What To Do When Your Family Doesn't Support Your Vision
Host: Isaac Mashman · February 21, 2022 · Episode 93 · 21 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited for names and terms. Wording can differ slightly from what was said; the episode itself is the record.
to Chase the Vision of Isaac no matter what you are trying to do to convince them, just says you are not doing anything worthwhile. Maybe they don't explicitly say it to your face, but you can sense it. You can tell it in their voice. Or maybe you can tell that they would have rather you went to college or they would have rather you took and chose a different career path. Or they would have rather you took a different position in a different place. And I want to be empathetic in this episode. I want to have a degree of empathy for all of you, because at the end of the day, I've been in this situation before, but I also have to be 100% honest, and sometimes that honesty has to come across with a sense of ruthlessness, with the sense of the opposite of empathy, right?
No empathy. And look, I get it. It sucks. Your family doesn't believe in you. You don't have things going on. You're like, man, this is rough. This is horrible. It really is. It really is. And I'm not here telling you to dismiss your emotions, but I am here to tell you that at the end of the day, you're the person who are living your life. And no matter what situation you are in currently, you're in that situation because of you. And so whenever your family is telling you that you are a complete failure, you need to examine your life and say, Hey, am I in a situation that could be better?
Am I not doing the things that I know I should be doing? You need to be aware of where you are at at all times and whether or not you are performing optimally.
But if you are pursuing something that you are 100% certain about, that you absolutely know that you are going to succeed. And that's the kind of energy, that's the kind of mentality that you really have to have pursuing anything in life. This aggressive, psychotic idea that I will become successful. This is going to work. And then you take that feeling, you take that emotion, you harness it, and then you run after it, and you attack that goal. There isn't some of this, you know, you're dipping your toes in the water. It's like you're jumping right in. And that's the mentality that it takes. And whenever you share that mentality with your family, you're going to get backlash.
And this isn't just about family, but it could be about friends. But I do want to keep the conversation specific towards family because I would tell you to handle friends a lot different, right?
friends you can cut off, friends you can completely remove from your life. But family, there's something about it in our human nature that makes it a little bit more difficult to handle. It makes it a little bit more difficult to kind of deal with because they're blood or they're people that you've shared decades of life experience with. Your parents raised you from the infancy, right? From the moment you were born, you have this connection with your mom. You have this connection with your father. You have this connection with your grandparents or with your, you know, aunts and uncles and cousins. And it's just this inherent human nature and this human connection that is inexplicable.
And so it is very thin ice whenever you're having this conversation, whenever you're like, you know, look, mom, dad, like, this is what I got going on. I really want to do this. And they're like, why would you do that? There's no money to be made here. It just, it's depressing. It's earth, Shattering, it crushes your dreams, it crushes your vision, it crushes the motivation that you had at that moment and it really creates the sense of, wow, I have to do this knowing that my family doesn't believe in me or they don't believe in what I have going on.
You know, and although they do believe in you, you're going to automatically take it in the heat of the moment and believe and take it and assume that they don't believe in you. When in actuality, they might not believe in what you are pursuing. Yes, your family is really rough. There are families like that. I can think of people that I've met and people that I know whose families would just completely be so biased, so cold to external opinions and so set in their stubborn ways that no matter what you say or what you do, can never convince them to think otherwise. The people who you could literally come to and say, Mom, I made a million dollars and she'd be like, I still wish you went to college, right? And some situations and some families are like that.
And it's unfortunate. But that's why you have to be certain in your own vision and certain in what you are doing. And have this level of belief, have this degree of understanding that, hey, it doesn't matter if my parents don't support me. Yeah, sure, it sucks. It's horrible. But I'm going to do it anyway. I'm going to do it because I want to do it. I'm going to do it not necessarily out of spite. And I'm not here to say to completely walk away from that feeling of spite and almost a sense of like anger because I think that there can be strength in that emotion.
