This past week I heard two stories that hit my heart.
Two well-known personalities, a psychiatrist and a writer, each confided that their families were uninterested in their success. At first, I couldn't believe it; they surely must be exaggerating.
The psychiatrist, also the author of several popular books, lectures on the most personal issues that touch most people. Invited to speak at seminars all over the world, he is celebrated. Yet his wife and his three children, college students, have never once heard him speak nor have they read even one of his books.
The other, an editor of an immensely successful magazine, also travels throughout the world lecturing on popular health topics while representing her magazine. Her writing has attracted a strong following and she too is celebrated. Yet not with her family. Neither her husband, a science professor, nor her two high-school-age children are interested in hearing about her experiences when she returns home. They don't read her magazine nor do they want to hear what she has found in her travels.
How can we explain such a phenomenon? Is it still true that one cannot be a "prophet" in one's own land? Could it be jealousy of spouses and children or desperate longing to keep them in their stereotypical places? Or have the psychiatrist and writer not told their stories as compellingly at home as they do when they are "on" to vast, but anonymous, audiences? Or is it that their very successes make them too big for their families, who, like many of us, fight against our feelings of smallness, of not counting enough?
Whatever the explanation, I know that in every single case, family members lose out. The two celebrated professionals miss what they crave from their families -- chances to share their own experiences and personal observations that would enrich their families. Learning and teaching are twin sides of what work is about. Consequently, everyone in the family suffers by not providing the other with love, understanding and motivation.
How families can achieve that shared growth and joy --so simple, even natural --becomes more than just a wish. It can be a realized goal if someone will assume responsibility for it. And that someone usually is the most successful one.
Here is what you can do to make this work in your family. Initiate family meetings, say Sunday mornings for a half hour. Insist that everyone take turns sharing what they heard and learned. Encourage everyone to engage with positive questions and responses. Be warned: there will be resistance. At first the stories will seem forced or stilted, but generally as the meetings go on, all members come to care about participation in these stories. This process becomes not only natural, but cherished.
As a result of this process, everyone is simultaneously the star and the audience, the appreciated and the appreciator. Each has a chance to show --not only to show off -- and to care how they relate their ex¬periences in the world to their families. Just as business has invested in team building exercises so families can follow suit.
It is more than a lesson in communication. It is a lesson in courageous living together. For each of us will value each other's achievements all the more and will be inspired to create our own.
To begin, you begin.