Last night my husband rocked my world

Too often, I don’t give him credit for understanding what I do. Too often, I am right. My husband works A LOT. He travels to far, far away places EXTENSIVELY. And for REALLY long periods of time. Then he wants to Skype or FaceTime me continually, interrupting my work time. He will even Skype me and then proceed to watch his hotel television or eat dinner.

Because he works so much I suspect he gets a little jealous or frustrated that I don’t appear to be working as hard. Yet, at the same time he gets upset because I’m working all the time. He gets bothered when I work through his calls, shrinking his image to a little box in the corner of the screen as he disrupts my copywriting time, my find more clients time or the other activities I do to build my business in order to have the freedom to do what I want.

Hopefully, you just caught what is wrong with that situation because it took me a long time to figure it out. It’s that duh, moment when I finally realized that I already have that freedom now I’m just missing out.

You can make someone’s day with 15 minutes and a shoelace

I was working on my client outreach, something I firmly schedule into my day, when I got a call from my son at school. He had broken a shoelace and wanted me to bring him a new one. I’ve noticed a trend lately. My kids call way too often for forgotten jackets, lunch money, homework or what have you. So I told him I’d deliver a shoelace after lunch.

Shortly after, my husband called and I told him about how the kids are continually interrupting my work time with their requests. That’s when he threw me for a loop. He didn’t get mad about me working all the time.

He quietly, calmly reminded me that this is why I own my own business rather than work under the whip of some newspaper publisher. My goal was to own a business that makes the money to be able to be there for my kids when they need me, to work when I say and to do fun stuff whenever I want. Yet, here I am with everything I wanted and I don’t even have a glass of wine in my hand as I write this–what?

My husband said, “Take a short break. You can make or break little Chase’s day with those 15 minutes and a shoelace. Be there for your kids. Have lunch with your friends. Start taking a day off to go wine tasting—in the morning. Start reminding yourself why you do what you do.”

With that one piece of advice not only did my husband rock my world he totally blew it up.

If you don’t have someone to give you this advice, I’m telling you right now. If you are already where you want to be it’s easy to forget why you wanted to get there. If you are working toward lifestyle design it’s easy to forget why you are working so hard to get there and give up. Remind yourself why you are working toward freedom and designing your life. Then, don’t forget to actually enjoy it whenever you get the chance.

Hopefully, you’re enjoying it with a very excellent glass of Argentinean Malbec in your hand.