Being present sounds easy, but for entrepreneurs whose brains never stop spinning business plates, it can feel downright impossible, especially when family and holiday expectations crash in.

In this episode, Melody and Curt talks about what it really takes to show up for your people, why “just turn your phone off” is terrible advice, and how guilt, workaholism, and that familiar business-owner urgency sabotage our best intentions.

What We Talk About:

1. Curt’s history of literally working through family outings and the moment he realized “being there” doesn’t mean being present
2. Why Melody felt mom guilt even when she was always aware of ignoring her family—and how it’s different for men and women entrepreneurs
3. The story of Curt being “white hot mad” on Christmas Eve and his sister’s reality check about presence and perspective
4. When providing for your family becomes the excuse for not enjoying them (and why that mindset is so seductive)
5. “Holding things lightly”—the Buddhist therapist hack that changed Curt’s approach to frustration, stress, and ultimately, family time
6. Melody’s transition from workaholic identity to re-learning how to savor moments with her kids, nephew, and actually herself
7. Meditating, being silent (even if only for a tenth of a second), and why decompressing is a skill—not an automatic reward for burning out
8. The only short-term hack that works: If all else fails, just make “being delightful” your job at the family party (it’s weirdly effective)

Key Takeaways:

1. Most family “resentment moments” aren’t about the actual holiday mishap—they’re business stress finding a scapegoat.
2. Presence is uncomfortable because silence and unstructured time can feel scarier than replying to emails.
3. Treating holidays like time you “give your family out of generosity” is an ego trap; true presence is a gift to yourself.
4. You won’t change overnight—getting present takes experimentation, therapy, self-mockery, and sometimes just faking it for a couple hours at a time.

Timestamps:

0:00 – Why being present feels impossible (especially during holidays)

4:05 – Curt’s all-time low point for family presence

15:00 – The “hold it lightly” therapy metaphor

18:46 – Melody’s three things that finally shifted her presence

25:55 – When your brain craves work stress more than silence

34:16 – Real secrets (and cheats) for putting down the phone and actually being there

Unlike exercising a muscle, just sitting with your mind and being aware of where it's going all on its own, when you let your mind run, that is a very powerful thing to know. Like, my mind always wants to go here or there, or my mind always goes in these weird circular loops. I wonder what it is that's feeding one thing to the other. And. And I think all of those things have helped me so that when I am with family, I can control myself more. And not like, control it like Thor and his hammer, but, like, maybe more like the way Mary Poppins can control a room when she walks in. Welcome to the Sole Proprietor podcast. I'm Curt Kempton.

And I'm Melody Edwards.

Each week we dive into the ethical questions that keep entrepreneurs awake at night.

Whether you're building your own company or exploring life's big questions, you are welcome here. So, Curt, you are not into this topic 100% and I am. And I'm still making us do it. Because now that you're not into it, I'm like, I wonder if I can get him there.

Yeah, I think it'd be interesting. Just to be clear, in case someone's wondering, I'm not ba. Humbugging. Humbugging anything. I love the Christmas holiday. It's probably my favorite holiday. If I was just, like, going to, like, quantitative about it here. But yeah, the topic that we are bringing up today is one that I'm kind of like, I hope I have enough to say about it.

Like, I don't feel like there's a lot to nail down here.

There is, because we are so out of it that we can't even relate to the topic anymore, which is being present with your family and friends. And just like, it's really about enjoyment of the holiday. When you are somebody who tends to work really hard and be an entrepreneur who's always 24 7, your brain is thinking about business. How did we make the transition to where we can be present with our families? Because first of all, Curt, have you always been present during holidays or family time? Has that been something that you just always have been? You've made the time and it's not been a problem?

I would say that I am exactly the opposite. There was a time when I was the least present, just to kind of give you a little background. I used to be a scout leader. There was so many times I went on a scout outing, came back from the outing, don't remember talking to the kids at all the whole time. Completely preoccupied. Holidays, very, very common. There were so many Times when I would be on my. I would literally bring my computer, hot spot it while my wife would drive us to the event.

I don't remember the drive. I would get there and be like, holy cow, we're here. Dang it. I still had a lot to do. I would get out, be thinking the whole time I was in that family get together about what I need to get back out to the computer and do go do it camping with family. Like, I did camp outs with the family, had my computer in the tent, spent time getting stuff done in the tent legitimately. And my wife just sort of accommodated all that. And to this day, if I said, right now, you gotta drive, babe, you know, she would drive and I would work on my computer.

