fbpx

Category: Parenting

Posted on

A Culture Of Happiness

Welcome to the second instalment of this series on kingdom culture. Today we address ‘the pursuit of happiness’. Everybody wants to be happy. Not only do we want to be happy but we believe that we deserve to be happy. Happiness… it means many things to many people. A dream job? Travelling the world? A husband? Children? All of the above? None of the above? The butterfly of happiness comes in a myriad of patterns and colours and shapes.

Look at the picture above. Linger on it for a while. This is one vision of happiness; the perfect family. The happy couple with their adorable children. Now juxtapose this vision against these words from Jesus (Mat 10:37-39):

37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

What is Jesus saying? Surely, we should love our father and mother and children? Of course! God is love! The message of love for all humanity is an immovable pillar of Christianity. But what Jesus is taking aim at here is a different kind of love; a love that worships the object of its desire. The love that says, “You are the centre of my world. You are my heart. I love you more than anything else!” Jesus is taking aim at what is your highest joy in life. Anything that you love more than Jesus is something you love too much.

Happiness is like a butterfly that rests only on the shoulder of Jesus. If you seek it, it will fly away from your grasping hands but if you forsake all and go after Jesus with all your heart, there you will find it resting peacefully. If you pursue happiness, even through your closest relationships, it will evade you.

Let’s go back to the photo. Think about how many advertisements incorporate this idea of happiness. The advertising agencies know what our deepest desires are and use them to sell their products. How many ads for milk, cereal, cleaning products, are set in the scene of the happy family? This is the apex of many of our hearts. Including Christian hearts. So many silent prayers and tears are said and shed for that perfect husband or wife that would make us happy? How many grandparents’ happiness rise and fall on the events of their grandchildren’s lives? How many are in anguish because they cannot have children? My hearts go out to these people not only because they are in pain but because the cure is not in the place they seek.

We need to stop selling a God who will make us happy with anything else but Himself. There must to be a place in our hearts reserved for God alone. A joy that is not moved by anything or anyone external. A spouse cannot make us happy but when God is at the centre of a marriage it is full of joy throughout the storms of life! Children or grandchildren cannot make us happy but a parent whose joy is in Christ is the most effective and happy parent of all! We are not pursuing God so that He would give us the things and relationships that would make us happy. We are pursuing Christ because He is our highest joy and most satisfying pleasure! The culture of the kingdom is not the pursuit of happiness but the pursuit of Christ!

Copyright Matik Nicholls, 2019. All rights reserved.
Posted on

When Children Are Our Idols

 

I think that we can love our children too much. Well, actually that’s not true; we can never love too much but we can have a counterfeit love for our children that is more akin to worship. Our whole life is for them. We say things like, “Mommy will do anything for you baby.” Will we really? I hope not. “You are my sun, my heart, the centre of my world.” I really wonder if we understand the ramifications of statements like that? It sounds great; like something a dedicated, loving parent would say but is it really?

According to a Time article by Jennifer Moses, “The problem with all this, aside from how silly it is, is that children who are the center of their parents’ lives become brats. Children whose parents put their kids’ entertainment, social lives, futures, and schedules ahead of their own well-being soon learn that there is only one important person in the room, and that person is the person whose short life has already been captured on endless video clips. This is not good. This is not good at all. Not for the kid. Not for the grownup. Not for the family dog.”

Children who are worshipped, grow up believing they are gods and believe that everyone will bend to their will as their parents have for their entire short lives. These ‘helicopter parents’ swoop in to clean up every mess and comfort every discomfort, robbing their charges of the necessary coping skills and character development that can only come from unmet expectations, disappointments, failures and the sometimes unfair hard-knocks of life. These poor children often suffer from depression and maladjustment as they encounter the real world outside their little personal kingdom.

Many of these parents may actually have co-dependent relationships with their kids; dependent on them for affirmation and love. According to Psychology Today, here are 5 signs that you are in a co-dependent relationship (To look at this from a parental point of view I substituted ‘partner’ with ‘child’):

  1. Does your sense of purpose involve making extreme sacrifices to satisfy your child’s needs?
  2. Is it difficult to say no when your child makes demands on your time and energy?
  3. Do you cover your child’s problems with drugs, alcohol, or the law?
  4. Do you constantly worry about their opinion of you?
  5. Do you keep quiet to avoid arguments?

