In the early days of his business, Medina had promised himself that he was going to be around for his kids. His own father, a career military man, "was always a good provider but was never there for us as we were growing up," Medina says. "No matter how often I would say to myself that I wasn't going to be like my dad, I was obsessed at being a good provider. The only difference was that I was home every night."
By the time the Medina boys were in high school, though, their father realized that time was racing past—and taking his plans for his family life with it. He had to make some tough decisions quickly, and he did—all of them geared toward separating work from home and Medina from work.
"The first thing we did was move the office out of the house into a building we purchased. The second big thing was that I cut my hours drastically and initiated a 6:00 curfew on myself." The result: Medina is now home for dinner almost every night. He rarely works in the evening or on weekends. And he is now in the second of a five-year program of selling his company and being completely out of it by 2009.
But even if the sale doesn't work out for some reason, "my role will be greatly reduced over the next three years," he says. He seems as determined to spend time with his family now as he was to build his company 25 years ago.
In fact, the entire family just returned from a cruise. "We got along great!" Medina reports, pleased with a vacation that could have been a week of arguing with bored teenagers who would have preferred to stay home with their friends. "I feel blessed every day that I still have a family and a business, because I was close—very close—to losing both."
Medina found his blueprints in time to build the life balance he needed. Check your own personal blueprint again. See where you are and measure it against where you want to be. If the difference is significant, you may be suffering from a life out of balance. Without attention to life's blueprints and careful construction of the life they outline, the most beautifully drawn plans in the world are worthless.
Judith A. Stock is a freelance writer living in Granada Hills, Calif.
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