She's just totally cool with it. And I know, looking back that there was lots of times we'd be at like kids school concert or something. And I know that I was the one making the concession to hurry and be there. And like, they were graced to have me in the audience, but I paid no attention. So I have had enablers all around me. Everyone understood, and I just had to provide for the fam. Like, that was just what I do.

This is why the conversation is going to be interesting, because what you said, my family's just accommodating. They know I'm trying to make it work for the family. And I have not the opposite exactly experience. I have always struggled with being present. Probably until five years ago when I really started making the effort to try to be more present, to really make that effort, because my family is highly sensitive to it. And right before we started this conversation, it hit me that you are the man of the house. And there's a different expectation potentially for the man of the house versus the mother and the wife.

And I will say also to add to that, in those times when I was the worst, my wife has since gone to school, graduated and become a nurse, since all the kids have gone to school and she wanted to do something. But at the time that I'm referring to, I was the sole provider for the family as well. So the Mana House, sole provider, protector, all that. So I think you're onto something there. There's a dynamic.

And also your wife is. She's a nurse. Right. That she still has motherly expectations. Right. Like kids expect certain things from a moment. And in some way. I'm not gonna speak for Rachel's.

No, no, I think you're right. And in fact, the whole time you were talking, I kept thinking about when you were Saying my family's very sensitive to it, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, oh, yeah, she's also got mom guilt. I didn't even think about that.

Oh, yeah, there's major mom guilt. I look back when I had my home service companies, especially my Christmas light business. Of all the businesses, it's all about providing what I say, joy and cheer across the land of Massachusetts and beyond. And then also being completely exhausted by the time Christmas comes, I am wiped. That's how my life was like with that company. Plus home service VA on top of it. My family wasn't getting the best of me. And I think oftentimes our families don't get the best of us.

And the one time that they probably do expect to get the best of us, I imagine, would be the holidays.

Let me ask you a quick question, because I think this is going to be really insightful for us moving forward. At the time that they weren't getting the best of you, were you preoccupied and or fully aware of the fact that they weren't getting the best of you?

I'm always fully aware of people's feelings around me. And I still make choices sometimes to do the work that I feel needs to be done because, you know, just because I'm aware of it, like, you might have that same dynamic, let's pretend. And you might just not be aware. That's 100.

What I was going to get at is, like, the whole time I was doing it, I was doing it for them. Like, they should be grateful for me doing all this. Like, so I think we kind of have found, like, item number one of discussion point. Because I didn't feel obligated to be fully present because they were just glad that I had the kind of job that would allow me to work from home or do my own hours, as long as that meant that some of those hours are while we're driving or some of those hours we're driving somewhere. Everyone in the car has to be completely silent while I'm on a call. They can't even talk to each other or play the radio because Dad's working. And in my mind, like, obviously, you guys are lucky to have you here.

How do you feel about that now?

You're the ones that begged me to come. I would have been working on my computer and not even bothered stepping out of the car. How do I feel about it now? You know what, Melody? If I could go back and talk to myself, I think I would give myself a different pep talk. But I don't exactly know how I could have done it a lot different in those eras, and I would need to sit with that for a little bit because I'm probably wrong, but I don't look back with regret on those times so much as I go, golly, that was a sucky time.

I would love to be like, Melody, you could just go back to your high school you and just say some words to you. That would change every. Like, no, we have to learn those lessons. We have to live right. We can't just know wisdom. Everybody tells us wisdom when we're younger. We don't listen to it, even if it was from our own mouth. You know, this is interesting because yesterday, my husband is a big football fan of the Patriots, who.

And this is football season, except it's not, because it's Christmas Eve. So he goes to a bar, which, number one, I am not a bar person. And he goes to, like, a local neighborhood type bar, and then he meets all his friends there, and then they just talk crap to each other the whole time and give each other a hard time and kind of watch football and then yell and scream. It's not exactly my scene most of the time. And so I have been putting off. And it isn't like he's always done this, but this year he asked me a couple times because these are friends that I enjoy hanging out with, too. But it's like putting all of those things together feels. It just feels energy draining to me.

And so a couple weeks, you know, he's been asking me, and I was like, no, I have to go. So yesterday Sunday, I went, and it was really fun, but it was also, like, at a certain point, I was like, okay, I have to go home now. I'm so tired. And I felt almost like I was. I did feel that sense of, like, he's lucky that I have said I would come and hang out with my husband, who is my partner, who is, you know. You know, and it's not that I thought that, but when I'm looking back, it's like, wow, it's the mindset. It was so good of me to go and do this thing that made me slightly uncomfortable instead of working all weekend. Right.