I find this list a bit scary because it is so close to our accepted paradigm of good parenting today. The thing about co-dependency is that (i) it prevents you from taking actions in the best interest of the child, and (ii) it is often a behaviour that the child repeats in his/her relationships. It is a very unhealthy behaviour that is not easily changed.

However, there is hope. The first step is awareness. Here are some habits that will keep us from co-dependent tendencies:

  1. Set clear boundaries on our time. For example, Sunday is my rest/fun day. I will not be taking you to any regular activity on a Sunday.
  2. Set clear boundaries on what we will and will not do for our children. I will not do your school project for you. I may guide and assist but you are responsible for it, not me. I will not write an excuse for you for not completing your homework unless there was a serious emergency that prevented you from completing your assignment.
  3. Intentionally give them more and more responsibility and autonomy as they get older. For example, as my daughter graduates to secondary school she will be ironing her own school uniform from now on. She is also allowed to be on social media now.
  4. Intentionally nurture interests and hobbies other than our children. For example, no matter how much my children may believe that I am not entitled to go out or play football or take trips (or do anything really) without them, I go anyway.

Our children deserve every opportunity to grow and mature into strong, balanced and healthy adults. Let’s not fail them by loving them to pieces but instead let’s love them to wholeness.

Joyfully.

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Sermons and Dresses

Admittedly, I had but a passing interest in The Royal Wedding.  Until I heard a bit of the sermon of Bishop Michael Curry! I promptly searched for the sermon online and I couldn’t stop listening. The power of love captivated my attention! I was so excited about this message of love echoing around the world and touching lives suffering from severe love-deficit that when some colleagues started talking about the wedding I exclaimed, “Wasn’t that a powerful sermon!”.

I was shocked at the responses. Apparently, it was inappropriate, too long and disjointed. I am not usually one to be surprised by differing views but this one caught me off guard. So, what was the main highlight for these (mainly female) colleagues of mine; the dress. It was what they had stayed up late to see. They loved it!

Now, I don’t want to draw any inferences about my colleagues in particular because I am sure they are not alone. In fact, there are probably more than a few church goers for whom the much too short dress of Sister So-and-so seems more important than the message of Jesus Christ. (Just though I’d throw that out there to shake things up a bit. Ha ha!) I do, however, want us to think about our society as a whole and what we value. Do we value messages of love, kindness, compassion and selflessness? We talk about it but do our actions align?

Last night I fell asleep while reading in bed and my daughter came and took off my glasses, put my phone to charge and turned off the light. She had never done anything like that before. I was so proud of her and full of love for her and grateful for such beautiful children, all at the same time. I did make sure to thank her and express my appreciation for her thoughtfulness, but I couldn’t help but compare that with if she had come first in end-of-term exams, for example. For coming first in her class, she would be showered with rewards and recognition. Something is wrong somewhere.

What about at work? Has anyone ever received a positive appraisal because they were kind to their co-workers? But if we achieve all our targets at the expense of other people, are we rewarded? Many times, we are. Sometimes even publicly applauded.

Our values are skewed. And it’s no better in the church. If I were to judge from what most guys talk about and get excited about, the biggest religion in Trinidad is football. Most guys quicker identify as a Man-U fan than a Jesus fan. Keep it nice and superficial. Big man doh deal up with d touchy feely business.

So, I ask you what kind of world do you want to leave for generations to come? Do you want more love in this world? Is it time to re-look our value system? If you haven’t seen Bishop Curry’s sermon, you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gonlKodrmk and tell me what you think; which was better; the sermon or the dress?

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Rebels And Sycophants, Tyrants and Nice Guys

A major part of life on this planet is about how we relate to authority and how we carry authority. Our relationship with authority starts almost the moment we take our first breath. First our parents, then teachers, then bosses. Eventually, we may ourselves be in positions of authority.

To explore how we deal with authority, I have chosen four stereotypes for discussion:

  • The rebel
  • The sycophant
  • The tyrant
  • The nice guy

The rebel’s response to authority is an obstructionist one. The rebel does not like being told what to do. His strategy can range from complete insubordination to subtle undermining. He is the child who does the exact opposite of what he is told to do by his parents who are frequently called into the school on account of his misbehaviour. At work he is that trouble worker that is every boss’ nightmare. The union is his best friend and he takes every opportunity to discredit his supervisor/manager.

