Who Gets the Best of You?

When was the last time your child or your spouse had your full attention? Not your body in the room while your mind rehashes work issues. Not your eyes occasionally looking up from a screen to make sure that scream didn't equate to blood on the floor. I mean your actual, complete, undivided presence. The kind where nothing else exists in that moment other than the person right in front of you?

Did that make you feel something reading that? If it did keep reading, this is going to be a fun one.

For the past 8+ years, I've had the privilege of working under and for one of the smartest people I've ever met in my life. In 2017, Michael DeVenney completed the Mindset Project- a study that analyzed the impacts of entrepreneurship on mental health. Fascinating study I hope you'll read when you have the time.

What really stood out to me was one statistic: Nearly 74% of entrepreneurs report heightened or sometimes extreme relationship/ marriage issues.

Working with people who are higher up in the business world has resulted in a myriad of conversations (that I never expected to have) that have helped to aid my understanding. These high performing people seem to have it all figured out in the business world, or are actively working through it. But sometimes I catch hints of sadness in them, or a remark about their family that makes me pay closer attention. Sometimes I hear stories about other high performers who have extremely fragile home-lives. The more I think about it, the more I realize that this is perhaps one of the biggest issues I hear about. Hell, I've been there myself.

This blog isn't going to be another useless piece about time management or priorities- you've read enough of them. But what I DO want to focus on today is YOU, your time, your energy, and most importantly, your BANDWIDTH.

Entrepreneurial Drive VS Presence

What most people don't know or understand fully is that 2 different modes of being, modes of perceiving are needed to effectively 'balance' work and family life- especially when you're an entrepreneur.

The entrepreneurial brain runs on a chronic low-grade activation of the default mode network combined with sustained sympathetic tone. Remember my article about the senses? This is the 'normal' mode most of us stay in where we exist in a sort of hypnagogic-sleep-walking-state. Said like a normal person, this means that even when surrounded by friends, family, and sometimes even hobbies, the entrepreneur's mind is almost always partially somewhere else. Seated in front of the computer, their mind is busy solving, planning, anticipating outcomes, attempting to detect small problems before they turn into big ones.

For many, and despite how hard they may try, this seemingly unavoidable state of mind isn't a choice or a character flaw. It's the result of owning and operating a business that leads to a re-training of  the nervous system in order to maintain business as usual.

As business owners, your lively hood depends on your ability to think clearly, anticipate, and make moves. Your thinking is perhaps your greatest ally- until you get home.

Now, you walk in the door, kids rushing (hopefully) to greet you well before you've even taken your shoes off. Now that you're home, your little ones or your beloved wants, needs, or demands your attention. The problem is, you can't shut work off. Your kid is playing on the floor, and you're mulling over expense reports. Your oldest is playing a junior league hockey game, but you're answering emails from the stands. Your spouse has been feeling lonely, unseen, maybe even neglected, and you don't even notice it, because you're trying to figure out how to keep the business running and growing.

It's as if we drop our bodies off in the room where our families are, and then poof away into Imagination Land.

The thing we need to fully understand is the fact that true, genuine presence requires the opposite neurological state than what's needed to run a business. To be present, you need a deactivation of the problem-solving mind, and an activation of a relaxed, open-monitoring aspect of your parasympathetic nervous system. Nerd words, I love em.

Said another way, you can't be genuinely present with your loved one when your mind and subsequent nervous system's still running the business in the background. It's like trying to run 2 simultaneous full-screen programs on the same computer monitor at the same time. You can only see one, and running both just bogs down your CPU.

• So you get home, sit down to eat with your family, and for some reason, your family thinks you're absent. "Papa?" you hear at some point, only to look up, eyes locked on you as you realize you missed an entire conversation.

• You're driving down the road with your little one's in the backseat as they excitedly banter on about Lego, farts what snack they want- and you're thinking about the next pilot project or AI system to implement next week.

• You go on a 2-week tropical vacation with your family, and instead of soaking up the entire experience through all of your senses, your mind is back home in the office. Your body quietly burns from a lack of shade and sunscreen while your mind burns from overuse.

• The spouse feels neglect, and you can't understand why. Surely you were home every night! Maybe even you made love twice this week. But was that enough?

• Your kids turn resentful and angry. The spoiled brats! Can't they see how hard you've worked to provide a nice house, clothes, toys!

No, they see it, but that's not what they need from you. What they really needed from you was the ENTIRETY of you.

Here's what few people have the guts to tell you. Kids don't experience your absence as a scheduling issue. They experience it as a question about their own worth. When a parent is physically present but mentally elsewhere, a child's nervous system registers that as rejection. "I'm not worthy of their attention, something must be wrong with me." This may not be something they register consciously, but their body will certainly feel it. They learn, slowly and without words, that they are less interesting than whatever has your attention. That shapes who they become.

• The daughter who clings to men who don't value her worth because her father never saw her. She learns to compensate for this lack by building up habits that may or may not be healthy.

• The son who never felt seen turns to drugs or extreme-risk taking in order to force you to pay attention to them when things spiral out of control.

• The lover who falls for another because that person actually looked them in the eye, made them feel seen, affirmed to them how beautiful they were while your eyes scoured excel spreadsheets.

  
  

Who Do You Want to Be to Them?

It should be worth noting that not every father or mother is truly dedicated to spending time with the people they call family. It's not my call to make whether that's good or bad. But what I can say, is that if you're an entrepreneur and you do have a family, or people who rely on you for more than material comfort, you're going to need to show up for them daily.

• You're going to need to invest time, energy, and most importantly attention in them for them to feel seen, heard, supported and loved.

• You're going to need to get home from work, down-regulate your system, turn off that work-mind, and activate your senses, those open-monitoring systems so you can be in-tune with their needs and desires.

• You're going to need to be committed to growing your relationships just as much as you are growing your business. Period.

This is why I stress the importance of knowing how to stop the world (your mind), drop into your body, release your tensions, and create a felt-sense of peace, safety and comfort in your own body. If you can't do this, you're going to be locked in your head, running thought-loops on auto play; all while your kids grow right before the eyes that never took them in.

If you remember nothing else from this article, please let it be this: Your kids, your spouse, they need more from you than your income. They need your attention- which in 2026 is the worlds most precious commodity.

The question isn't whether you have enough time. It's whether the people you love feel like they have enough of you.