Maybe the right word.

And I think it works for you. I think it would work for me, too. Is I'm being a giver here.

I'm such a giver. Yeah. Yeah.

Like, I know. I'm hyping it up a little bit. Like, you're so lucky to be around me. That's not probably quite accurate.

Audience listeners, we are Making fun of ourselves. Yes.

I remember one Christmas Eve, I was so stressed out, and my mom, it was so important to her that all of her sisters. So this would be my kids, grandmother's sisters, but they're all gonna have dinner at her house. It was a potluck. My wife had been spending the whole day baking all sorts of stuff. I'd had the day off, but I was stressed out about something I was getting done. And I remember being so angry at my kids in the backyard. They had destroyed something in the backyard. I went out and discovered it, and right as we were getting ready to leave the house, their clothes weren't nice.

They weren't all dressed up. They'd been all rooting around in the backyard. They destroyed something that was important. I remember being like, white hot mad. And it probably in that evening would have been better for everyone else if I hadn't gone. But I remember going. And my sister, immediately when I walked in the door, could see like, something was super wrong. And I know I'm tying this to the kids, but I wasn't mad at the kids.

I was mad at what the kids had done. But I know for sure that I was not white hot mad about what they did. I was white hot mad about something from whatever the entrepreneur pressure was a hundred percent.

I'm relating to everything you say. I've done this a million times, so, yeah, I've lived it.

I should not even say this publicly, but she takes me out. She's like, what is wrong with you? And I said, I hate my kids. I hate them. And she's like, whoa. She's like, welcome to momhood. And I'm like, no, you don't even know what I'm feeling. And she's like, actually watch yourself right now. Like, that's what it's like to be a mom.

And I remember just being like, don't you dare try to pretend like you've ever been as mad as I am right now. You know, like, I was just so angry. So she said, look, your mom has put together an evening. Do you love your mom? Of course I love my mom. Okay, cool. This is a time for mom to show her whole posterity off to her sisters. It's Christmas Eve. You are totally allowed to hate your kids after the holiday.

If you need to hate your kids after the holiday, cool. But tonight, you're delightful and you love them. Do you understand?

I remember my sister right there.

Yeah, I did fake it for the rest of the night, and I'm so glad she did, because you know, I was able to put something behind me. They were so lucky to have me there. Right. But truly, like, I needed that.

Oh, yeah. Like, if you hadn't had that experience with the business thing, maybe the kids ruining the thing might have been a laugh it off moment.

It could have been. It really could have been.

Right.

Because I literally can't remember what it was. I remember how intense I felt, but, like, I want to say, it was a picnic table in the backyard. Like something made out of two by fours or something. Like something I could have probably spent $8 at Home Depot and stained it and put it on.

But it wasn't about that. It was about your stress.

It definitely wasn't. Yeah.

If we don't train our brains to unwrap ourselves from those feelings, from the business being so much a part of our soul, it is going to eat us alive. When things aren't good, it's going to stress us out when things are stressful, when things are good, we're still thinking about the future, things we haven't done. We're not even like, wow, things are so great right now. Most of the time. We're always looking forward and we're not even enjoying the present moment of like, business is going great and I am enjoying this. Right. And so the one time of year I feel like when we should give ourselves and it's not even for our families, it's a gift to us. And I just kind of think of it as a hack of tricking myself into doing the thing I want anyway, which is to just have a break, not think about business and able to blame my family by saying this is for them, but really it's for me.

The reason I wanted to talk about this is because so many business owners and entrepreneurs struggle with releasing themselves and giving themselves the space to just be present with their family or to actually enjoy a holiday. It's not even just about the family. It's about enjoyment. And that's like the real part of life. Business is just a hobby of life. I feel like it's the thing that makes us money. But life is about getting to laugh with your kids and watching them open the presents and having a meal with them and spending time with your spouse. And we miss so many of those moments and we call it like, well, we had to because of work.

Don't they know how hard I'm working for them? So I kind of wanted to talk about, for people who struggle with this, how did we unwrap ourselves? Because. Because it's not easy we might not even remember. But I feel like if we talk it through a tiny bit, maybe we can remember what had to change in our brain, what we were learning that made us start to change. Because this was not a quick shift. And it's still something that I have to be very mindful of, think about it, make decisions about it.

I'm thinking back right now, and it is one of those things where you add a few things to the bowl, you mix it up, and you put it the oven at a specific degrees, and it works. So I originally, when I thought this was not a big topic, I was just gonna say I got beat down in attrition. Like, I just couldn't live like that anymore. Like, there was a time where I was just like, Curt, if you don't check out, there's a saying, a bow that is strung too tight will soon lose its spring. You ever heard that before?

