Welcome to the win at home first podcast. I'm your host, Corey Carlson. This podcast is where we talk about how successful business leaders win, not only at work, but also at home. On this podcast, we will go behind the scenes with great leaders to hear stories of how they win. Thank you for listening and on to today's episode.
Hello, my name is Corey Carlson and you are on the win at home first podcast. This is episode number two and I am extremely excited to talk about the content on this because I see this so often to be what holds men back. They are men. We can continue to get stuck in this mindset that we can go to work to offset the winds that we aren't getting in our personal life or the, we aren't getting it at home. A lot of us men, I know I've done it in my life and have they even watch out occasionally now or we can continue to chase after something and really is to avoid something else.
(01:03): We're going after the winds at work. We're going out for a title or going on for money because maybe we don't want to deal with the baggage from a past decision or a failure. And so we will go to the success that we get them maybe can be somewhat of a coping mechanism for some of the dark side of our life. So today we'll talk about three different watch outs that I see that I've had in my life as well as men that I in my inner circle and those that have been clients of mine in. The first one is that work wins don't offset personal brokenness. The second one is work wins, don't offset the home losses. And the third one is the work ones. They just feel better when we're winning at home. So let's dive in to each of these three to help debunk the thought that some of us have that we can maybe avoid some of the pains.
(01:58): Let's talk about the first one. Work wins. Don't offset the personal brokenness. Now in the last episode I was vulnerable, shared my story about how I had an affair and then eventually came clean of it. Well, unfortunately, due to that experience, I also know what a lot of you may be going through for some different choices that you've made. From the moment I had the affair to when I came clean of it, there was a, you know, it was a span of some years, unfortunately. I mean, hate to even admit that, but that's the truth. So during those years, if I start to have that guilt of what kind of a crap husband I am, or crappy dad or just w man, whatever it is, I would go do different things to forget about it. I'd go work hard. Almost like if a, if my wife found out that I made this stupid choice, then at least I know I was a good provider.
(02:54): I provide for, I may not have been the best husband, but I was a good provider, so made it okay. I would go for a run. Yeah. I got big into, you know, being physically fit and looking good and feeling good because in my mind I was like, well, if she finds out I had an affair lease, she knows, Hey, I mean he's taking care of himself. Good looking guy, I'll stick with that. Other times it would be to go have a drink or I would go out with guys to get my mind off of some of the personal brokenness and baggage that I had. So I know what that was like for those years leading up to when I finally did confess of the affair. And so some of you can relate to some of those different coping mechanisms and what you're running from.
(03:40): What was interesting though is once I came clean of it, I wasn't quick to go tell everybody that's for sure. But as Holly and I started to talk about it and kind of pray about it, we started telling them a person kinda here and there about the affair that we had, are we the affair that I had? And using it as someone who's discipleship sometimes as a position of vulnerability to help an individual, whatever the reason may have been at the time. I always, I didn't just broadcast it, but it was more just kind of praying through, Hey, Oh God, is this the right time to share my own brokenness? And it's not. Sometimes I, I felt like it was other times I did not. Well, what I've found often is, as I shared it, it was amazing what was said from the other side of that coffee table [inaudible] brokenness that people could relate to.
(04:29): Maybe that exact story, maybe they did have an affair, but maybe they had some other brokenness. [inaudible] Has been tethering them back. So for you, maybe it's not an affair that you had and hopefully you did not, but maybe there's some other brokenness that you have, whether it's addicted to porn, [inaudible] alcohol or drugs or food. Maybe you're just in a bad marriage. You haven't had an affair, but emotionally or not connected [inaudible] maybe it's online, maybe it's porn that you know you're involved with. Or maybe there's someone at the office that you flirt with or talking away or share some deep emotional pieces. So you had an affair. But there's definitely you're taking some of your questions of who you are, you know, and just someone at the office. Maybe there's broken relationships in your family. It's a parent, it's a sibling. It's something that is broken, that continues to beat you down.
(05:24): Maybe you constantly look to others for approval. You don't have a sense of who you are well enough and you're still seeking approval from other people. You feel insecure, you feel alone, you feel not enough. So there's different wounds that you may have from your past. Maybe someone said something to you that you still hang on to. You had a business that failed, that you still beat yourself up for. You feel like you're not enough. And some nights, some of us, we all can lay our head down on that pillow just thinking, Hey, will I ever catch up? Will I ever be enough? Will I ever do enough? And so this brokenness that we all can have, we all, I can relate to it but we've got to address it head on as opposed to run from it. I wish I never obviously would have had the affair cause some of the demons inside the affair weren't just [inaudible] another woman being involved.
