Evan Carmichael says his happiness rests on three pillars: alone time, family, and business. He keeps two friend groups—entrepreneurs for ambition, a salsa community for relaxation—and shifts between them based on his energy. A supportive partner who complements your Type A personality matters most.
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How to balance work with relaxation. I got a great question from one of my newsletter readers, Jacob, who wrote in to say, hey Evan, it seems like you have a strong Type A personality, a real achiever who works hard, probably sacrifices social life, relaxation for work study like me. I feel like a lot of people that I'm around don't really understand this personality type. It sometimes leaves me discouraged. Discouraged. If you ever felt this way, do you have any personal advice to embracing this personality type or balancing work with relaxation? Thanks for doing what you do, bro. Thank you, Jacob. This is a great question. I don't know if I've got it all figured out. Uh, you know, you asked me a business question. I'm more online, but, but let me answer it the best way that I know how. Okay. Uh, I find that for me to be happy, I need my own personal time to relax and do my own thing. I need family time, and then I need my business time. And if any of those gets too out of whack, I get unhappy. So if I'm spending too much time in my business and I don't have my family time or personal alone time, then I feel like I need, I need that break. You know, if I'm on vacation and we're just sitting there on a beach, I get fidgety, I get agitated. I wanna— I have to think about business, you know, I miss my business too much. Or if I'm alone too much and I miss the other things. So there has to be a balance for me, and there's a range, you know, it's not like the same amount. I need 10 hours of family time or whatever it is, but there's a range, and I start to— I have to listen to, I guess, my body, myself, and figure out when something is too far out of whack, I gotta change it. What I would say is it's important for the main person in your life. So I don't know if you're married or have a girlfriend or whatever, that person has to be understanding and feel kind of the same way as you do. Has to be understanding of your personality and support what you're doing. From, you know, relationships that I've seen, typically if you're the strong Type A personality, usually your partner isn't, right? Because if you are both strong Type A personalities, you're always fighting. I, you know, I'm not the relationship expert, so I'm sure there's more questions I'm not qualified to talk about that, but, but, you know, I believe the person that you're with, your life partner, should be somebody who supports what you're doing and fits well with your personality. Otherwise, you're in for a lifetime of fighting. What I found helps me in terms of the people— so you're asking about surrounding yourself with people who support you. I have two groups of friends, and there's very little overlap between them. I have one group of friends that are my entrepreneur friends, and we meet up, we talk about business, we're goal-oriented, we're focused, we're driven, we're let's go achieve this, you know, let's do something great. And I have a group of— I call mastermind group. We meet every month. There's two groups, and we sit down, we push each other, be better, be stronger, do something amazing, rah rah rah, you know, like getting the blood pumping. Massive achievement. That's your Type A, you know, action right there. And then I have my other group of friends that are salsa friends, and I'll spend like 20 hours a week in the salsa community dancing, DJing, teaching sometimes. And salsa people are the exact opposite, at least here. They're— can I say lazier? They're lazier. They're not as responsible. They're more chill, laid-back. Don't show up to things on time, which is the complete opposite of my entrepreneur friends. And so I balance it. You know, some weeks I'm spending a lot more time doing salsa when I just need a break, I need to relax, I don't want to think about all the craziness that is the business. And I hang out with those people, the salsa people, who just, you know, just fun time and relax. And then, you know, if I'm feeling too relaxed and I need to go do something and I need some energy, I'll go hang out with my entrepreneur friends and we'll talk business and we'll get excited and we'll help each other's companies and we'll get new things that we can— even if I'm talking about it, I'm speaking faster, I'm more energetic. And so I think you need to balance those out and, you know, you have to find whatever ratio works for you. You know, the people you surround yourself with, you have a choice. These are your friends, you have a choice of who you hang out with. It sounds like you have a lot of the people who are the chill, laid-back kind of people, so you have that covered off. You may want to find people who are more ambitious, ready to go, you know, drive our goal forward, make things happen kind of people. And you can either form your own group or look for an existing group to join. Because getting that other group to kind of motivate you and surround yourself with will help you cover off that side of your personality. And then when you're ready to chill and relax, you have your other friends to help you out too. Anyway, that's how it works for me. Hopefully that helped you, Jacob. Great question. For those of you watching, you like the video, give it a thumbs up below. Let me know what you think. How do you handle that question? How do you balance your work and your leisure activities? Leave a comment below. You have a question for me, leave it below too. I'll make a video response just like this. And click on my face to subscribe to the channel and see more videos like this. Thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it, and I'll see you soon.
