the reverse is also true.

(A gentle note for men: if your success and happiness comes with the expense of your wife’s personal and professional developments, then you will pay for it sooner or later. Have you seen volcano eruption before? You certainly don’t want a lava-flowing volcano at home. You definitely want to know whether there is a dormant volcano at home which may eruption some time! ^_<)

Family life is like a boat in the ocean. The direction of the boat is for the best outcome of the family and for most cases, it’s not always the best for both the husband and wife individually. The point is that both persons are on the same boat, so both must strike a ‘balanced happiness’ for each other. From there, good things can happen.

Have you ever seen someone who is a high-flier at work but have a miserable life? Yes, you may have seen some. They paid the price for the ‘success’ of their career and I don’t think that’s the way to go. Why not enjoy both success at work and also happiness at home? That’s how we should aim for in our life, isn’t it?

Dr. C. Richard Wu @ REEAConsulting.com