(06:18): Instead it was me looking for approval, me looking for validation that I was a man and so because I was taking who I was, my questions to my wife or to my work and when those weren't fulfilling, I went elsewhere. Same thing can happen in all of our different brokenness if we don't see that we can heal our own brokenness her own way. We'll go to these other coping mechanisms similar to a bandaid where we will just cover up the wound. Well eventually if we don't attack, go after the wound itself, it will be infected. It will spread. You'll start to affect other areas of her life. Stephen Covey had a quote years ago from the seven habits of highly effective people. If I really want to improve my situation, I can work on the one thing which I have control of myself. So my encouragement to all of you is any of this ring a bell of a brokenness that you have, they you struggle with that can't yet overcome.
(07:17): The encouragement is to step into it and yes you can overcome it. Yes, you can break those chains cause the reality is whatever that brokenness is, it's really tethering us to our past. It's tethering us so we can't go B beyond greatness. I know for myself, there were many, many years that I thought I could not be a successful businessman because I had a failure in real estate, which we'll talk about in a future episode. There were times I couldn't think I could be a good husband because I knew I had an affair. I wouldn't be able to be a good father because I didn't know how to model whatever the right type of man should be. I couldn't grow closer to God because of this brokenness, like all of these different lies and head trash I was telling myself because I was allowing my past, my own brokenness to tether me to the past.
(08:09): So I encourage you to push through it because you may feel good in the short term with some of this brokenness, but long term it's holding you back. Second myth, second idea to overcome is that work wins don't offset the home losses. Can we talk about the own personal brokenness? A lot of times there's in our home we just don't feel like we are winning though we are not winning in our marriage. We are not winning the intention IO with our children or even whatever dynamics it is in your particular home. But because we're not winning, we go to work to get our wins. Almost this logic that, Hey, if I'm working well, providing then that's okay if home is not going well. Interesting story in just to this idea. I was hired by a company to help build the vision and values help improve the culture for the organization.
(09:05): And then at the time it was the largest contract that I had ever had to date. So I was very, very excited. I had my first call with the president of the company and as we're talking, my typical call will be, it was just get to know him more. Right. What are the biggest breakthroughs that you have going on in your life? What are the biggest challenges you have? Just trying to better understand who they are and what is going on. So we talked about the break. There's work and work was going fantastic. The business was growing about to go over 200 employees, which is a large milestone for them. The business had tripled in seven years, so all these neat things had taken place. And then I wanted to start to shift into home, Hey, what'd you do this weekend? Just trying to get a feel of what's happening.
(09:51): He shared his kids involved with his kids and I re nothing was mentioned of his wife. I remember earlier when we first met he made a comment that they were getting ready to celebrate 25 years of marriage. I was like, that is so awesome. 25 years. Way to go. Sorry. I remember that story from our basically consultation sessions at the very beginning, but now here we are diving into these in this coaching call, no mention of his wife. If I bring it up. I said, you know sir, obviously we won't use his name, but where was your wife? Why wasn't she around? And he says, ah, she doesn't like going, you know, to the farm with us. She doesn't like going and doing these different things with us. I can just tell his response was there's a heaviness to it, so now I'm getting, now I'm getting nervous.
(10:38): I'm feeling this prompting from the Holy spirit. I need to step into this if I'm going to really help this leader with the culture at his company. Yeah, I'm going to have to press in what's going on at home. So nervous that I may, in fact, asks a question and he's going to terminate the contract on the spot. My largest contract to date, I'm going to lose on the very first call, but I couldn't. I couldn't get away from the prompting to talk to him. So I asked, I said, Hey, before we go any further, we'll get to vision and values. We will get to helping build in your culture. Absolutely. But we believe that as the leader goes, so goes the company. So if you are not doing well at home, eventually that will catch up to you at work. Is it okay if we also set a precedent at home and how has working with with your spouse, with your kids, your own personal routines, how are you doing before we go into, while we're going talking about work, it got long silent.
(11:44): I was nervous. Like Eric goes, I'm about to get terminated and he said it'll be okay. We can do that every day. I drive, I have a pit in my stomach before I get there. You hear that a president of a company who has done incredibly well for this company, triple the business in seven years passing a milestone of the amount of employees that no matter how good work was, it could not offset the losses at home. He could not offset the fact that him and his spouse had became basically business partners of the home, kind of running their own schedules and just making sure that, you know, the house stayed, stayed together, but he had a pit in his stomach. So maybe some of you don't have a pit in your stomach. It's not that heaviness of it, but there is, there could be some pieces of that story that you could relate to that you, as I know I have, we'll go to work to get those wins because they're not working at home and it will catch up to us.
(12:48): We all have had that argument with our spouse, 7:00 AM to only find a, and when we and a 9:00 AM meeting, we're going to text that's continuing on with that fight or that argument. Or at the end of the day it's, it's three o'clock. We're starting to contemplate going home. But, and right away we started to think about the argument that we may have. We walked through that front door. What are we going to say? Well, what is she going to say? And so this just starts to eat at us. So if we are not doing well at home, we, there's no way we can bring our best self, especially in this day and age. We can't get away from a home that is not thriving and doing well and try to take it to work with technology the way it is that there's always an iPhone and I and I watch or some technology that we are communicating with home throughout the Workday.
