Quarantine, Close Quarters, and Getting Along with your Teen

Parenting is a funny thing. We clearly have the instincts for it because chickens and sloths do it without the help of books, blogs and coaches (that we know of). And yet so many people find it to be the hardest thing they’ve ever done.

One of the reasons is that there’s no formula. The rules and tactics your parents used on you doesn’t seem to work with your own kids.

And even when you think you’ve found the secret yourself, kid #2 comes along and makes you feel like an intern all over again.

This is especially true when you’re living in close quarters with teenagers, but is something most parents grapple with nearly every step of the way.

A business leader that I coached last year summed it up well in our first session. She said “I can manage 7,000 employees and some of the most difficult customers in our industry, and yet I spent last night walking on eggshells around my 13 year old daughter. She’s basically running our household.”

But when I interviewed Lisa about how she goes about her job as a business leader, she had so much clarity and wisdom.

For example, like many seasoned business leaders, Lisa got better over time, but not because she had more technical knowledge. Experience brought her something deeper and more fundamental: she got better at overlooking things. She got more picky about what she thought about, what she focused on. Lisa lets a lot of stuff go now that she used to keep on her mind when she first started out.

The result is that her mind is more free than it used to be, even though she has more responsibility. And that creates more clarity and higher quality of thought, even in times of crisis.

And as Lisa discovered, when a business leader’s mind is more free and lucid, two things happen: they get better at picking their battles, and they have more fresh and creative energy to tackle the things they take on.

What Lisa discovered as a business leader are the very things that are missing in her parenting. As a mom, she had so much on her mind, and tried to take on everything, which kept her in a constant state of overwhelm and reaction. And created a bottleneck of tension that didn’t allow her fresh, creative thought to come through the way it did around her leadership challenges.

The bigger message here is that biologically, we’re connected to the same universal intelligence that allows all critters to raise their young. And sometimes we lose our way and need to get back to the simplicity and clarity we have in those areas of life where we’re most graceful. Like Lisa and her leadership.

Today’s video, like all of my work, will help provide a little reset for you if you’ve lost your way as a parent.

To watch today’s video, click below.