When the Sacrifice is Too Much

Realigning Your Life to Reflect Your Core Values

Last week I wrote about the need to make sacrifices to reach goals and achieve greatness. I feel like some may have read that entry and thought, “What if I do not want to make the sacrifices any longer?”

The first thing to acknowledge is that this is a perfectly fine way to look at things. Setting goals, driving yourself hard, and making sacrifices to achieve those goals is often what we celebrate. Yet you do not have to make Olympian-like sacrifices to win in life. And it is okay to say “enough is enough, I don’t want to do this any longer.”

I get it, because I have been there myself. There was a very specific time that I was struggling professionally, which of course manifested into personal struggles. I felt very alone, torn between two possible choices for my future, and burdened with the feeling that no matter which decision I made, I would be leaving people disappointed and hurt.

Choosing swim coaching as a profession is the choice to jump into a tough, unforgiving world. The hours are long and odd (often a day will start around 5:00 am and end late in the evening).  Due to the fact that swim practices have to take place outside of school hours, coaches are on deck “conducting business” well after the traditional end of the work day at 5:00 pm.

The lifestyle is counter to just about everything we know about self-care and raising a family.

When you have a family as a swim coach, it has to come with a major amount of patience and understanding from your spouse and children. Swim coaches routinely miss out on after school or weekend events due to the fact that they occur when the coach is on the job. The first night I met my future wife (we were set up on a blind date), I told her that I needed to find someone who accepted my career, not necessarily someone to understand it. Throughout our entire time together, my wife has been incredibly supportive and understanding of my professional life, although the time I spent as a coach was far from easy for her.

In total, I spent nine years wearing two hats as Head Coach and Team Administrator of my program. Coaching alone meant 20 hours a week administering practices. This does not account for time preparing those workouts, responding to parent inquiries, reaching out to college coaches on behalf of rising seniors, communicating and mentoring the rest of the coaching staff, planning for competitions, or planning team travel. As the team administrator, I was handling all billing, negotiating contracts and lease agreements, handling all human resources duties, and planning for the future of the business.

It was too much. Waaaaaay too much.

I still remember sitting down in 2015 with Frank Busch when he was USA Swimming’s National Team Director and telling him everything I did as coach and team administrator. I think Coach Busch was ready to write up a job posting for me right then and there. His words helped me see that, while I thought I was saving money and doing a good job wearing both hats, I was actually holding the business back.

Beyond all of this, there were personal issues I was dealing with leading me to this place: I no longer wanted to make the sacrifices I was making to do the job I was doing. Something had to give and changes needed to be made. Most of all, I needed to bring my professional life in line with my goals and values.

There are a number of different ways that you can narrow down different qualities to determine your core values. My preferred method is through the use of a card deck available from the One Thing Community (https://the1thing.com/core-values/). The deck includes over 100 cards, each with one word or phrase representing a different value. There are even a few blank cards allowing you to add values you might have identified but not present in the deck.

The exercise is a simple way to determine, as the One Thing Community says, your “True North”. The process is very accessible, enough so that our daughter was able to go through it at eight years old, with minimal guidance.

Once you know who you are and what your values are, making decision on your future, personally and professionally, is a much easier task to accomplish.

In 2017 I was both the Head Coach and Owner/Administrator of Greater Philadelphia Aquatic Enterprises. We were one year removed from having two swimmers represent the team at the US Olympic Trials, one of which reached the top 8 and was a two-time USA Swimming National Team member. We had over 200 swimmers on the team and about 100 in swimming lessons.

I was also deep into a serious lawsuit, the result of a construction project for a stand-alone swim school facility that did not go as planned. The project left me $800,000 in debt with no workable facility to show for it.

Personally, my wife and I had been married for nine years and we had two children (6 and 4 in 2017). My children were starting to get involved with different activities, and I was missing them due to the hours of my job. My wife was also incredibly ill, the result of a Lyme infection which exacerbated an underlying auto-immune disorder. This illness left her constantly exhausted, not a good place to be when you are the primary caregiver each evening and many weekends for two young children.

All of these roads led to the same place. I was out of gas: physically, mentally, and emotionally. Despite the support from my wife (what she could give), I felt I was not ‘living up to’ the expectations I had for myself as a business owner, husband, OR father. Everything combined to put me in a place where coaching swimming was no longer enjoyable. I was overstressed, overwhelmed, and uncertain if I could continue to run my business in this way, or even if the business would be able to survive the incredible financial deficit it was in.

The goals were no longer worth the sacrifices and I needed a new path.

Using the cards noted above, I determined my own core values and began taking the steps to align my life in reflection of them. This led me to the decision to make a significant sacrifice: I fired myself as head coach and decided to turn my focus to the administrative side of the program.

Since that time almost seven years ago, the number of swimmers on the team has grown by 70% and the number of children in our swim lesson program has grown by 200%. All of this contributed to an overall business growth of 60% from 2016 to 2023. Was stepping down as coach the reason for this growth? It is likely a combination of things. However, looking back, I do not see a path to this point if I am still trying to perform both jobs.

I could have kept “grinding”, kept making sacrifice after sacrifice to keep things going as they were. But it would have cost me a lot. Instead, by staying true to my core values and using them to help craft my new goals, I was able to establish what sacrifices I was willing to make to achieve these goals.

Ultimately, the decision to stop making certain sacrifices is a deeply personal one which requires introspection and courage. By identifying and understanding your core values, you can make intentional choices which align your life with what truly matters to you. This alignment not only brings a sense of fulfillment and peace but also opens doors to growth and success in ways that are sustainable and meaningful. Remember, it is okay to say "enough is enough" and to adjust your path to better reflect who you are and what you value at that time in your life. By doing so, you give yourself the opportunity to create a life that is not only productive but also deeply satisfying.