The sycophant on the other hand lives to please her parent or teacher or boss. She loves to be the favourite daughter or the favourite student. She fetches coffee for her boss without being asked, is lavish with her compliments and bends over backwards to meet every demand. She uses every means necessary to remain in favour with her upper line including hiding unfavourable facts. Her priority is to stay in the good books.

The tyrant is the boss that uses her authority to reinforce her own authority or the bully in school. She delights in the ability to bend others to her will. For her, authority is a tool for domination and control. The tyrant enjoys making others lives miserable by making unreasonable demands and setting impossible targets. The only consideration in the tyrant decision-making is what is favourable for herself.

The nice guy cannot bear the thought of not being liked by his children or his staff. He avoids uncomfortable discussions about poor performance and can only take disciplinary action behind the curtains of a higher-level order or clear policy infraction that forces his hand. At home, he is the parent that refers the tough decisions to his wife and spoils them behind her back.

Of course, these are caricatures of traits that may exist in smaller measures or varying combinations. For example, a tyrant boss can often be a sycophant with his boss. The question is, “What is a healthy, balanced way of relating to authority and carrying authority?” The rule I find useful in this regard and the standard to which I aspire (I do not always succeed) is to do the most good for the most number of people.

I believe that if we took this attitude when relating to those in authority over us, we would strike a happy balance between seeking our boss’ goodwill while doing all in our power to seek the best for others as well. That could mean at times standing up to our boss or refusing an instruction or bringing information to light that she may not want to hear or that casts ourselves in a bad light.

Likewise, in discharging our responsibilities as those in authority we would not seek to do harm to our staff or to pander to them. Our focus would be to help them to succeed yet not pander to them in ways that could bring harm to others or the company (all employees).

The same philosophy can be applied to parenting. We seek the highest good of our children which can mean praise or discipline as required. We also seek to parent in such a way as to produce adults that contribute to the highest good of society. One can easily see how producing self-centred or undisciplined children contravene that aim.

Let us seek to do the highest good to the most number of people in all that we do.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Performance Pressure

Next month my 12-year-old daughter writes the big SEA exam for entrance into secondary school. My 16-year-old son will also write his O’Level exams around the same time. Meanwhile, at work we have been having conversations about setting more challenging goals and cultivating a high-performance culture. These days, it is more evident to me than ever before how deeply this performance culture permeates our society.

There are side-effects to this culture that reminds me of those ads for some new wonder drug that promises to change your life, but possible side effects include drowsiness, depression, nausea, dizziness and erectile dysfunction. You begin to wonder if the drug is worth it right?

Some of the side effects of a performance culture that I have observed are:

  1. Unhealthy comparison/competition
  2. Confusing ability to perform with self-worth
  3. Fear of failure

Unhealthy comparison/competition

I have children with different natural abilities and talents. One may be great at math while another may have great physical agility. One may have a superior command of the English language, while another may be good at arts and craft. I see my role as a father as facilitating the emergence of the best in each of them based on their individual potential (not their performance compared to others).

Unavoidably, that means unequal treatment. To illustrate: If I have one child who is a natural math genius and they get 95% in an exam and another who struggles with math and they get 65% in an exam, I would reward them equally. What the performance culture does is sets up a way of thinking that encourages comparison against others rather than against your own potential. So, the child who gets 95% may feel unfairly treated because he/she did much better than the other one. But that’s ok. Far worse is the child that is always held to the standards of his/her sibling. It can leave awful scars.

In business, the negative behaviours that this type of thinking often breed is unhealthy competition between peers or departments. Unhealthy meaning that individual or departmental success is prioritized above the company’s overall success. Once I meet my targets that’s all that matters!

Confusing ability to perform with self-worth

This is one that I’m particularly watchful for any signs of in my children. Too often failing to pass an exam or win a match is interpreted as a reflection on personal self-worth. It needs to be said that the top students and top athletes are not necessarily better people! So often we write-off people because they don’t have the credentials or track-record that we think is important. There are so many valuable attributes that are not generally measured!

Failing an exam does not make you a failure. Not meeting your goals does not make you a failure. The human being is more than the narrow band that society focuses on. The same culture is also in the church by the way, the indicators are just different. The church measurables are: How long do you pray? How many times do you attend church? How well do you know the bible? How long have you been married? How long have you been serving the Lord? Are your children serving the Lord? Thankfully, God does not measure us that way. We are all The Father’s children and we were all worthy enough that Jesus died for us, every one!

