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How Will You Measure Your Life, by Clayton Christensen
I first read this book allllll the way back in 2015. The adults in my family went on a cruise together, and we were all supposed to read this book beforehand so that we could have meaningful discussions about the book in the evenings on the ship. This was my absolute FAVORITE part of the trip because we would talk for hours about things that really matter, and my dad (who was always the one to talk too long when we were kids) was usually the one who had to call it a night because we could have kept talking for ages. We’ve honestly never had anything quite like that experience since then.
I didn’t remember much about the book, but I had such a great experience with it the first time that I wanted to use it as the first book of 2023.
Well my friends, I was sorely disappointed 🤣 I’m not sure how we had so many amazing discussions about life and parenthood on that cruise back in 2015, because the book did NOT hit the spot for me this time around.
While I knew it wasn’t strictly a “parenting” book, I didn’t remember it being such a “business” book. It is broken into two main parts, the first about your career and the second about your relationships, but even the relationships section relied heavily on business examples! There are a few good nuggets when it comes to family life and parenting, but overall, it’s definitely not one that I would highly recommend.
That being said, the premise of the book is that, to have a good life, you first have to figure out what makes life good for YOU. Be wary of doing things just because they seem to make everyone else happy, because often those things don’t lead to happiness at all. Instead, focus on doing meaningful work and building strong relationships — then you’ll be able to live your life with joy and look back on your life with fondness.
Read on to find the tidbits I pulled from this book!
Now is the Time
“‘When our children are a bit older and begin to be interested in things that adults are interested in, then I can lift my foot off my career accelerator. That’s when I’ll focus on my family.’ Guess what. By that time, the game is already over. An investment in a child needs to have been made long before then, to provide him with the tools he needs to survive life’s challenges—even earlier than you might realize.”
I think human brains are wired to think in terms of “I’ll be happy when . . . “ or “Things will be easier when . . . “ or, as Christensen states here, “I’ll build a relationship with my kids when . . . they’re older.” We’re so quick to push things off to a later time. But we can manually override our brains and decide to work on things NOW instead of just hoping they work themselves out later.
When it comes to parent-child relationships, it can seem more difficult to build strong relationships with small children who throw tantrums and don’t yet communicate very effectively. However, just like everything in life, relationships are built little by little. If we take advantage of all the time we have with our kids, including when they’re small, we then have a better chance of maintaining that relationship as they become older children, teens, and even adults.
Of course, relationships change over time, so a parent-child relationship will be different when the child is 3 years old vs 13 years old vs 33 years old, but if we work on the relationship from the very beginning, we’ll be able to build up the relationship, just like we might add blocks to a tower.
Figure Out what Your Spouse Wants
“Yes, we can do all kinds of things for our spouse, but if we are not focused on the jobs she most needs doing, we will reap frustration and confusion in our search for happiness in that relationship. . . . Even with good intentions and deep love, we can fundamentally misunderstand each other.”
My dad has a saying (not sure where he picked it up) that the golden rule is “do unto others as you would have them to unto you,” but the platinum rule is “do unto others as THEY would have you do unto them.” That’s what this section of the book was about: If we want good spousal relationships, we can’t just do for our spouses what we would want done — instead we need to consider what they would like us to do.
If you’re familiar with the love languages of Gary Chapman, this is basically another way of saying, “love your spouse in THEIR love language.” This can be difficult, as we don’t always fluently speak the love language our partners prefer. It’s also tricky if you or your spouse are anything like me — I respond to all the love languages at different times in different circumstances, so sometimes I’m particular about what I need in the moment!
It requires effort to figure out what a spouse wants or needs, but this is the kind of effort that creates strong marriages, and strong marriages are incredibly beneficial for strong families!
Establish a Strong Family Culture
“Parents want to set [their] priorities . . . so that family members will solve problems and confront dilemmas instinctively, whether or not the parents are there guiding or observing. Kids won’t have to stop and think about what Mom or Dad wants them to do—they’ll just go about it because their family culture has dictated, ‘this is the way our family behaves.’”
Of all the things this book talks about, this is the one topic I specifically recalled from those cruise discussions with my family (and unfortunately for me, I didn’t even feel like this section was quite as good as I remembered it 🤪).
When I think of family culture, I think of the really solid things you take with you from childhood; the things you’d easily be able to say if someone asked you what your family growing up was like, or what was important to your family when you were growing up. For my family of origin, I could quickly say that the things that we focused on the most were loving and serving God, working hard, and traveling and having fun together.
To establish that kind of culture, my parents had to show with their actions and house rules that those things were priorities. We went to church every Sunday and had regular gospel discussions, family scripture study, and prayers; we were expected to contribute to the order of the home with daily and weekly chores; and we went on summer vacations, watched a lot of movies together, swam together, and went to “theater in the park” most summers.
One important thing to remember when trying to establish any type of culture in your family is that your actions need to align with your priorities. You can’t SAY you want a culture of service and then never serve each other or others.
Another important thing is that you can’t have 100 top priorities, so by choosing just 3-5 that are MOST important to you, you can more clearly focus your family’s efforts on establishing a culture that aligns with those things.
And finally, having a family culture doesn’t mean kids will always be cooperative — they’re still humans! So, for instance, if you want a culture of respect, that doesn’t mean your kids will automatically always show you respect — you have to work to establish that culture! One way to do so is to *respectfully* remind your child who is showing disrespect that “In our family we show respect. Please [use a respectful tone of voice with me, even when you’re mad at me.]” Over time, and with repetition, is where culture comes from.
The book had other good takeaways as well, but overall I felt like the takeaways were kind of simple and not as clearly written out as they are in other parenting books. It’s not a BAD book, but definitely not my favorite.
Next month’s book is a re-read for me, too, but I read it more recently (just one year ago) and absolutely LOVED it. Hopefully you’ll love it, too! I’d love for you to join me in reading Hunt, Gather, Parent, by Michaeleen Doucleff.
And check out this post to see all the other books we’re reading this year!