No, but Matt is an archer, and he's gonna love it.

Okay, so I was always sprung tight, and I was definitely starting to lose my spring, and I just couldn't do it anymore. So if I was to answer that question, like, the way I thought I was going into this meeting just. It got to the point where Rachel be like, okay, so what's going on today? And I'm like, I can't do it. I'm sorry. I can't tell you everything. I'm done talking about today. Today, everything that happened, I lived at once. I'm not going to live it again.

And that sort of became a theme in the house. And Rachel's like, but I do want to know what's going on in your life. And I'm like, well, I lived it once, so you can either sit by my side and live it with me, or you can just live in the dark. But I'm not doing it again. And it started out kind of funny, and then it was like, Curt, you really gotta be able to talk at some point. I said, well, you can't catch me at the end of the day. I'm happy to talk to you. Kind of at the beginning of the day when I'm sort of getting into my planning of the day or whatever.

But anyway, that's what I thought I was gonna say. I have some new things that, as you've been talking, have come to my mind of really important. So maybe I'll share one little thing, and then maybe we'll go sort of with one of your little things, because I know you are filled with hacks. So the one that I Didn't think of before I came in here was therapy.

Yeah.

And I explained how it's just I get so upset with stuff and I hang onto it. Now this is more like just Curt stuff, not entrepreneur stuff. One of those things is that the world should be utopian and everybody who does not do utopian stuff is the one responsible for our non utopian earth. It's them that's the problem. And so what happens is someone will do something like cut in line or a kid will damage a table, right? And what happens is I fixate and I hold it tightly in my hands. The third therapist, but the first one I ever really worked with that I ever had was a Buddhist monk. And he taught me the principle of holding things lightly. And I was like, hold things lightly? What does that mean? He's like, well, when you hang on to something that someone cut in line and you are sitting there stewing about it, how's that working out for you? It's not working good.

So he said, put your hands in front of you and squeeze your hands as tight as you can. Okay. You hold on to something. So you got your hands, you're holding onto that thing. You're tenacious. What else can you hold right now? Well, nothing, obviously. Nothing, right? And all that tension in your arms, all that tension in your shoulders, is that going to lead to good things or bad? That's probably bad things, sure. So, and then as you're fixating on that thing, what else can you see? Like when you're holding your hands tightly and you're looking at your hands and what else around you can you notice? Not really all that much stuff.

Okay, now I want you to just hold your hands like you're holding the bottom of a bowl. Just hold them out like this. And then something lands in your hand that you like. What if you have to hold it, you're just barely, barely curling your fingers around it, but your eyes are free to look at what you're holding, they're free to look around. The looseness in your body allows you to sort of move more agilely. You feel better. And that principle of, like, my hands are open, ready to receive, as opposed to constantly not being able to receive and being under lots of tension. When he told me that, I told my wife the principle of holding things lightly.

And to this day she'll like, look at me like, are you holding something tightly right now? Like, I'll be like driving in the car and maybe someone cuts in front of us or something. I'm like, oh, man. And she's like, oh, oh, are you holding it lightly? You know, and. And honestly, Melody, that really, it was a good exercise for me. And that was probably one of the first things that ever cascaded to help me to realize, okay, I always heard the saying drinking poison and hoping it kills the other person kind of thing when you're mad at someone. But I don't know why that helped me more than to think of it as holding things tightly.

It's so hands on, like, literally. I think it's a beautiful analogy and I can understand exactly why that probably it was the right moment for you to hear it too, because as we know in life, sometimes you hear things. It's not the right moment. You can't take it in. You were ready to take it in.

I love it and I think it's super helpful. The one I share later on, I think will be kind of like branching off of that. But I'm curious, Melanie, for you. What about you?

So mine is there's three things that come to mind that I'll be brief on. But the first time I sold a business, I had been a workaholic completely. I was a single mom when I owned that business, everything was wrapped around my identity as person who owns business. And I've said this before, the minute I sold the business, my identity shifted. And it was really, really tough. And from that journey of getting myself back, it was a really tough journey that I don't think everybody's going to be able to go on. Right. But what I learned is, oh, I am not my business and I don't have to be my business.

So that was like, phase one. That's the recovering workaholic in my head kind of thing that I tell myself. But then the second thing was, during the time that I owned that first business, my daughter was growing up and I missed a lot of things that I experienced with my son Max. It's not that I wasn't there, but I wasn't present. And we were growing up together. It was a different time. Like, I was 30 when I had my son. I was 20 when I had her.

