Evan Carmichael explains how to handle family members who discourage your dreams. He shares his own experience cutting contact with a negative relative and tells the story of Akio Morita, who left his family business to found Sony. Set boundaries or distance yourself from toxic family if they drain your energy and block your goals.
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What do you do if little man is your relative? So I got a great question from one of my YouTube viewers— love you guys— Samir, who wrote in to say, amazing videos, thanks Evan. I have a question for you. What if the little man is your relative? In my life, I have many little men, but these little men are my relatives and I love them so much. What should I do? So Samir, you know, I'm gonna be honest with you, this question caused me a lot of Stress. Usually when I get a question, I can get in front of the camera and I just start answering. This one I had to kind of walk around and think about it for a while. For those of you watching, you know, little man— the little man is the person in your life who tells you you can't make it, who tells you that you're not good enough, who tells you to give up on your dream, who tells you to do something else. And you can't listen to little man, you know, you got to do your own thing. And we all have these little men in our lives who hold us back from doing the things that we want to do. What do you do when it's a family member? I'm kind of hesitant to jump on that kind of personal advice. I don't want the guilt. I don't want the guilt. Maybe I'll just share my story. I think first of all you have to determine who family is, if it's your spouse or not. I think the person who you spend the rest of your life with should be somebody who believes in what you're doing, who supports you even if he or she doesn't understand what you're doing. We should be supportive of the people who we're married to, right? So hopefully the little man is not the person who you're seeing, girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, wife. What do you do with the other members in your family? You know, there's one person in my life— I'm fortunate that my close family are all very supportive of what I do. My parents, my siblings, you know, my mom schedules in her calendar every day I have a radio show and she listens in. And, you know, that's great to have that kind of support. I know a lot of people don't necessarily have that support growing up. There is one person in kind of my extended family who is just negative and as I grew up caused tons of grief, not only for me but for everybody in the family. And so I've had to write this person off from my life. And if there's family functions, you know, I avoid them if I know that this person is going to be there. And it causes a little bit of scheduling issues, I guess, but I'm so much happier, right? Like, I don't need more negativity in my life. Running a business is hard enough. I don't need more frustrations. And in general, I eliminate people from my life who are the little man. I eliminate the people who are just negative. You know, there are people who are just just negative. They suck your time, they suck your energy, they make you, you know, you leave a conversation with them feeling bad about yourself. I don't want to be surrounded by those people. You know, friends are easier, or friends are easier to get rid of, I guess, than family members. But there is one person in my life who I've had to, in my family, extended family, we've had to do that with. You know, right or wrong decision, I'm a happier person as a result of it. I have less negativity in my life because of it, so I'm comfortable with that decision. You know, I don't want to tell you— I don't know who the little man is in your life. I don't want to tell you don't talk to your parents because they're the little man in your life. This is a personal choice you have to make for yourself. But what I, what I believe in, and maybe this helps, is that you have to live your own life. You're living your life for you. You can't live somebody else's dream. You can't live somebody else's life. You know, if your parents want you to be a doctor and you want to be an entrepreneur, my view is you got to do your thing. Like, you're never going to be happy living somebody else's life. It's just— it's somebody else's dream. It's not your dream. You have to do what excites you, what gets you excited, right? And there's a point as we grow up where, you know, we're trying to please our parents all the time, and, you know, through school. And then there's a point where you break off and you decide, like, I'm ready to become my own person. That may mean going against what your family wants you to do. You know, I think of— I think of— it's harder in some cultures. I think of the founder of Sony, Akio Morita. His family had been in the same business for multiple generations, and they just expected him to take over, and he didn't want to do that. He's like, I don't like this business. I don't want to be in this family business. It's not for me. I want to do my own thing. I want to start my own company. And they, you know, didn't agree and put huge pressure on him. And that was more the, you know, the culture, and I guess Japanese culture at the time. And he still had the courage to go and do his own thing, and he built Sony, built one of the biggest brands in the world. And if he had just done, you know, his family business, he wouldn't be happy, wouldn't be successful, and he'd always be thinking, like, what if I went out and did my own thing? How much happier, how much more successful would I be? You gotta follow your heart. You know, you gotta do what you believe is the best thing for you, even if that means upsetting people in your family who think a different path is better for you. How you maintain the relationship, if you choose to maintain the relationship or not, if there's a break, if it's not talking about your business, I don't know. Like, I'm not the expert on that, but I sincerely hope that that you don't let other people's dreams and other people's visions for what they think you should do become your reality. And instead, I want you to focus on what you feel in your heart is the right thing to do. Do that first. Focus on that big thing first and then line everything up afterwards. That's the most important decision. And then how everything else follows, you have to figure it out. I don't know if that helps. Maybe not the most concrete video I've ever put together, and it did cause me a lot of stress and thinking about it, but those are my thoughts, so believe. For those of you watching, like the video, thumbs up below. Let me know what you think, leave a comment. Your comments, I love your comments. They make me— they're the fuel for me every day, so please comment below. You have a question, put it in the comments too, and subscribe to the channel by clicking on my face. If you want to see more videos like this. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll see you soon.