Fear of failure

In a paradoxical way, this high-performance culture ensures mediocrity. If you know that your boss is going to measure you by what you say you are going to achieve, then you are not going to set any outrageous goals. But don’t we want people to go after the unattainable, the outrageous? Sure we do, but we are never going to get that unless it is ok to fail.

The other way we insure against failure is by taking as few risks as possible. We are constantly taking the safest road possible because we know that we will be severally penalized for failure. The culture keeps our focus on the wrong thing; on what could go wrong, instead of what could go right!

This happens at home too. Do we parents support our children when they come with some outrageous pie-in-the-sky dream? Sometimes we stifle our children by making them play it safe. Go to school and become a doctor or a lawyer. Drop out and start a business making earrings? Don’t be crazy! However, some of our most celebrated business leaders today started out as college drop-outs with crazy ideas.

In summary, here’s my philosophy of life in answer to this prevailing culture:

  1. The only person I’m in competition with is myself. I challenge myself to grow continuously and become all that God wants me to become. I don’t want to leave unfulfilled potential on the table.
  2. I don’t have to succeed at the expense of your failure. We can all succeed together. I believe in win-win. I believe we can all be exceptional!
  3. I believe every single person is highly valuable not because of anything they have done or not done but because they were created by God. Every person has something valuable that they can add to my life and if I don’t see it, it just means I’m not looking hard enough.
  4. Failure is an opportunity to learn! I am not defined by my failures. I am not afraid of failure. I am afraid of not living life to the fullest!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Granny

Today is granny’s birthday. She is gone now. None of my grandparents are alive. Granny is the only one I miss though. I often ponder why that is. She was not the one who did the most things for me. That would be grampa. He bought me my first bicycle. He made sure I got braces. He took me to get my driver’s permit. He took me for my first hot dog and milkshake and taught me to swim in Macqueripe.

My cousins and I all fight over who was granny’s favourite. It’s really no contest though; I am the eldest and clearly her favourite long before the rest arrived. 🙂 I was her tomato. But it goes to show how she made each of us feel special. We all knew that granny loved us personally. Not a generic, ‘I love my grandchildren’, kinda love but a personal appreciation and care for each individual.

No matter what, I knew that granny believed in me. It was the little things she would say, “Matik I always admired how you handled your divorce. Things didn’t work out but you made sure that XXX was well taken care of.” Or, “Mats you have a good heart and the Lord knows that.” Or if she knew I was going through a rough patch, “You gotta roll with the punches Mats.”

She worried about every one of her grandchildren and wanted to know the details of everything that was going on in our lives. I remember when I started going out at night as a teenager, no matter what time I got home, granny was up at the dining room table reading until she was sure that I had made it home safely.

Granny was special. In the weeks before she passed away, I went to visit her and some of her last words to me were, “Thank you Matik.”

“For what granny?”

“For being you.”

Thank you for being you, granny. You are my hero. I miss you but I know that you are still in my corner.

PS: I know you love flowers. These are for you.

Joyful tears,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

Posted on

Parenting Is Hard

Parenting is hard enough but single co-parenting (a term I just invented to mean when you are not in a relationship with the other parent) is ten times as hard. As I came down from the euphoria of vacation and the cold water of reality splashed my face, this was one of the harsh realities of my life that met me at the door.

“Daddy, you don’t spend any time with us,” was the latest issue. It was not something that I hadn’t heard before, but the complaint seemed to be getting louder. It’s an issue that I find particularly frustrating because their point of view and mine are so far apart. They take for granted the fact that I changed by working hours and hardly ever work late just so that I can drop them to school in the morning and see them in the evening. They don’t know how much of a social life I forego just to be present in their lives. They have no clue and they probably never will until they have children of their own.

What exacerbates the issue is that their reference point is their mother who is a stay at home mom. She has the advantage of being at their beck and call 24-7 if she chooses. In a ‘normal’ family where the mother is at home, I guess she would help the children to understand that daddy has to work etc. I unfortunately, have to deal with the opposite dynamic.

Thus, when I sat down to have a heart to heart with my kids I tried to discern not only what they were saying but how they really felt. It was clear that they did not feel unloved or neglected but they did want more meaningful time with me doing things that they like. I realized that with my daughter’s preparation for the big SEA exams and their extra-curricular schedule, most of our time was spent being busy. Busy getting ready for school, busy getting ready for bed, busy getting ready for lessons, busy getting to football training, busy, busy, busy…

So, despite how skewed their viewpoint might be, there was inside there some truth that I could not ignore. I weighed my options.  What more I could do to be a better dad? I weighed the wants versus the needs. Children always want. A significant challenge is always to give them what they need not necessarily what they want. What could I do that would answer the need in their lives? What was I willing to give up? That question brought me right up against another significant challenge; finding the balance between sacrificing for your children without sacrificing your health.