But I'm also not here to tell you to lean into it and be like, Oh, I'm dismissing this emotion and all this other stuff. Like there isn't really a healthy ground here. That's the ironic thing. I truthfully do not believe that there is any way to healthy or healthily address the situation.
You have the one area that's leaning into this anger and being motivated by spite and you have the other emotion that's leaning into what they want and not even doing it. Or there's this third, this, this so-called middle ground where you're, you're like, it's okay, mom. It's okay, dad. You guys can completely shit on my dreams and it's okay. I'm still going to pursue it. Right? Is that really going to work? Is that really going to be an emotion that's going through your head? You're either going to say, I'm going to give in to you or I'm going to do the opposite because I have faith in myself.
really isn't room for that middle ground in that conversation. I remember when I was getting going and I literally was one SAT test away from a four-eyed scholarship to Florida State and to University of Central Florida and Florida State really doesn't have a super high acceptance rate. I think it was like 33 percent whereas a lot of the colleges, other people in my school were going to have like a 70 or 80 percent like I got accepted to Florida State. I could have got a four-eyed scholarship through the Bright Futures program.
I was an excellent student. I had all straight A's pretty much my entire academic career minus B on very, very rare occasions and a C once in my life. And it was the end of the world of how to go get tutoring. I'm not saying this to Bragg, but I'm saying this to say, Hey, look, I turned down going to college and going and getting a degree to say, Hey, I'm jumping into jumping straight in business. Now, what worked for me might not work for you. What worked for me might work for you. for you to find out or not find out. But I remember going to my guidance counselor and I said, Hey, I'm not going to college and he looked at me. He's kind of like, what, what, what do you mean? You're not going to college. I'm like, I'm not going. I'm pursuing business.
And I didn't necessarily see disappointment in his face. I just saw like this blink of expression. And then it was a very tumultuous time in my life. My parents, you know, my mom and my stepdad, they definitely weren't particularly fond of my decision either because I worked to this entire time to go to college and to get a degree. My mom sacrificed a lot for me to go and get a degree. And this is the other thing. There are people in your life and people in your family who have made sacrifices, which adds an additional layer of emotion to this conversation. is a rough situation to be in because in my case, I was saying, Mom, I appreciate you. I love you and I respect all your hard work and all your sacrifices, but I'm not going to college.
Literally everything you did this for. I'm not, I'm not doing it. And that in my mind, I was motivated by spite saying, you know what? You guys are not supporting me and I'm going and I'm doing my own thing. But I also had this thing in the back of my mind saying, you know what? This is all the more reason for me to win to kind of say, Hey, your sacrifices were worth it. That is when you can be motivated by this in a healthy way, saying, look, I'm going to prove it to you anyway and say that your faith was not misplaced. Right? Again, going back to they didn't have a lack of faith in you.
They had a lack of faith in what you were doing. You make up for that lack of faith by having your faith in what you are pursuing and in your own vision. You can't always get that same emotion across to the person who who is sitting across from you.
You can't always have that same vision. Now, great leaders and organizations can get this vision and adopted by an entire organization, but this isn't business, this is life, this is family, this is relationships, this is blood, this is a lot deeper than a business organization and growing a business and offering solutions and whatnot of the matter of the subject. And so I knew that I needed to go all in and I needed to make this work. I didn't know when it was going to work. I had the idea and the assumption that it would work immediately within the first 12 months of me graduating. Is that how it worked out?
No. Did my vision ever change? Absolutely not. I still knew that I was going to do it. That I was going to continue on this path no matter the sacrifice, no matter what.
And that was it, right? That was it. It wasn't me going to give up after a couple of years and say, I'm going to college and me sacrificing that scholarship. Now not only did my mom sacrifice things to give me that time as a single mom until the point that she remarried, but now I had something on the table that I was sacrificing. I was sacrificing my academic career and performance up until that point and I was walking away from that degree. That was how deep I had to believe in what I was doing. I really want you to understand that you have to have that same level of belief and commitment to what you are pursuing as well.
