The Cost of Pursuing Excellence as a Parent AND the Gift Within It

Some of the most difficult conversations I have with athletes, coaches, and high-achieving leaders aren’t about performance. They’re about the sacrifices they make in this pursuit, especially as it relates to their families. They’re conversations about missed birthdays, missed weddings, time spent physically absent, and the guilt of missing everyday moments that can't be replaced. If you're a high-achiever pursuing your own dreams and ambitions, but struggling with the cost of this in your personal life, then this episode is an invitation for you to remind yourself of what they also gain from your pursuit.

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Transcript

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There's an internal wrestling match that I often hear from the coaches and leaders that I serve that centers on one of the biggest and I think most difficult aspects of their chosen profession. Now it actually doesn't pertain to their jobs or their careers. It's actually the cost of what they often sacrifice in order to pursue their goals and their dreams. You see, to become a great coach, a great leader, and really just about great at anything in life, there will be sacrifices. These pursuits will often take a toll on the other parts of our lives that the public or your colleagues, your teammates, they won't always get to see it. And more specifically, I think these pursuits oftentimes greatly affect our relationships with our loved ones. Now, for many coaches and leaders, the hardest part of their work isn't the work itself, it's what the work takes you away from. So today what I want to discuss on the podcast is this exact concept and what this feels like for many coaches, and just offer a perspective that hopefully might help some of you just carry it just a little bit differently. Hey coaches and leaders, I got a quick question for you. You spend a lot of time building game plans for those you lead, but when was the last time you built one for yourself? If you're looking to sharpen your leadership skills, strengthen your team culture, or find better ways to support and challenge your athletes in the mental game, I'd love to help. I'm offering a free coaching call where we can talk through your current challenges and create a simple game plan for what might move the needle most for you, your players, and your program. Most coaches I know obsess over developing their team, but they neglect the person in the mirror. This call is a chance to invest in you because a better you is going to produce a better them. And if that sounds helpful, you can grab a time at Callendly.com slash Zach Brandon. That's Callinly.com slash Zach Brandon, or just check the link in the show notes. I'd love to connect and explore how I can best support you. Now the inspiration for today's episode came up in a recent conversation that I had with two coaches, uh, both in professional baseball. They've spent over 30 years for both of them in the sport at this level, and along the way, not only have they built incredible careers, they've impacted countless, countless players. They've lived out what I think many would consider to be a dream. But when we were having our conversation at one given point, it kind of shifted towards family. And when they started to talk about theirs, the tone of the conversation felt really different. They asked me about my own, and I was sharing how I'm in this beautiful stage of uh, I call it beautiful chaos with a two-plus-year-old, a six-month-old. Uh, so as people are constantly reminding us, we are quote unquote in it, whatever in it is. And they both talked about their own experiences, how hard it's been away from their kids, both of which stating that their kids are now young adults, no longer living at home. And they both discuss how even after decades, this part of the job has never gotten easier. Over the years, I've had a lot of these conversations with different coaches, players, and I've always found many of them to be some of the most challenging in my work. In fact, I think I've found many of them incredibly heartbreaking. I've heard many players and coaches talk about missing birthdays, missing special events like weddings, having to watch their kids on FaceTime in another city or in another hotel room or recordings of their sporting events. A lot of them describing just missing just very ordinary, everyday moments that we don't get back. I've even had some talk about they've had family photos taken that they weren't in. Or even one coach that I talked to who said that their kids came home one day from school with a drawing of their family and they left them out. Not intentionally, it's just dad's not around that often. And no matter how many times I hear these, I still feel like I can feel a small dose of pain in their words. When you choose to pursue something at a very high level, you're gonna choose some trade-offs. And sometimes those trade-offs show up in the form of what you miss with those that you love the most. So here's what I'd love to offer for today. And it's not gonna be this easy practical solution because honestly, I don't have that. It won't be me telling you what's right or wrong for you. That's not my decision or opinion to make. But I will offer another perspective, an invitation to maybe look at this just a little bit differently. Because what I've noticed is that a lot of coaches and leaders carry this weight of guilt. They replay what they've missed, and sometimes we get stuck reflecting on our absence over the years. My invitation is this don't forget to also consider what your family has gained. Not just financially, which is I think where a lot of people's minds go, but what they're witnessing. They're watching someone their dad, their husband, their spouse, their wife, their mom, whoever, care deeply about something, committing to a goal, showing up consistently, working through adversity and challenges, staying with something for a long time, even when they're not always sure it's gonna pay off. They're seeing what it looks like to pursue something meaningful, even when it's hard. And I can't tell you how inspiring it's been just for me over the years to be with, to learn from, and support coaches and leaders who have poured their life's work into positively shaping the minds, the hearts, the careers, and the lives of so many others. This is very far from insignificant. Because whether we realize it or not, we're always modeling something, even in our absence. And for some kids, one of the greatest gifts they will receive from you as a parent is not just having a parent who may have always been there, but it's also having a parent show them what it looks like to go after something that matters to you, to go after a dream. And again, this isn't about me trying to pretend that the trade-offs don't exist. They certainly do. And it's not about using this as a way to avoid hard decisions, especially if something you feel like actually needs the change in your career or in your life. But it is about holding up a more complete picture. So if this is something that you wrestle with, maybe a few questions to consider. What am I modeling to the way I pursue my work? If my kids were to tell the story of me one day, what would they say they've learned from watching me? Have I helped them understand the why behind what I do? Because often it's not gonna just be the absence that shapes someone's experience, it's gonna be the meaning that we attach to it. There's no version of pursuing something meaningful that's gonna be free of tension, of trade-offs, of costs. But that tension doesn't always mean that you're doing something wrong. Sometimes it just means you care. So if you felt that internal pull, that wrestling match, I would just invite you to consider and remind yourself that you're not alone. And maybe today is a reminder to zoom out and hold up both sides of the equation and carry it with a little more understanding of what's being given and not just what's being missed.