In the end, I gave up one football sweat a month and my Saturday morning run would be reduced to every other week. In exchange I would have some more unhurried time with my children. I’m not expecting huge outpourings of gratitude and that doesn’t matter to me. My fulfilment is in their success as Godly, loving, happy, contributing human beings. In their eyes, compared to their mother, I might still be the second-rate parent, but I believe their hearts know better. I can feel it in their hugs.

Parenting is hard but anything worthwhile is hard.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls. All rights reserved.

Posted on

My Goal Is To Be Mediocre

It doesn’t sound inspiring, but it’s true. I’m not sure when this became a goal but it solidified in my psyche early in my professional career as I became more and more successful as a manager. I observed the men who were outstanding in their field or CEOs of large companies and I noticed that many of them were not spending much time with their families. They seemed to have traded the role of father for the role of Fairy Godfather. Even if they were present in body, they were not present in mind. They were also very one-dimensional. Their work consumed them.

I grew a strong dislike for this kind of persona and determined that if that is what it took to be successful, then I was not going to be successful. On the other hand, I had standards of excellence that I did aspire to in my career and I wanted a life full of interests and passions and learning, so I couldn’t be father of the year either. And so my life philosophy took shape, I was going to be mediocre at a variety of things.

I was going to be a great dad but my children would not be the centre of my life. I was going to be a good surfer but not good enough to win any competitions. I was going to be an avid football player but not club material if you know what I mean. I was going to be an excellent manager but not the super ambitious guy who is always looking for the next rung to climb. I was going to be a continuous learner but I didn’t see a Ph.D. in my future.

I often wonder though, if it’s still possible to be great at something without sacrificing the rest… I know, I know, I’ve always wanted to have my cake and eat it too. But I do think it could be possible. People like Richard Branson give me hope. He often blogs about family (both his biological and his Virgin family). Many people blog insincerely about family with their posed photos but for some reason I believe Branson when he says, “Without the love and support of my wife, children, children-in-law and grandchildren I wouldn’t have the drive to keep achieving. And without the love and support of the Virgin family, achieving things wouldn’t be so meaningful or fun.”

But on the other hand, I wonder if the sacrifice is worth it if the cause is big enough? If a researcher spends her life in a lab and cures cancer at the expense of a relationship with her husband and kids, is it worth it? I wonder what the children of great world changers like Nelson Mandela and Marie Curie thought about them as parents? Maybe they understood what their parents were trying to achieve and were proud. I don’t know and I can’t judge for others, but for me, I’m committed to my mediocrity :).

Ultimately, I want a life of great service to God and men. Maybe I will only be of great service to a few people and little service to many people. I don’t know but being of service is perhaps the only true greatness and the only standard that does motivate me greatly. I look at my life, and to the extent that it is selfishly about my happiness, I am dissatisfied. Sometimes deeply dissatisfied. So I strive on to achieve greatness…. and joy (I still want to have my cake and eat it too); the joy of service in my own mediocre way!

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls

Posted on

The Marshmallow Test Started In Trinidad?

Eager to get going on my goal to be more disciplined in 2018, today I started a new audiobook; The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control by Walter Mischel. I was completely taken by surprise by what I heard in chapter 6… Let me say upfront that I was in two minds about sharing this given the sometimes volatile racial tension in Trinidad but in the end the opportunity for learning from the objective scientific insights of a foreigner far outweighed the risks. Here are excerpts of what Walter Mischel had to say:

“The marshmallow experiment allowed us to see how children managed to delay and resist temptation, and how differences in this ability play out over a lifetime. But what about the choice itself? I started to ask that question while I was a graduate student at Ohio State University, well before I joined the Stanford faculty. I spent one summer living near a small village in the southern tip of Trinidad.