Now, that doesn't mean that your belief can never be misplaced and maybe you change, you know, visions, you pivot a little bit, you go from one business to another business. But at the end, that idea of financial freedom or independence, that idea of being wealthy, that idea of traveling private, that idea of owning the Rolex, that idea of speaking on stages and helping people from all around the world, that never changes. But the vehicle in order to pursue and achieve that, that can very well change throughout your life and throughout your own progressive journey.
And as you're growing, you're going to be, you know, changing. And as you change, you need to keep up with your current idea and what you really know you should be doing. And so if you're in a place right now to where your family is saying, Hey, I think that this is the wrong decision. The best thing you can do is to keep that relationship alive in a modest way. You can't expect them to support you. You can't expect them to go and anytime you talk to them about your business, they're going to be like, that's a great job, Johnny, because they don't understand it.
They don't understand what's going on in your head. They don't understand your vision. Chances are that they are the ones who pursued college or maybe they're the ones who worked in a job for 20 or 30 or 40 years, or maybe you're coming from an immigrant family and the only way for you to become successful in your parents' eyes at this current situation, current moment in time is by pursuing college, by pursuing that higher education.
And what many people don't understand and what many parents fail to realize is that you can pursue a higher degree of education by being in the real world than by ever going to college. You could put me in a room with anybody who went to college for public relations or for marketing or for branding and chances are I could probably rip every single one of them a part because I have real world experience. I've closed clients. I've seen results. I've gotten results. It's not textbook. It's real. It's real world experience. And so the best thing that you can do is to keep your relationship with your family in a very cordial way of saying, Hey, I respect that you don't respect me and don't understand it.
I still want you to be my father. I want you to be my mom. I want want you want this relationship to really not change. Now understand that your relationship will change because now the things that you were previously discussing in your college aspirations are probably not going to be received in the same manner. They're not. And that that has to be okay with you deep down. It probably won't. But on the surface and what you are going and doing you have to be okay with it. You have to try to convince yourself that it's okay and that you're still focused on your own journey because if you really go and dive deep into that emotion and say, I know they don't believe me.
You're going to be so unmotivated every single day. I'm not telling you to dismiss your emotions or to mask yourself into wear this little mask, but there is no denying that you were built for something different and that what you were built for you are growing and you are chasing and you are really getting after. And so at the dinner table, instead of bringing up your business, bring up something else in conversation, although it's extremely difficult to, and to have that small talk and talk about the weather and talk about what's going on and how the friends are and how the family is and everything that's going on.
I would really recommend that you do that because if not you're going to be like that outsider and now it's going to come across as Braggadocious and it's going to create this animosity and this drama. Now once you get to a point of success and to where you're doing great things you're going to notice that when you do bring up your successes and one-on-one conversations, let's say with a parent or a grandparent or a cousin or something like that, it can become difficult to actually have that talk and to have and say, hey, you know, I've been doing X, Y and Z and you're just going to come across and you're going to think to yourself, about, wow, maybe I have done a lot.
Maybe I have done a lot and you're not going to say this, but these are the thoughts that you're thinking, you're going to say, wow, now, I know I'm not bragging but it sounds like I'm bragging because I'm just listing off my accomplishments.
And you're going to say, wow, I'm not trying to do this but the facts speak for themselves. And then at that point, you're going to realize that what you have been telling your family has come to fruition that although you might not be flying private yet or you might not be wearing that Rolex or speaking on stages in front of in a stadium setting, you've still accomplished a lot of what you were originally pursuing. A lot of what you made those sacrifices for have now become your reality. And that's a great feeling because that increases your faith. And then on top of that, leaning into that negative, darker emotion, you're now going to realize that the people around you are not changing themselves.
And that's a sad thing to address. It's a sad thing to realize because now as you are growing and evolving and getting better and focusing on personal development and doing things that have never been done in your family ever before, you're going to be advancing and progressing and everybody else is going to be staying stagnant and therefore digressing. They're going to be going back farther and down and down and worse and worse and worse. It's like going back to your families and their health has continued to deteriorate and they haven't done anything to change it. They're still smoking. They're still not working out.
