24. Relationship Mastery Milestones for 4-Day Work Week Apprentices

The four day work week journey, there are four stages I've identified that most people proceed through as they gain mastery. The first stage, I like to call the four day work week apprentice. This is when we focus on maximizing our life outside of work without needing to change jobs. So even though over time we might evolve eventually to being an entrepreneur or a business owner, or the next step, a four day work week worker, at some point, we want to be able to master our ability to optimize life outside of work. These things include our relationships, how we invest our time, how we invest our money, and the things we possess. Now, in any of these stages, there are certain milestones or steps you achieve where it's really confirmed that you've mastered this. In the step where we look at the relationships where that part of being a four day work week apprentice. There are 10 things I've identified. Now, you might not agree with every one of them, or you might decide to tweak them for yourself. But here's what I found that worked for me and people I know when I'm on top of things.

Now, to be really clear, I'm a human. Sometimes I'm on top of these, sometimes I'm not. But when I am on top of these, my life goes infinitely better than when I'm not. The first thing is taking about 30 minutes a day to develop and nurture your relationship with God or Spirit or whatever you happen to believe in. Now, if you say, Wait, I don't believe in that. That's okay. Maybe it's just 30 minutes to be with yourself, to be with your thoughts, however you want to look at that. But time to disconnect from the world and not be present to all a lot of the chaos and the overwhelm that a lot of experience every day. In each of these things, what I'm going to show you is rather than us just talking about it, I'm going to show you where this can be something where you decide, A, am I going to do this? B, what's the target date I'm going to set for this? Then you can track the status on it for you. If you're just listening to this, you'd be able to see there's a worksheet that goes along with this that you can download as well.

The second thing is having the time and the attention, and that's important, not just the time, but the present attention for one family gathering or event each week. Now, again, if you don't have family nearby, you might modify this. You might say your loved ones are the people who are like family to you. The third thing is time and attention, again, both necessary for one social gathering or event each week. This is extremely important if you already do have family and separate from that, you have friends or other people other than your family. If we really only focus on relying on our immediate family or a certain group of people to always be there for us and always be that means of satisfying our social needs, there can be a lot of pressure on that. So being able to have other people that are social, peers, friends, influences as well, can be extremely important. The next one, if you like to, you don't have to do this, but most people find when they have time and attention for one romantic date or event each week. I know for me, when I get time with my wife, the week goes so much better.

When we've gone a few weeks and we've not gotten to that for whatever reason, maybe because work's just getting too serious, or life's too serious, or we just couldn't find a babysitter. That's something that makes life not as enjoyable, and so we're not optimizing the time that we already have available to us. Time and attention to be fully present for family meals at least one hour a day. Now, a lot of these, I'm putting time indications on it or numbers on it to try to give you an anchor, because if I just say, well, sometimes family time, a lot of us have a tendency to let ourselves off the hook or simply not be clear in implementing that. So I'm going to suggest to you that family meals, whether it's two meals a day or half hour each or three meals for 20 minutes or one for an hour, about an hour of just time with your family, being present with them. This is one of the things that a lot of people find, especially in the Western cultures, where we can be so fast paced and so trying to achieve that we don't make time to just be present and be with each other.

And so there's a combination there. It's a little bit of managing our time, but it's also about making time for and valuing our most important relationships. Time and attention to be fully present for family members at least one hour a day outside of meals. My family would like to play board games sometimes. It seems almost so trivial, you'll say, Wait, you've played that game before. It's not about the game, it's about being present. No disrespect to television, but it's not the same as sitting in front of a TV with your family for an hour. If you also choose to do that, that's great. But in my experience, you're not going to get the same level of connection as if you're actually interacting with each other. Regular, on a monthly basis or more often, forgiveness practices to maintain your psychological emotional health and just to heal relationships. There's different ways to do this. Different religions have practices. There's different psychological tools. There's all sorts of different ways. There's a thing I learned from a teacher, Deepak Chauvin, that he just has a mantra and says, Hey, you know what? I can choose to hold on to grievances, or I can choose the positive side or some miracle behind it.

I'm going to let go of my grievances. I'm going to let go of the things I'm mad about, and I'm going to choose to look for the miracle, for the forgiveness, for the opportunity in that. And for me, going through that and saying that five to 10 times whenever I remember to do it, I don't always remember to do it. When I do, just helps me remember, okay, and I check things off. Okay, let's let it go with that one. That wasn't a big deal. That's not going to matter a year from now. That's not going to matter a day from now. Great. And just letting that out and just moving forward, very important. If we're going to look to have more time off and more time, four day work weeks and more extended time, we're going to want to put ourselves in a situation where we're enjoying our time outside of work. So this is a huge part of it. Contacting our important relationships, even if they're long distance, at least on a monthly basis to stay connected. This is one of the wonderful things that does come from social media. If you're able to connect on, let's say, Facebook or Instagram in a way that you find healthy and beneficial for you, that you can connect with people and stay in touch with people you haven't seen for years.

And being able to maintain relationships is one of the things that is very important. And if you haven't heard about that book, The Five Regrets of the Dine, and one of the regrets of the Dying was, I wish I hadn't worked so much. And another regret was, I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. And so that's such a huge piece of happiness personally and our needs as social beings. Number nine, this is so huge. And again, these are signals of mastery. So we can move towards these. It's not going to be perfect. But when you find you're spending zero time in organizations or companies that you don't respect or believe in, that's a really good sign. Now, notice I didn't say organizations or jobs that ask you to do work you don't like to do. Everybody's got to do some work they don't always like to do. But if you just don't believe in the cause in a fundamental way, or you don't respect the organization or the company, it's probably a good idea over the long run that you get out of there and you go somewhere else. And then finally, less than one hour a week with people or groups you don't wish to see.

Now, there's an asterisk next to that because sometimes you might have family connections or in laws or people that you just see. And for the sake of the family, you go see that group. And yet you might say, Well, I don't know like that person, that person. I wouldn't choose to hang out with them individually. So there's an asterisk there because, again, you might make choices or there might be certain people that you hang out with in a group because the group does something and you like the group activity, but you wouldn't choose to hang out with those individuals. Again, life is not perfect, but for the most part, you're in a situation where you're not engaged in relationships that you don't want to be in, and you're making lots of time for the relationships with the people you want to be engaged in. I hope you find that helpful, understanding these mastery milestones for your relationships. Again, we want to help you make more money in less time, do what you do best. But if after we do that, you're not enjoying your relationships outside of work, we still have work to do. Hope you find this helpful.

If you want to see the slides on this, you can go to 4dayentrepreneur. Com and get to show slides and notes. If you want to learn more about becoming a four day work week apprentice and the process of the different stages in that and other specific tools we have to help you master that, go to 4dayworkweek. Com apprentice and learn about the 4 day Work Week apprentice training program.