The inhabitants in this part of the island were of either African or East Indian descent, their ancestors having arrived as either slaves or indentured servants. Each group lived peacefully in its own enclave, on different sides of the same long dirt road that divided their homes.… I discovered a recurrent theme in how they characterized each other. According to the East Indians, the Africans were just pleasure-bent, impulsive, and eager to have a good time and live in the moment, while never planning or thinking ahead about the future. The Africans saw their East Indian neighbors as always working and slaving for the future, stuffing their money under the mattress without ever enjoying life”

“To check if the perceptions about the differences between the ethnic groups were accurate, I walked down the long dirt road to the local school, which was attended by children from both groups.” “I tested boys and girls between the ages of 11 and 14. I asked the children who lived in their home, gauged their trust that promises made would be promises kept, and assessed their achievement motivation, social responsibility, and intelligence. At the end of each of these sessions, I gave them choices between little treats: either one tiny chocolate that they could have immediately or a much bigger one that they could get the following week”

“The young adolescents in Trinidad who most frequently chose the immediate smaller rewards, in contrast to those who chose the delayed larger ones, were more often in trouble and, in the language of the time, judged to be “juvenile delinquents.” Consistently, they were seen as less socially responsible, and they had often already had serious issues with authorities and the police. They also scored much lower on a standard test of achievement motivation and showed less ambition in the goals they had for themselves for the future.

Consistent with the stereotypes I heard from their parents, the African Trinidadian kids generally preferred the immediate rewards, and those from East Indian families chose the delayed ones much more often. But surely there was more to the story. Perhaps those who came from homes with absent fathers—a common occurrence at that time in the African families in Trinidad, while very rare for the East Indians—had fewer experiences with men who kept their promises. If so, they would have less trust that the stranger—me—would ever really show up later with the promised delayed reward. There’s no good reason for anyone to forgo the “now” unless there is trust that the “later” will materialize. In fact, when I compared the two ethnic groups by looking only at children who had a man living in the household, the differences between the groups disappeared.”

Given that this was around 1956, can you imagine the cycle of absentee fathers and instant gratification that has led over 60 years later to the current social crisis in Trinidad & Tobago!?! Myers goes on to talk about experiments in Boston that showed that 12 years olds with less ability to delay gratification were far more likely to cheat to get something that they want. The correlation to our current crime culture is clear. Why work to get anything? There is no trust that society will give me any rewards for hard work and why wait anyway when I can rob somebody (equally applied to a petty thief or corrupt government official) and get what I want now?!

For me this was a poignant pointer to the root of the problem. We can continue to rail against the failed political leaders/parties or police service from now until whenever but until and unless we face the failed leadership in our homes and our communities and our churches/mosques/temples, we will be hacking away at the branches leaving the roots of crime untouched.

In 2018 let’s point the finger at ourselves and make a commitment to make a difference. As a predominantly African male with three children, I’m starting with me.

Joyfully,

Copyright 2018, Matik Nicholls.

Posted on

Are You A Bad Guy?

“But daddy, this is my last chance to be a part of the team with all my friends!” She was crying now, and I was wavering on the inside, but I kept a straight face and said, “Honey, I know you want to be on the team with your friends but right now passing for your first choice is more important. You have to keep focused. Eye on the prize. Eye on the prize.” She was not the least bit consoled. “Honey, I love you and because I love you I make decisions that I think are in your best interest,” I said, giving her a kiss.

It was another ‘but daddy’ moment and like most of them I was not absolutely sure that I had made the right decision. My daughter wanted to be part of the Lego robotics team which required practice sessions twice a week right up to two months before SEA exams next year and she already has a packed schedule with extra-curricular activities and lessons. How she performs in SEA exams will determine which secondary school she will be placed in and that would determine the level of tuition and kind of environment that she would be exposed to for the next seven years of her life. The competition is fierce, and I had decided that there was too much at stake to risk it.

What made matters worse was that her mother didn’t agree with my decision so I was the bad guy… again. As her mother consoled her while scowling at me I knew I was outnumbered and outgunned. Lacking the emotional effusiveness to be able to stand up to the mother-daughter coalition I retreated to the next room.

Nobody likes to be the bad guy in the movie but if we are given the part we should play it without compunction. Everybody and especially every leader, be it a parent at home or a supervisor at work has to be prepared to be unpopular at some point in time. Any decision you make will be liked by some but unpopular with others. So, choose where you will take a stand and stand. Hold true to your inner compass at all costs.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t reconsider if more information or another point of view comes into play but do not waver because of fear of falling out of favour with people. That is a fatal mistake.

The next day my little princess snuggled up next to me in bed, “I’m still mad with you eh! Now give me a hug daddy!”

Joyfully,

Copyright 2017, Matik Nicholls