They're still taking a bunch of salt. They're not working out or applying to as many jobs as you know they should be. And look, as much as you want their situation to change because you love them, you also have to realize that you cannot get them to change. The best thing you can do is to be a positive influence from a distance, from a healthy, medium distance. In my case, I completely was like, I'm going across the United States, I'm going across the world and there's nothing you can do to stop me and my relationships really suffered. I would do it all over again a million times because I believe that it really grew and shaped me and it helped my family understand just how serious I was. But at the same time, if you can go and maintain that healthy relationship and I say healthy, healthy is obviously subjective right here.
And if you're a therapist or a family psychiatrist right about now, I don't want you to hit my line and say, what the hell are you talking about? Look, I'm speaking from experience and from what I've been in and what I have personally seen other people pursue. This might not be correct in the form of therapy or healing or addressing trauma. But what I can say is this isn't anything fufu, this isn't anything that I don't believe in and I wouldn't say it if I didn't believe in it. But I sacrificed those relationships and I would do it again. And then afterwards I started to rebuild those relationships But it was extremely difficult to come to terms that every time I called and checked up on people, nothing was different. Everything would change. Maybe you've got a different job that was still paying you the same or maybe you got into a better situation.
But that's the thing. Their vision and what they are comfortable with is nothing comparable to your own vision and to what you are comfortable with. You have to be okay with sharing a different vision as difficult as it might be. But that's the brilliant thing about this life. Imagine if you had to share that vision. See, you are the person who is breaking those generational curses and doing something different. You are thinking differently. And therefore, by thinking differently, you will get different results. You are not going to be the same as your family. Therefore, you will be growing. Whereas everybody else will be staying stagnant.
You are going to be that oddball who is evolving and becoming better each and every freaking day and your family won't understand you. They never will understand you. But what I can say is by going up to your family and saying, Hey, I'm buying something as simple as I'm buying the gas. Hey, can you pick me up from the airport and you buy lunch? Hey, can you go and do this? And you ask them to do something small for you. And from there, you do something big for them. You know, being able to come home and say, Hey, I got the bills. Don't worry about it.
Hey, I got this or hand your family a check or hand your family a hundred bucks or be that uncle who comes back on Christmas or You know on on holidays or birthdays and and brings a cool gift and shows up on reunions and says hey I can treat you guys out and I'm not saying to be this materialistic Family member that only shows up on the holidays and when there is an exchange of goods Don't be like that But I'm just saying that throughout your life and as you're building up your relationship just like you would be building your relationship if you would have pursued what your family thought was ideal for you.
You're still going to be building that relationship. But now you have the benefit of having wealth or having fulfillment or having, you know, your desires meant. There's nothing wrong with chasing desires that are healthy that do not trample on other people around you. Now, you are very simply doing something that you are excited about, doing something that you really enjoy. When I think about my business, I'm like, wow, like this is cool. And that motivation isn't consistent. It's not 24 seven. There are moments where it disappears. But I do know that when I come home and I visit family, I'm like, I did a lot of what I'm telling you to do.
And then you'll come and reconnect with somebody from your past, maybe a friend that you haven't talked to that you dropped contact with or somebody that was an acquaintance or knew you back in the day.
And they're going to be like, man, every single thing that you told me you were going to do, you did. And even if they didn't believe in you, they can't deny the facts that you said, I was going to do it and then you pursued it and you did it and you accomplished it. And then at as time goes on and as you know, things really progress, you're going to continue developing this belief and this idea that what you did was worth it, that that sacrifice was worth it. And then there might become a point where your mom or your family member comes to terms with what you have done.
says you know what I might not have believed in him back then but I'm glad he believed in himself and my sacrifices were worth it because now he's in this point.
Now he is in this point.