Totally different situation, but it just was such a reminder to me of, like, when I had my son, like, I don't want to miss all that stuff. And now with my nephew, like I was telling you before, literally spending 20 plus hours a week with this kid and making the time and space for him because it's important to me, because I love him so much and I want to. Those cheeks. Oh, my gosh. Anyway, it Was so cute to see you come alive. I love it. Yeah, but that was another thing that it was kind of like, not in one period of time, but it's over time. And then the third thing that's really important, I can easily become a workaholic at any moment.

I can get so ingrained in the work. And this is a side point. I think you and I have both learned that sometimes the work doesn't even matter. I would say, like, 80% of the time, whatever I'm working on is never as important as I think it is.

Yeah, I would agree to that, actually.

Yeah, I'm probably certain. It's probably more like 90%. If I have to, like, end a day and not finish the work versus finishing it, I don't think my life is going to change most of the time. The next day, it just is. Like, my brain has attached myself to. Like, this is so important, and your brain is in it and you must finish it. Doesn't mean I have to. Right.

But the third thing that's the most important hack that I have is I literally started a company that teaches people how to take time back and how to make more time for what, quote, unquote, freedom. So it's like, that is a hack that I think about a lot is if I am trying to teach other people how to. Actually, it's not even getting the time. I give them the. You know, I don't give them time, but they get time back. But this is the part that's the hard part is, like, figuring out how to actually live your life, not just live your life in business. How to give yourself to your family, how to go on vacation. I was just talking to a new client who's a friend, and she had worked her whole life for a beach house.

Like, not her whole whole life, but, like, her grownup life. And her kid would be like, you know, mom, why aren't you coming to this thing? And she said, because the beach house. Well, she got the beach house. And she said she was sitting on the porch watching the waves. She had never planned beyond the beach house. I also had that experience of, like, I've met all my goals that I had when I was younger. I never really dreamed beyond that. And so not everybody wants to have the time necessarily, because time can feel uncomfortable because it's like you're not thinking, you're not doing.

If you're somebody who doesn't want to think too deeply, being busy is a good way to solve that problem.

That actually is so true.

Right. Like, Most of us don't want to think deep. Like I've said before, if I'm not doing something, I'm thinking, like, what is the reason that we exist in the world? And I'm kind of joking about it because it's not always like that, but I go deep. And so I think it's easy to be all or nothing as a business person. And I've had to learn to look at the past, see what I don't want to do, what I don't want to repeat. Also understand, nothing breaks. Like, I can't think of a time when something broke because I didn't finish something at the time. And especially during the holidays, literally nobody else is working, but we're not used to it.

If we're workaholics, we're not used to that time and that freedom, that space. So maybe somebody can make it their job on the holiday. That's the work, you know, that they get to be a workaholic for spending time with their family.

That's funny. There was a time that that was my coping mechanism was I was like, this is my job right now. Just be involved. Like, don't check out, don't check your email. Your job right now is to make sure that this kid is so proud of the fact that he can bunny hop his new bicycle. That's your job right now. Put your phone back in your pocket. Do your job.

I still do that sometimes. I still have to do that sometimes because it's just. It's hard, guys. It's really hard. But it's possible. And think about the times when we were younger, when our parents were present for us. Like, what did that feel like? It felt amaz. It's all we wanted.

When your spouse is like, all about you, that feels amazing. When you have that real connection when we take the time for it.

Yeah, that's actually super insightful.

So what do you think now?

I'm really embarrassed to tell you what my next one is.

Please, no. Do I?

No, it's.

No, you have to.

You literally just made fun of mine. No, you didn't make fun of it, but you just. In joking way, honestly. The truth is, is that as I hold things lightly, one of the things that you said is that I gotta figure out why I'm actually here. I gotta get like a little existential. And I know you talked about going deep and it can be a quick, shallow answer, like for now, like for this moment that I'm in, you know, the holiday. And it can also be a much Deeper answer. And I think that's sort of like where your mind can sort of like do the gymnastics or energy that it needs to spend for whatever that moment takes.

I'll tell you one of the things that's a real challenge is that it doesn't matter while we're here, if you took the oxygen out of this room, like, the only thing that's gonna matter is to get another breath. So if I put you underwater, you know, you might be fine for 5 seconds and 10 seconds, but, like, right around, like, that 30 second mark, you're gonna be like, only one thing matters right now. I need air. And your priorities will change from this way to another way. And we could use the same thing with water. Like, if I said you can't drink anything, you'd probably be fine for maybe even a few hours, depending on how hydrated you are. But at some point, that'll be the only thing that matters. And so where air might be really immediate and water might be a little less immediate, they both can become the only thing that matters.

