Pride

Pride controls a lot of what I do...

On one hand that's a good thing. Pride is what drives me to make the best designs I can. It motivates me to push ahead to get things I want and to succeed in goals I've set for myself. Pride has helped me each time someone told me "You can't do that" or "You're not good enough", where I turned the table on them later on and there's no better feeling of pride to be able to kick it back in their faces and say "STFU I did it!"

On the other hand, I know pride has driven me to have ignored good advice. It's allowed me to create stress and pressure for myself that needn't be there. I know it's one of the 7 deadly sins, in general it's probably a more negative trait then a positive one.

I guess it depends how I handle it. Somehow I have to steer it more towards using pride as a motivator rather then a crutch.

Why did I bring this up? Well.....when I consider that my girl may move to Hawaii someday, there's a strong likelihood she may make more money then me. She's awesome with her money and there's no doubt she's in better control of her retirement situation then I am. Her career as a nurse is in super high demand right now so it's like she can take her pick.

While I know this is a new day where it's more and more common where sometimes it's the wife that can be the main breadwinner for a family, somehow there's still the male pride deep inside that makes this situation feel very emasculating. You feel like somehow the order of the universe has flipped and as they said on one of those Seinfeld episodes -- "She's got hand". (Again with the Seinfeld references?)

Now it's not one of the stupid male things. All my life I've worked with strong and intelligent women who taught me a lot of what I know in business and life. But I guess what I'm saying is that when you consider getting together with someone, you want to make him or her feel proud of you. Not like they're doing you a favor.

I guess I can either decide to shell up and cry about it. Or let this drive me to build my business to succeed to the point where this is not an issue. I don't see that as an impossibility...but it's certainly going to take a lot of work and dedication. The good thing is that she's driven me to look more at retirement planning and investing. I just have to suck it up and allow the fact she's been better at these things then I am.