I just got back from Huntington Beach, where I helped my parents move out of my childhood home. It was a 5 hour flight to spend 5 days packing, moving, then unpacking. We had to empty a home they had lived in for 35 years, helping my parents say goodbye to clothing, cutlery, and artwork that didn’t fit into their new house and lifestyle. It was grueling work.
But being able to help my parents move, which would have taken them twice as long without us, grounded me in reality. My mom turns 70 this year and my dad will soon be entering his 80s, and our time together is limited.
It was a profound trip because it reminded me of what’s truly important: relationships. I knew this intellectually, but the realization dropped like a lead weight from my brain into my body. Nurturing relationships is what truly brings me happiness in my leadership, work, community, and as a daughter.
A friend recently reminded me of the Harvard study on adult happiness. The researchers followed thousands of people over 85 years to understand the major factors in longevity and happiness. The crucial factor? The quality of people’s relationships.
Everyone talks about wanting fame and money, so that’s where we focus our energy. How often do we dream about our wealth compared to dreaming about what our relationships will look like? We need to envision a world where we have strong social connections, knowing how deep and meaningful our relationships with friends and family can be. We don’t give enough thought to the one thing that truly matters for our longevity and happiness.
I’m writing this to put this topic to the front of your mind, because I know that a focus on relationships can save lives. I want to describe my perceived underpinnings of this wound and begin the conversation on how to unravel it.
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Why We Put Relationships on the Back Burner
It might sound obvious that relationships are the key to happiness. Then why do I see founders (especially men) put their relationships on the backburner to prioritize work and wealth? Why did I do that in the first half of my business, until it became obvious I needed my support network?
I had the privilege of getting an early glimpse into wealth and saw that it’s not an indicator of happiness. Starting as a CEO at 20, I saw the underbelly of post-exit wealth through meeting 30-50 year old founders at YPO, LIT, and CEO retreats. Many of the wealthiest, most successful people were incredibly miserable. Their struggles often stemmed from neglected relationships with their spouses and children. They had sacrificed these relationships in the name of work, believing it was for the benefit of their families. But in actuality, it justified neglecting their families, which destroyed them.
And the data shows that the percentage of people with no close friends is increasing. Fifteen percent of men have zero close friendships while 10% of women report no close friends, a fivefold jump since 1990 for both genders. Social isolation increases the risk of premature death by 29%.
I’ve seen high achievers remove themselves from their friends to focus on work. We often do this because we believe that wealth will make us safe. Many entrepreneurs I know struggled with money early on in life, so wealth represents stability, safety, and freedom. Those values are noble, but ironically the treadmill to achieving wealth and success can isolate and suffocate us.
I love a good rags-to-riches story; it’s part of my family’s history. My Jewish father from Brooklyn and my Chinese mother from Taiwan have passed along the fire of ambition that’s been burning in our family for generations. It’s what helped us survive the pogroms of Russia and being exiled from communist China. It comes from an ancestral trauma of being poor and homeless. But this story often focuses on wealth as the key to happiness. When we overemphasize wealth, we pour all our energy into work as the holy grail, often forgetting the importance of relationships in leadership.
Even if we give ourselves permission to spend time with people personally, we see it as a means to an end. How many times have I heard a founder justify time with their friends and rest so they can work harder?
We have it all backwards. I’ve had it all backwards.
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My Path Back to Wholeness
I’ve traveled the rough journey of the last four years to understand that work isn’t all of me. Selling my company felt like selling my soul. I was so identified with the role of entrepreneur that I didn’t know what to do with myself afterwards. I felt tremendous guilt for selling, which I believe was a way of avoiding the sadness of letting go.
Who am I without my company? How do I add value to the world? What’s my purpose? Am I worthy?
I wrestled with myself for so long exploring these questions.
Until I slowed my wrestling down. I started to look at the questions from curiosity instead of guilt. I found a community of post-exit founders and realized how normal it is to lose yourself as an entrepreneur. I let myself wander in uncertainty, and eventually I let my new path emerge.
Leaving the fast-paced, high-stakes world of being a tech CEO to become a coach has helped me rewire my thinking. I’m well compensated for my work, but I’ve reached a point where I’m happy with the amount of money I make. Before, I was always looking for the next financing, excited about the next pay raise, eager for the company to gain liquidity so I’d have more cash in the bank. But now, I’m in alignment with my rates and the quality of my relationships with clients. It was initially weird to me that I’m not clawing for more.
But it makes sense given that my sense of safety is now linked to an inner mindset of self-acceptance. Self-acceptance gives me the ease and capacity that allows my creativity to bloom. And it connects me to the knowledge that no matter what life throws at me, I’ll figure it out.
I was talking to a new professional friend recently who told me that he saw coaching as simply a part of me. I felt truly witnessed. Even though we met in the context of my capacity to coach, he could step back and see that who I was was much bigger. It reminded me how often I need to step back and see the whole of myself. And I believe that putting energy into the people who know you as a friend, mother, daughter, and neighbor can keep you grounded. Because the reality is, you have so many different, beautiful facets of you that twinkle depending on what angle you shine the light of awareness. If you can’t hold your own richness, let others hold those different angled lights for you.
Your Path Home
Looking back at myself as a founder at 20, I wish I could shake myself awake. I often neglected friends and community because I felt I had to put work above everything. Then later when I “made it,” I thought, I could cultivate relationships. But it’s crucial for happiness and longevity to continue nurturing relationships alongside striving for success.
If you’re a hardworking, high-achieving person who believes wealth will make you happy, think again. Slowly drop the veil that success will make you happy. This takes time and applied effort: it’s one thing to talk about it and another to adopt it as a belief system. If you view work as an expression of life as opposed to a prerequisite to happiness, then you create more space in your life to be happy now. That’s where I help founders find those underlying beliefs and slowly unwind them to work instead from a healthy attitude of self-acceptance.
Put relationships first. Call up that friend you haven’t spoken to in a while. Set boundaries so you can spend concentrated, attentive time with your kids. Let people who know you outside work reflect those other parts of yourself back to you.
Cultivating personal relationships is essential for mental health and effective leadership. It’s not to say you can’t have great relationships at work, but it’s important to widen the net of who you spend time with. To heal ourselves as leaders and achieve the longevity and impact we desire, we need to prioritize relationships. These aspects of our lives don’t have to be at odds with each other.
By focusing on the importance of relationships in leadership, we can achieve true happiness and success in both our personal and professional lives.
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