And I think our businesses can do the same thing. And as you're trying to hold things lightly, at some point you're like, but I gotta hold this tight. I have to. Because the circumstances that I'm in right now will not allow me to think about eternity. The circumstances I'm in right now, I have to think about the next five seconds. And like you said a lot of things, we trick ourselves into believing that matters in the next five seconds. You know, as an entrepreneur, we're known for sabotaging our own lives. That's what entrepreneurs are.

Probably one of the most best things that they're best at by sort of like doing this weird priority shift, like, if I don't beat the market to this or if I don't do that, or if I don't answer this customer email right away, or whatever.

Like, listen, I literally have midlife crisises all the time, as you know. You should never have been embarrassed about that answer. I am the queen of why do we exist in this world if I'm not doing busy work, right? And busy work, by the way, can mean going all in on a hobby. Like, I'm about to decorate my home for the holiday, like the exterior of it, and I'm going to go insane. And that'll be my job, right? But it's a hobby. It's not my business. It's my fun time. And it'll still be done like a job, because I obsess.

And I guess the whole Point is, the reason why I think a lot of people are workaholics or become that way is because we don't want to think about the question of the why. And that's why so many business people in their later years, they've accomplished all the things. They've gotten the beach house, they've made millions and millions and millions. And we watch them suddenly have a change of like, priority shift of like, oh, I've discovered the why. That's why this, the Simon Sinek book is so popular. It's like to me, that's the universal question I've been asking forever and ever. And most people don't ask that question, I guess, is in business. And maybe to you and Meeker, it was probably a pretty natural question to ask, like, why are we doing this?

Yet we still were able to easily override it with the immediacy of whatever we imagine the business required, or in reality what the business required. It's really quick and easy to lose track of that.

And I'm wondering about this too. You really have to hustle when you start something. You have to care deeply about this thing. It becomes everything because it's a make it or break it. When you start a business right, you have to be all invested. And then we get, especially the first one I think we get in the cycle. That routine of just high stress must make this work. Even when it's working, we're still like, high stress must make this work.

We talk about the ADD stuff and we talk about like the certain qualities and traits that good entrepreneurs have. It's almost like it was set in our DNA that we are always going to be like that. High stress and taking time and being present is probably the highest actual stress that we experience because there's so much empty space there and just sitting in it. We're so used to the, you know, what some normal person would think of as a high stress environment. That's our norm. That feels good because we're used to it. Even when we say it doesn't feel good.

Well, you're reminding me of when I first started getting into meditating. That was really hard to sit quiet and keep my mind empty. I thought, actually quite good at it. But then it got harder than ever and it was a really weird cycle thing. But now I'll sit in meetings and I ask people what they think. And it used to be that if they let 4 milliseconds go by without responding, it got really awkward and I'd be like, or if you don't Know what you think, like, I could and.

I would just like, oh, that's so me. Yeah.

But I've gotten a lot better at that. And that has progressively gotten better. I have a long way to go. I probably can make it to, like, maybe a hundred milliseconds. That's one tenth of a second. But I have employees that I'll be in a group with, and they always spark up because they're the ones that also can't sit in silence. I bring that up because what you said is that sitting with it, sitting in silence is. It seems to be an American problem.

I'm sure that other countries deal with it as well, but I've certainly seen other nationalities that don't like. It's just not an issue at all. It was an old proverb. I read about it in a book. It's kind of funny because two guys from Norway, I want to say, Norway is the country they carpooled to work. And on the way to work, one of them says, I heard a joke the other day. And then they get to work, and on the way home, the other one says back to him. A joke, you say.

I remember that striking me as like, can you imagine people being that contemplative?

Contemplative.

That is such an amazing thing. And I'm trying to constantly get there. But all that to say that spending time allowing yourself to enjoy the decompression, that was a learned skill. And that was the other thing I was going to share, is that meditating and taking time to meditate on different ways. When I first started meditating, I thought meditating was just purely clearing your mind and focusing on your breath, which, okay, that's a way to meditate. You could do that. And then having a clear mind has a lot of benefits. But sometimes meditating is about a topic, like just thinking about a thing and letting things.

