What success could look like – living out our values (w/ Jim Sheils)

Jim Sheils and his seminar program Family Board Meeting give parents strategies for forming closer relationships with their kids and a framework for teaching them how to lead fulfilling lives. Their goal is to “end the epidemic of entrepreneurs with broken homes.”

As one would expect, Jim practices these strategies with his own family. That means his kids have benefitted from unique topics of conversation and values in their upbringing that most other kids never get the chance to experience, neither in the home nor the classroom.

Jim Sheils believes there are three critical life skills that most schools fail to teach adequately. They are Financial Intelligence, Personal Development and Relationship Skills. Those areas make up Family Board Meeting’s Life Education Framework. He believes that “core curriculum” is the essential foundation of a happy and fulfilling life.

When Jim says that’s what he wants for his kids, he actually means it. Of course, like most parents, Jim wants his kids to be “successful in a monetary sense,” but he also wants them to be “passionate about life and content in the path they have chosen.”

His commitment to setting his kids up for success beyond financial abundance means he has had to take their education into his own hands. “I don't know why we just consistently subcontract that to the government or to fancy institutions, our greatest assets, our children and their education,” he explains. “I think it's our job to step in.”

In the Family Board Meeting model, this looks like, well, a board meeting with your family. Jim Sheils’s website explains that a family board meeting consists of “one parent, one child, four hours minimum, with no technology.” This intentional time together is a chance to instill the Life Education Framework lessons and simply get to know each other on an individual basis.

This practice has unlocked a closeness and an openness between him and his kids. His kids are regularly given a space to talk about their personal projects and aspirations. In these conversations, Jim and his wife always reinforce, “‘Don't worry about what I want. That's going to mess things up if I try to project what I want onto you. Don't worry about what I want. What do you want? Think about what you want.’”

Jim’s son Alden, 18, wants to start a charter fishing business. Alden has been an avid fisher since he was in his early teens, so his dream enterprise fits their recipe for fulfillment. Jim tells his son, the three most important questions to consider when choosing a path are “What does the world need? What are you naturally good at, and what do you enjoy?”

This thinking is the opposite of what Jim (and many other people) grew up hearing. Jim grew up hearing, “Get something safe” with a high income, like a career as a doctor. Jim “always thought: if you became a doctor, everything is fixed. Obviously, now working with a lot of doctors in real estate investment, I know that's not true because… if you're uncomfortable in your own skin, your relationships are in the toilet, and you're really bad with money, you're probably not living your most fulfilling life.” Even doctors need financial intelligence, personal development and interpersonal relationship skills in order to thrive. “That foundation is irreplaceable,” Jim acknowledges.

“That foundation is irreplaceable,” Jim acknowledges.

To be honest, I’m jealous of the environment Jim’s kids have grown up in. I can’t remember having the opportunity to discuss and develop my own version of success. The way my family and other influences talked about success, it seemed like a fixed idea. It looked like financial abundance, stability and status. These expectations were never stated outright, but they were reinforced by what I observed and heard growing up.

Growing up, when I would tell people what I wanted to study in school or what career I envisioned, I would often hear back something like, “But what are you gonna do with that?” Then “Why don’t you try [whatever else]? That will pay better.” The message I received was that my passion and my unique ability were inadequate to be successful. They might as well have said, “Why don’t you become a different person? That will pay better.”

Almost always in those conversations, the preeminent consideration on everybody’s mind was how much money can be made. The implication was that the other aspects of life would sort themselves out as long as the money flows with abundance. I now know as well as Jim Sheils that nothing is further from the truth, but it is hard not to inherit a money-based measure of success when that is all you hear and see.

...it is hard not to inherit a money-based measure of success when that is all you hear and see.

In contrast, when Jim creates a space for his children to envision their own version of success, “That's when the power and the creativity really starts,” he says. All they have to do is fit together the three pieces of the puzzle: What do I like? What am I good at, and what does the world need? Within those guidelines, they get to determine exactly why the world will reward them for doing something they themselves find rewarding; they must first acknowledge their own strengths, then figure out how to prove their value to the world. There is no sacrifice in this formula, only creativity.

Without the benefit of open conversations about success, children are left to inherit whatever vision of success they see and hear the most. In American culture, the popular vision of success is characterized by flashiness, opulence and excess. So those are what the dreams of the people look like, and how they measure themselves against one another.

That popular vision of success has been dominant for generations, and it continues to be passed on without question. It is unsustainable. There are things that are not worth sacrificing for money. They tend to be the most intangible aspects of life – relationships, leisure, health, time – yet they have very real consequences when neglected, both for ourselves and for others.

We know there is so much more to living a fulfilled and meaningful life, but we do not discuss it with each other. Can we be more intentional about creating a collective vision of success that is human and sustainable?

For Alden and his siblings, how will they measure their success? “I think success to them looks like living out our core values,” says Jim Sheils. “We talk a lot about core values. We've designed them as a family. We call that our spaghetti strainer. Your values are the strainer, and everything else runs through it, and that's how you make your decisions.”

Alden is an eighteen year old who strives to live out his own and his family’s values. That is radical. He doesn’t want to be a millionaire by age 25, or a CEO. That sort of old-school thinking fails to acknowledge the other aspects of life that exist beyond work and career. People who only have those sorts of ambitions rarely ever ask, “What happens after I become a millionaire?” or “What will I need to sacrifice to be a CEO?”

Alden may achieve both those things and much more, but if he is able to derive his success from the fulfillment of his personal values he will find success long before and long after he has achieved them. Indeed, he already has.

Resources

• Jim's book The Family Board Meeting: You Have 18 Summers to Create Lasting Connection with Your Children (on Amazon)

• For developing your personal values and mission statement, I recommend The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey

About Jim Sheils

Jim’s firm, 18 Summers, specializes in retreats, workshops and private consulting for entrepreneurs looking to strengthen their family lives while still succeeding in business. He has a best-selling book on Amazon, “The Family Board Meeting.” Additionally, Jim is a general partner in SI Asset Management, a company that specializes in private fund offerings for accredited investors based around the highly lucrative Build-to-Rent niche. He also owns a private real estate investment company, Jax Wealth Investments. Jim is an avid surfer and enjoys traveling with family and friends, especially his beautiful wife Jamie and their four children, Alden, Leland, Maggie and Sammy.

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