Your Job Isn't Happiness
Inspired by Alisa Cohn episode
Alisa Cohn: Your job isn't to make employees happy, it's to drive results. Same for parenting—you're not here for 24/7 happiness.
Alisa tells new leaders who desperately want everyone to love them: That's not your job. Your job is to drive results. If you avoid difficult feedback because you don't want to upset people, you'll end up with a dysfunctional team.
New parents fall into the exact same trap. You just want your kid to be happy. So you give them a snack even though dinner's in ten minutes. You skip the nap so they don't cry in the car. You let them watch another episode because the tantrum isn't worth it. Then you're standing there at 9pm like, "Why is bedtime a complete disaster?" Because you optimized for smile-per-minute instead of functional human.
Your job isn't to maximize their moment-to-moment happiness. Your job is to raise someone who can eventually leave your house. Sometimes that means they're upset. Hold the boundary anyway. Not because you're mean, but because that's literally what they need, even if they're currently screaming like you've committed a war crime by cutting their sandwich wrong.