And it's really trying to focus your mind on a thing. There's lots of other ways that you can sort of go deep inside yourself with meditation. Of the ways I do it is. It's like prayer. I'm talking to God and I'm trying to listen and I'm trying to, like, stay focused on. And then I'll find, like, as I'm talking to God, all of a sudden I'm thinking about what's on my grocery list. So when I come back, instead of I think about my grocery list, instead of, like, chastising myself, I'll be like, you know, God, now you know what I think about? Like, you know, God, I'm hungry. You know that now.

And so there's just a lot of, like, kind of learning about where the mind wants to go. And, you know, I know I started this saying, Melody, that this is just such a. A non topic. Like, I got five seconds and I took the challenge. You did.

I was excited.

I'll take five seconds to explain you. As soon as you're too tired to be focused on your business a hundred percent of the time, you finally start looking forward to not. And the truth of it is, is that, no, it took me a lot of time to learn different things. Holding things lightly, being contemplative.

Contemplative? Yeah.

Thinking about what God really wants for me and wondering if the things that are pulling my attention, like breath and water, are the things that I'm deeming as emergencies to pull me away from where I actually need to have my focus. Are those things really that important right now? And if they are, which they can be, like, when can I get back? When can I get back to thinking a little bit bigger and longer term? And then that final thing, as far as, like, understanding how to exercise your mind in numerous ways. And it's weird because exercising a muscle requires a sort of, like, hard repetition. And I will say that sitting with a quiet mind that reminds me of that is like teaching your mind to be quiet. That is hard work. But then also unlike exercising a muscle, just sitting with your mind and being aware of where it's going all on its own, when you let your mind run, that is a very powerful thing to know. Like, my mind always wants to go here or there, or my mind always goes in these weird circular loops. I wonder what it is that's feeding one thing to the other.

And I think all of those things have helped me so that when I am with family, I can control myself more. And not like, control it like Thor and his hammer, but maybe more like the way Mary Poppins can control a room when she walks in. Just like, how did she do that?

As you're talking about this? Because I've done some meditation. Usually I can do it really well, but only if there's yoga involved. I still think that's meditation. My mind shuts off. But it requires a lot of training. But I think most importantly, it requires you to want to change. And I don't know if that's something that comes because people's families get resentful or because you realize that the thing that you thought would be fulfilling to you is not fulfilling to you the way you thought And I think it becomes a thing during the holidays, because the whole point of a holiday, besides the birth of Jesus and then also the presents and whatever people celebrate, it's also really clearly about family time, as is Thanksgiving. And if we can't sit in those times with our family or with our friends and just be there, then something's wrong.

And I think about now when I go to an event. I don't think about work unless I get an idea. And then I'll just write it down in my notes app or I'll make a voice memo to get it out of my brain. There's a hack. Sometimes you need it to come out of your brain. And I literally can do that. I know it's there, and I can find it again later, and then it's released. But I don't feel that same compulsion to be like, oh, my God, I have so much work to do.

Because also, don't we tell our employees, like, take time, work, life, balance. We're telling employees things because we don't want them to burn out and quit our company, essentially, that we don't actually practice all the time, but we should.

Yeah, I'm with you on that. I will say that when I tell my employees to take time, I do expect that they are ravenous when they are working. And I found myself resenting when people take time, and I don't feel like they gave me ravenous while they were on. And I'm like, oh, you need more time, huh? Was that too strenuous for you?

Do you mean, like, vacation time?

Yeah. Went on a vacation. They get back, oh, I'm so tired from my vacation. And then you're like, and then they go on another vacation just a few weeks later, and you're like, look, I didn't feel like that last three weeks between vacations was that productive. But again, that's holding things tightly. If I was holding things lightly, I would just go to the employee and say, hey, I noticed you took a bunch of time off. Let's talk about what you've accomplished in the last such and such months. I don't mind you taking time off when things are still getting accomplished, but holding things lightly.

Actually, you'll have a lot harder conversations because you don't put it inside of you and expect something to happen.

Yeah. And from a business place, I will say, if we have goals for employees, like we have quarterly goals in our company and people have projects that they're supposed to be working on, you can clearly see sometimes I haven't been Good about tracking that. I'm just like, you guys know what to do, just, you know, do the stuff. But when you do have like more of a tracking system for that, you can clearly see if progress is being made. And they also can clearly see. But that requires some level of us paying attention. And we sometimes move fast, which is why I am not the person in charge of paying attention to those details.

And a scorecard. A scorecard?

