Am I a Selfish Dad?

Because I quit my Job for a startup

This one haunted me for a quite a bit. It may be haunting some of you reading this as well. What I discovered extends beyond parenting and impacts everyone, whether or not you have children.

But before we get there, let’s start with the simple question of “is quitting a stable job to pursue your passion to build a startup or a business being selfish if you have children?” Aren’t you risking and jeopardizing their future and livelihood by not earning as much money as possible to afford the very best education, home, and food for them?

Superficially, the answer would almost always be a resounding “yes.”

And in the cases where one has no income streams or savings and huge debts to repay, I would agree. Children must have bare necessities, because Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is an actual thing. At the same time, there is a reason why the shape is a pyramid with ascending stages. As one progresses to build a career and livelihood, opportunities arise to increase the fidelity level of the consciousness and reality that we manifest.

At some stage beyond the bare necessities, there is a diminishing return of going to the best of the best schools, living in the most luxurious of the luxurious mansions, eating the best of the best foods, and the list goes on. Coincidentally, there is an increasing opportunity cost to not develop integrity and self-actualization while getting mired in the lower parts of the pyramid.

Yet, we feel pressure to remain focused on maximizing income generation and safety at the same time, even if we have built an engine in ourselves that can run on its own. We must get that extra paycheck, that extra bonus, that extra retirement carrot and milk our corporate careers as dry as possible because it’s the safest route for fear of introducing risk into our children’s livelihood.

This one-dimensional viewpoint is a powerful drug - it keeps multitudes of people locked in, to the point where the situation literally becomes as baked-in as the sun rising in the East. And just like a narcotic, it can hollow out your soul to the point where you morph into an empty shell doing things because you have to, not because you want to. Day after day after day, after day.

But it’s all for the good of your children, right? #sacrifice?

This is the point where I broke free. I thought about this for many months. Deeply. And then, the stunning realization materialized: it may be good because it is safe, but there are better actions to take for your children.

So what could be better?

Have you ever read the greatest regrets of the dying by Bronnie Ware? Perched at #1, is this top regret:

I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me

I don’t want that regret when I’m on my deathbed. And I certainly don’t want my kids to have it either. So, in my case at least, I want to teach them to live… life!

I don’t want them to become a hollowed-out lifeless worker waiting to discover such a regret on their death bed when it’s too late.

And the best way to teach this to them, is to show them by example. As I said earlier, there is a point of diminishing returns once base provisioning is accomplished. Going to Philips Exeter prep school to eek out a gain over another “lesser” high school will not be as critical as nurturing one’s soul and being alive. All that does is satisfy the egos of parents who can wave that label at cocktail parties.

You see, what I realized was that even in failure, I would still teach them something invaluable. Integrity. Self-actualization. Courage. Life.

In short, I want to be their hero - and I knew working longer hours at some corporate job for more and more years wasn’t going to get me there. Instead, it would get me - and my children - to the #1 regret people have on their deathbeds. I want to break this cycle, not reinforce it.

But this extends beyond children, and this is how. Children represent responsibilities. As we age, we tend to accumulate more and more of it, with children being one of them. Now, if you ask yourself what one of the greatest responsibilities you have in life is, it’s the one you’ve had since you were born: yourself.

You must be responsible to yourself. You must hold yourself accountable.

And it is for this reason why the message of this post, while easily understood in the context of children, actually applies to us all.

You must be your own hero.

For while not everybody can become the Lionel Messi or Michael Jordan of the world, we can become the Messi or Jordan of our own stories and our own lives.

Ultimately, that is all that really matters. For you, and for your children.

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Watch the accompanying YouTube episode over here: