You Must Build the House Before You Can Live In It

You Must Build the House Before You Can Live In It - This summer, I spent a few weeks with my parents and their new puppy, Arthur, who is the sweetest, smartest, and most mischievous cutie you’ll ever meet. Every afternoon, I’d put out a tray of snacks before dinner, and every day, Arthur got into it, no matter how inaccessible I tried to make it or how clearly I gave my parents a heads-up that food was out and they needed to supervise Arthur. They would get into a conversation or a heated game of dominoes, and before we knew it, Arthur was covered in hummus again.

You Must Build the House Before You Can Live In It

A few weeks later, I had a session with a client I’m doing business coaching with (I do non-parent kinds of coaching too - fun fact!), and she mentioned how much time and work it was taking to get her business off the ground. She knew it was par for the course, but she was working much longer hours than she had envisioned for her business in the long run. It all reminds me of the idea: 

We must build the house before we can live in the house. 

Someday, Arthur will be a responsible grown-up dog, and my parents can play dominoes and eat snacks without watching him like a hawk. And someday, my client will have a thriving business that requires only 25 hours of work per week. But these situations have to be built before we can enjoy them. And if we don’t do that building now, we’ll never have that house to live in.

How's Your House

Most days, I feel like I am enjoying the house I built. My kids are awesome, truly wonderful humans making great choices and heading in beautiful directions. Most importantly, my relationships with them are solid and incredible. And these are all things I worked tirelessly to build. I put in the work, and now I get to sit around playing dominoes and eating snacks (most days).

Living in the House We Built

But what I also realized as I wrote this today is that we are ALL currently living in the houses we’ve built. We build them with intention or with avoidance, with introspection or denial, with growth or with stagnation…but we have all built the house we currently live in, and we are all currently building the house we’ll occupy in the future. So my question for you is: 

What have you built so far? What are you building now? 

If there is any reason to lock in and invest the time and energy it takes to have the life we want to have with our children, this must be it, right? I can’t think of anything more important and more rewarding than this kind of building project! Reach out today for a Discovery Call to see how to make it happen for yourself.

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