004: Raising a Family Doesn’t Mean Sacrificing Your Dreams

49 minutes
When we're raising a family, it can feel like we have no other choice but to put our dreams on the shelf. Ben and Rachel share from their personal experience about the discouragement and frustration they faced, and the mindset shift that helped them realize that not only can you pursue your dream while raising a family, but your family needs you to pursue your dream.

Through managing expectations, focusing on the long term, working in the season you're in, and finding fulfillment in the daily work, you can enjoy the satisfaction of pursuing your dream without sacrificing your family relationships.

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When we’re raising a family, it can feel like we have no other choice but to put our dreams on the shelf. Ben and Rachel share from their personal experience about the discouragement and frustration they faced, and the mindset shift that helped them realize that not only can you pursue your dream while raising a family, but your family needs you to pursue your dream.

Through managing expectations, focusing on the long term, working in the season you’re in, and finding fulfillment in the daily work, you can enjoy the satisfaction of pursuing your dream without sacrificing your family relationships.

Show Notes:

05:21 Ben: I hope that many of us can agree with the idea that we can raise a family without sacrificing our dreams at face value, but I remember a time in my life when I had a very hard time believing that. Rachel, it’s been even more of a struggle for you. There was a time when we were in a band together, and the other guys and I all quit our jobs to pursue the music, but you had to keep working. Can you share a little about that experience?
06:12 Rachel: I was a managing editor for a newspaper and, even though I always knew I wanted to write fiction, it wasn’t really possible at the time. My time was really short. I felt like I was withering because when you’re not pursuing your dream in any of the moments that you can, you’re a smaller version of who you were meant to be. I stayed in the job for nine years and we continued adding children and it became less likely that I would quit the job. I finally reached a point when we had the twins where I decided that I could be a better mother if I would make the time to write. That’s when I started writing my first book and we started focusing on our family values. I just felt like I could be a better mother if I was pursuing something that I love.

Avoid the “All or Nothing” Approach to Pursuing Your Dreams

08:05 Ben: I heard you say “pursuing it when you could” and I really like that versus pursuing it “whatever it takes.” I wonder if we as parents make it too black and white. A lot of what we hear about pursuing your dreams says to sacrifice everything, to go all out. It’s possible to find a responsible approach and sacrifice the things that don’t matter so I can make pursuing my dreams possible while still giving the things that do matter the time they need.
09:10 Rachel: What are some of the things that don’t matter?
09:18 Ben: It’s different for every person. For me, one of the things that doesn’t matter is binge-watching tv episodes on Netflix. I think it’s okay to watch a show every once in a while, but even then I have to come to terms with the fact that I could probably be doing something better with that time than watching a tv show. I want to focus more on the things that do matter. Spending time with your family matters. Spending time making a living so you can support your family matters.

Be okay with working in short bursts.

Short bursts add up over time.

10:15 Rachel: I had my day job working 40 hours per week and we also protect our family time very religiously and my personal writing fell into the margins. I had to come to terms with that because I am a mom and I work and I’m not going to “write a book in 90 days.” During the year we did our family values, I was writing an essay every day. I was rarely able to sit down and write more than 500 words at a time, but at the end of the year I ended up having written 300,000 words.

The Dream Makes You Whole

12:03 Ben: Rachel, when you felt like you were withering, even if we couldn’t see that, the family felt it. There are many different pieces that make up a whole “you.” Your dream is a piece of who you are. When any of those pieces are missing, your not able to give as whole a version of yourself to any other area of your life. It reminds me of plastic fruit. Sometimes it can look and even feel like real fruit, but if you were to take a bite, you’d find that it’s hollow inside. The deficit that you feel spills over into your family’s experience of you.
13:55 Rachel: It also spills over into your day job. When you’re not pursuing your dream, you’re more likely to feel bitter when you have to go into a job that you don’t love.
14:18 Ben: The bitterness can also find its way to your family relationships. There were times, Rachel, when things got pretty tense at home because you weren’t able to pursue what you loved. Even now, if there’s even a hint of a possibility that the time you’ve set aside for pursuing your dream is in any danger, it brings back that tension. I understand why you want to protect that so fiercely, because you don’t want that bitterness to grow. I’d like for us to focus on the idea that your family wants you to pursue your dreams. They also want to be a part of that journey with you.

You Are a Tangible Example For Your Children

15:39 Rachel: That’s great for kids because when they see their parents doing that, they believe that it’s possible for themselves. We grew up in a time when our parents didn’t feel as free to pursue their dreams, so we are working to overcome that hesitancy, but in doing so we are setting a new precedent for our children.
16:24 Ben: You can tell your kids all day long to pursue their dreams, but you’ve also got to demonstrate it if you want to see them do the same thing. When the boys walk into our room at night, they see when I’m laying in bed watching a tv show and they see when we’ve got the whiteboards out, brainstorming ideas. Think about how powerful those examples can be.
17:33 Rachel: I want to acknowledge that for some people their day job is their dream.
18:03 Ben: Yes, you can’t just define that for everyone. Regardless of what it looks like, how we talk about it is important. It may very well have been one of my dad’s dreams to be a teacher, it probably was, but he didn’t talk about it in those terms so I never made that connection.

