Have you ever wondered about where your family, your friends and your business partners belong in your life?

What is the place and size of each one of these people in these categories in our lives? Can they overlap? Can a family member or a friend be a business partner? 

The answer is yes - if, and only if, there's emotional maturity in those people. And this is where all the gray zones are created, and you may end up feeling confused.

Let's talk about family members and friendship first.

I see many people feeling guilty about having to get along with difficult family members. They think it's their fault and that they should be doing something about it. My focus on this blog post today is specifically on the family of origin, which refers mostly to your parents and siblings, and closer relatives.

According to the Bhagavad Gita - our family members are inevitable.

You have to deal with them.

They're part of your life. You cannot avoid your family members.

if you're avoiding family (I'm not talking about a second degree cousin, but about your parents and siblings and family of origin), they belong as family members. 

But do they have to be your friends?

They're beyond friendship because their family, right? We can get along with our family members for personality connections, but we don't have to. Knowing they're inevitable, you can settle for that, and not fee the need to be friends. You're not obliged to it.

You can set healthy boundaries if you have a toxic family member, for your own sake.

And make your peace with it.

Now...

what about business relationships?

Can a family member or friend be a business partner, or employee?

I see a lot of people at Ranova who have employed their family members or who are employed by their family members.

This is delicate because, on the one hand, you want to benefit a family member or friend.

On the other,

the person you want to benefit, no matter how much you love him or her, may not have the abilities, or the right attitude, to work with you.

When there's conflict and turmoil, it means the healthy boundaries are not set  -and that the person is emotionally immature. 

Remember -

if there's emotional maturity, independence and healthy boundaries are always present.

It means people have common sense and know their place in whatever system they're operating in. 

However,

if there's emotional immaturity, "children" by definition do not know boundaries, and if adults acts like children, they only know fuzzy boundaries and unconsciously try to mess them up.

This means immature adults will behave like children in a work environment. They may feel entitled. They may demand privileges. They may be demanding, period. And this can become a mess you really don't need to deal with.

It's the job of the adult, or of the healthy ego, to set the limits in those types of relationships.

So please understand this:

You do not have the obligation to employ your family members - especially if they're emotionally immature and may bring you unnecessary and avoidable problems.

It could even be detrimental to their growth if they're immature and always sheltered by family members, even in social life - where they should be independent.

Does this mean you can never work with a family member? Of course not.

You can work with a mature family member,

but you need to discern if there's emotional stability and "updated soul timing", or not.

If someone is delaying their personal growth process, or delaying adulthood in general, this doesn't have to become your problem.

When you're in a business relationship with a family member, and this mainly refers to siblings, parents and children, it's important to be very mindful of people's attitudes. Not rarely, I see children employing their parents when they come for sessions here. This is not "wrong" as a general concept, but we need to be aware of why the relationship is happening that way, because

Nature designed parents to take care of children on all levels, and not the other way around.

(for more info on how this works, check out our talk about the three principles of the soul here).

Ideally, things can work out when family members work on the same business

if there are healthy boundaries in healthy relationships.

If you're suffering because family members in your business are creating turmoil, something's interfering in the objective energy of business, which is designed to flow without emotional drama or abuse.

Our professional lives, social lives and adulthood should not be dramatic.

These are areas in which we can be more objective and expanded than family life. And when it comes to working with friends, we also need boundaries. Friends are not family members, but we have affection for them, and we can work with them if they have common sense and discern what a professional relationship encompasses.

Again, if there are healthy boundaries and emotional maturity, you don't have to feel guilty about your friends and you don't have to feel like you have the obligation to employ them, or help them in their professional life if that person is unstable. 

Enabling immature friends and denying their limitations in a professional scenario is not healthy, and in the long run  you're not helping the person. Like the immature family member situation, you could very well be slowing down their personal growth processes if you do this.

Another thing people always ask me is if you have to be friends with everybody in your business. A business can be healthy and wonderful, and really objective and mature - and friendship doesn't necessarily have to be involved.

Sometimes this kind of wondering is cultural. Some cultures really don't discern much about what's a family bond, what's a friendship and what's a business relationship, because they often overlap. But these are three very different types of connection that can overlap as long as there is emotional maturity, but they don't need to. 

This is actually a good test for you:

Do you really want to see the world with more objective eyes? Or are you more of an avoider who prefers to sugar-coat the flaws of people you love and even hurt yourself professionally in the process just so you can protect friends and family at the cost of a healthy business?

This is a question I ask in a loving way - though some may say it's tough love, it's better than pretending someone's not as much of a handful as you very well know, deep down, he or she is - even if it's a family member or a good friend.

There's no need to connect all three realms of family, friends and business for the sake of guilt.

If you make business decisions for the sake of caring for others regardless of their behavior and above anything else, please know this:

You probably have a motherly nature and are unconsciously taking care of emotional children in your social life, instead of your private life.

And for the good and sake of all involved, especially the immature adults you're enabling, it's time to stop doing this.

Everyone will grow once you start nurturing your professional and social life with emotionally mature decisions.

I hope this was clear, and I'm curious to know - what do you think about this whole family, friends and business situation? Let us know what you think in the Comments Area below! 

Thanks for your presence here today, ad I'll see you soon in our next blog post!

Love always,

Paola.