Yeah, you need a scorecard for employees. That's really important. We sometimes will even feel that even when there is a scorecard, because we have a tendency to want to move fast. And just because they're meeting their goals within a deadline doesn't mean that we thought the deadline. What will take us two solid days of staring in? Like, it'll take them a week or two. And we're like, yeah, you got that done. But what about the next three projects? So there's a couple different things I was bringing up there. But definitely I understand that it's hard being an entrepreneur because we were developing businesses with non entrepreneurs.

The people in my life are not entrepreneurs. Like my kids are entrepreneurial, but they're not entrepreneurs. And they don't think of me as mom the businesswoman. I'm not Mel, the lady of business. I am. Mom, why didn't you make me dinner?

Mom, where's my other sock? It's your responsibility.

Yes, basically anything. Mom, you didn't pick me up on time. Mom, can I borrow your car for three weeks? That's the current thing. Oh, but that's okay. I'm borrowing my brother's car for three weeks. It all works out.

You got your own mom.

So anyway, the point is, like, they deserve the best of us too. Our spouses, our family, the holidays. There's not a lot of holidays. At the bare minimum, like we probably should give them us during those times, fully make it your job, that actually.

I've had success as this good short term hack. If you can't do all the other stuff we've said and you are resonating with a lot of this, then I can just go ahead and tell you that making it your job to be great. And I know I said it earlier, but it became a thing. I'm delightful. When I go to a place and Rachel's like, are you gonna be delightful? Like, yeah, I'm gonna be delightful. And I've sure aired a lot of dirty laundry on this particular podcast.

But it made me like you more.

I have some family members that not a big fan of. Not even Hurt me. I wouldn't say that. Hurt me. I just am offended by how they treat people around them. I'm offended by some of the things that they believe. And I'm also. Well, I'll leave the rest of it out.

But the point is, is that there's some things that I just. I don't want to be in the same room with them. But when I go to a family party and I've made the decision that it's my job to be delightful, I'm asking them if they need any napkins. I'm asking if the food was delicious. Do you want me to bring you another dessert? Do you want me to refill your water? How was your thing? Because guess what? I'm only going to be here for two hours and I can do anything. Anything for two hours.

That's right. Yeah.

Except for go without air. But other than that.

Hopefully it'll never come to that.

Yeah, no, but I mean, there are times when it feels like, all right, you're delightful is starting to run out. But part of the job, and these entrepreneurs know that, is that you might not spend the entire two hours doing the hardest possible thing that you could put yourself in the way of for two hours, but you can constantly shift gears. If there's a family member that's hard and you just had a five minute conversation that was like, really hard for you, you can go take interest in what the kids tables going on at the kids table, and then when you're done with that, then you can go make sure the food's getting cleaned up. You can just be delightful as heck and still keep moving and changing like a chameleon with all the things going on around you. And you can be just as good at that family party as you would be at your business.

100%. I agree. That's the best hack we can give people, is pretend that this is your business, the business of family. I've just ruined family and business in one sentence. And don't use that as your strategy forever. No, no. That's the starting point.

Yeah. But that's a good act.

Yeah. This is the shortest episode, one of the shortest episodes we've ever done. And yet it was really gonna be a five minute episode, according to you before we started. And I knew it wasn't gonna be. I'm so proud of us.

Well, I'm actually really proud of you. Maybe I'll just call that out. Melody, that you knew this was gonna be powerful and good. You knew that people struggled with it. You called it when you asked me if I struggled with it, we talked about something that I think, you know, every buzzfeed article says, you know, six top ways to get through your next family gathering or something. Also said is that I don't want a task list. I want to like, check in on the emotional side of it and everything else. And I went in this and I said, melody, if you really think this is important, I'm going to have this with you.

And guess what? This was really good and really important.

All the articles, all of the things that we hear or we see are talking about just the hack or just the top 10 tips. But life doesn't work like that and humans don't work like that. We can't just be a checklist. We can't operate on a checklist, no matter how many checklists we have. Hopefully this will help just one person who wants to make that shift and is struggling to make it. Maybe it'll help them a little bit.

Yeah. Thank you, Melody.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

Merry Christmas. Thanks everybody for joining us at the sole proprietor podcast. It has been an absolute pleasure, pleasure having these discussions with you. If you wouldn't mind taking just a few minutes to rate and review us wherever it is that you listen to podcasts, it would mean so much to us. We really do read each of these reviews and it gives us the opportunity to get the word out to more people who could benefit from hearing about topics like this and so many others. If you want to engage with us at our website, maybe share some topics or ideas of other people that you'd like to hear hear on the podcast, feel free to go to soleproprietorpodcast.com and share with us your thoughts and ideas about what we could do in the future to bring even more light into the world.