(13:36): So if you get in that fight at 7:00 AM with your spouse at 9:00 AM, you may be in a meeting trying to bring your a game and you get this text from your spouse. It's still frustrated from your morning comment or towards the end of the day, it's about three, three 30 you're starting to think about going home, but then it enters your mind of, Oh, we're going to have this conversation or we're gonna have to continue this. I'm going to say this. [inaudible] She says that, and we start to already the end of the day, we're still in a work environment where we're thinking about what's going to happen. We get home. And so in today's day and age with technology is very, very hard to separate work from home. We can't just compartmentalize it. I'm sure back in the day when they're on the farm, you know, working within how will this technology, they could go out on the land or go out to the steel plant or go out wherever it may be with no technology [inaudible] Joel to get away from work. That is very difficult now at this day and age. And so for you in your own life, I love this quote that Jim Collins talks about where we have to confront the brutal facts and so for you and for your home, and maybe just confronting those brutal facts that I got to address the home issues because I've been running, I've been taking it to work. I'm crushing in work, but I am not as much at home.
(14:55): You're unstoppable at work. At home. It's another story. Sound like you good news. I'm here to help. If you're ready to win at home, they can go to Corey M carlson.com and download your free copy of 10 ways to win at home.
(15:14): The third component I want to talk about today is work wins. Feel better when you're winning at home. I think we all can relate to this that we have. We've closed a big deal. We got the right sale, we finished the project, whatever it is in our space, if we are doing well at home, we want to come home and tell our spouse
(15:34): Almost the high five I got the big prospect. I've been chasing hun. We landed it. We do. You know, we did it together. However, if you are not doing well at home, you don't want to share the wins because sometimes they come back to bite you. I know in my own case, there's been times where I may have shared something and I almost feel like the responses, you better have closed it. You haven't been around home at all. You better forgot that prospect. You've been spending more time on that project than you have with us. You better have got it. So it's almost this, you don't even want to share the good news because you feel the good news is going to be used against you. And that's not always the case. But sometimes that is what transpires. I had a good friend of mine who had justice situation, they landed they largest project and he knew the, the pain of not when at home actually surfaced when he won the big project
(16:27): Because he did it want to tell his wife cause he's [inaudible] I thought he would actually get in trouble for the amount of time he spent on that project. So that was the, the right wake up call that he needed so that he could start to double down on home. And the last thing on the workpiece is we all give so much to our current employer, which, which is great, right? W w as for myself as a follower of Jesus, we are to pursue excellence. We are supposed to do all things for his glory, not just for ours. So when we work, we're supposed to give our best or employer. Absolutely. I know in my own career I worked for a couple of different companies, some of which I left on my own terms, other one on which I was terminated from now self-employed, you know, writing, speaking, coaching,
(17:14): And now so we love it. But
(17:16): If I made individual commitments to my employer at the time, at the expense of my family, well I've left all those different companies I've worked with. And now here I am with my family who's, you know, slugging in with me through the the entrepreneurial world. So I'm forever grateful for my family, for being with me during that travel into the three different cities that we've lived in. And so it's just a reminder that we've got to make sure that we're not just giving an all do our work because our work won't be there forever either the company we're working for or eventually we all retire, but yet the family will. So in this episode we talked about how the work wins don't offset the personal brokenness and if that is you, and if this personal brokenness really rang true [inaudible], let's start to hit that head on and reach out to be more than happy to talk to you about what that looks like, how to unravel those components that help you get better.
(18:11): There are so many times on coaching calls, I'll be with an individual and they'll say, man, I think I'm the only one that talks about this. I just will laugh and say, no, you're not. Everyone is wrestling with a brokenness. You are not the only one. And so for you, as you hear this and you've got a brokenness, you are not the only one. And so I encourage you to press forward. Keep listening. These podcasts did the one at home first book, I have a client who's turned into a great friend. You heard me talk on another person's podcast, got to the hotel room that night, ordered my book winter home first, and then reached out to start working together to start to overcome some of that brokenness. So for you, I would love to see, I could come alongside and help. The second is that work wins don't offset the home losses.
(19:02): So stop running from any home losses they have cause it does not offset. And so start to date your wife, start to pursue it and start to increase that communication. Be intentional with your kids doing the one on one dates and spending time with them. And the last one is when you do win at work, which we all have our great days at work, it feels so much better to share that success with your spouse and with the overall family. So thank you very much for listening. Excited for what we have coming up on our next episode where we will talk about who you are as a man and where do you go to get your identity. So until next time, visit my website@coreymcarlson.com where you can download 10 ways to win at home. Thank you very much.
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