Don’t Compare Your Output to Others’

18:53 It’s easy to feel like we are falling short in pursuing our dreams when we put what we’re producing up against what we see others producing. When you are raising a family, the pursuit of your dream and the work you’re able to produce is completely different. When you don’t have children, life can be relatively simple. Children add complexity. I could look at the results my friend is experiencing who doesn’t have children, and if I’m not realistic about my own circumstances, I can feel very discouraged. Life happens in seasons, and when you have children, the seasons of your life are more pronounced. You have to give yourself permission for the pursuit of your dream to look differently depending on the season of life you’re in.
21:42 Rachel: When you have a newborn, it’s difficult to be as present. Dream sessions may feel disjointed. Although, I’ve heard lack of sleep is like being drunk and sometimes your most creative ideas can come from when you’re intoxicated.
22:08 Ben: We had a new baby a few months ago and it’s been pretty intense. It’s more difficult in a lot of ways and easier in some ways. Because of the energy drain of having a new child, you may need to scale back to the bare minimum of what it means to pursue your dream.
22:54 Rachel: Or, you keep creating. You might be making what you think is bad work, but there’s value in doing the work, even if the quality is suffering temporarily because of your circumstances.

Pursue Your Dream In Seasons

23:13 Ben: I like to think of it like gardening. There is a season to plant, a season for you to tend the plants and help them grow, a season for harvesting, and a season for tilling the ground and getting it ready to plant again. The tilling season isn’t very exciting, but it’s a necessary season in order to get to the other ones.
24:25 Rachel: It’s hard to approach chasing dreams that way because you’re so passionate about it that you want to see it happen sooner. We were writing down all of my ideas for what I want to work on last night on the whiteboard and I want to do all of those things now.
24:50 Ben: I wrote a time line on the whiteboard and there were tick marks in ten year increments. Looking at that may feel discouraging, but if you think about it, ten years ago probably doesn’t seem that long ago. Even if you just do a little bit of work and show up every day, think about where you could be ten years from now. When we focus on the long term, we’re capable of accomplishing more. When we focus on the short term and we don’t see results right away we can feel discouraged and it can have a negative effect on our work.

It’s Going to Take Some Time

29:22 It’s so important to think long term and not be about short term gains. When that’s where your mindset is, instead of trying to find your fulfillment from the goal, you find your fulfillment in the work that it takes to reach that goal. Over time your goal may change and evolve. If you are growing and changing as a person, your dream is going to change. The purpose of the dream is to motivate you and propel you toward the work which is where you can find the greatest fulfillment.
30:47 Rachel: Sometimes on the journey to reaching your goal, you take a road that feels like a tangent but ends up being a significant part of your dream. If you’re so focused on what the end goal is supposed to look like, you may end up missing out on an opportunity.

The family and the dream are not opposed to one another.

The dream enriches the family and the family enriches the dream.

31:43 Ben: This is why the focus on the daily stuff is so important. You can get so focused on the idea of what you want to accomplish that you can make yourself miserable doing the daily stuff to get there. One of the pitfalls I experienced as a young person was centering my dreams around celebrity and notoriety. When I looked at people experiencing the kind of success I wanted to see, I thought it was because they had gotten their “big break.” So instead of focusing on the work, my focus and attention was on “where is my big break going to come from?” I learned this from culture growing up. I want to demonstrate something better for my kids. What if you like the idea of celebrity but you hate the work that it takes to get there. The work isn’t going to change once you get there. I want to demonstrate for my kids the value of loving the work. There’s nothing wrong with celebrity, but you’ve got to love the work more.

Open Communication Is Step One

35:02 I want to revisit this topic again and talk about some practical things we can do to make the time to pursue our dreams depending on the stage of life we’re in. Rachel, what’s one practical thing we can share as a good first step?
35:55 Rachel: We shouldn’t be afraid to talk to our kids about our dreams. That communication is powerful. Inviting your kids into the dream and letting them know they play a role is very valuable. We can even collaborate with our children on their dreams. We shouldn’t shy away from talking about our dreams with our kids. It’s now become such a part of who we are that we’re having these conversations all the time.
38:00 Ben: That’s a really good practical first step. Talk about what your dream is with the people who are in the boat with you. They want to be a part of what you’re doing. It may even be something that gives you greater accountability. When there’s open communication about the dream you’re pursuing, it gives your family an opportunity to give you the support you’ll need to reach it.

Don’t Let Guilt Get In the Way

38:59 Rachel: I wanted to bring in this final word about guilt. Moms deal with a lot of guilt when it comes to doing things outside of taking care of our children. Something that has really helped me is realizing that I can be a better mother when I’m giving myself the time to do things I feel passionately about. You may not be able to completely rid yourself of guilt, but you can allow yourself to experience grace.