The other Half- ½ + ½ = Wholesome

To be successful, the biggest determining factor will be….

Spouse

As the Chinese proverb say，
~ 成功的男人背后都有一个女人 ~

What I will add on is，
~ 成功的男人背后都有一个支持他的女人 ~

What does having a good spouse got to do with your success in life? To put it simply, your spouse is just like the other half of yourself, you will be crippled if the other half of yours does not support and be in synergy with you. If you are running, you would need tremendous coordination of both your legs and you would need great balance from these 2 legs in order to cross obstacles. With just a single leg, you will never outperform the synergism of 2 legs and not to even mention crossing obstacles.

If the metaphor is not vivid enough, let me further elaborate what I mean through more examples. To be successful in business, I feel that one of the crucial factor is not to put too much emotion into business as business is business and personal is personal. Being rational is the key to maintain good judgment and hence committing lesser mistake in business. And what would usually constitute the majority of the emotional upheaval a person can suffer from? Most of it would definitely lies in the strain that your love ones has given you, and the majority of it will be from your spouse whom you will have to see everyday.

Imagine having an unsupportive spouse who always complains to you, does not understand what you are going through, do not offer you advice nor empathy and maybe grow tired of listening to the hardship you are going through. Well how about quarreling and nagging you when you are drained after a bad day at work? How successful do you think a person will be with such “support” from his other half?

~ 先安家后定国 ~

Notice that the proverb states that a person who cant even manage his family cant even dream of managing a country. Drawing analogy to business, it is the same logic. A businessman with a chaotic family will not be able to put in his best in his business and hence will fail on both pillars of his life, namely love and career. Being nonchalant is not good enough, a spouse should be supportive so that the couple can live through tough time with the love emerging much stronger during a crisis. The spouse is the crucial element in a family and a good family begins with a good spouse. With a good family, then a businessman will have more energy to concentrate in business and hence increasing the odds of success.

I had understood this logic from my business associates, whom all seem to fully agree on this point each with substantiations of their own. The mutual agreement is thus that, a businessman must have stringent criteria when choosing his spouse. First of all, it has to be a rational choice before emotional. I have to thank my associate for pointing out what my criteria should be =). My spouse has to be intelligent, supportive and yet do not flirt around. The first two sounds like rational choice but the third looks more like an emotional criterion as which guy can stand a flirtatious lady as a spouse? She further substantiates by saying that it is a rational choice as usually guy would go for beautiful ladies and for me I am definitely into looks. A beautiful lady has the chips to flirt around and a businessman can’t maintain a balance of emotion when he is fighting hard for his career while worrying if his spouse is flirting as he is fighting hard in the business world. Hence it is rational decision too as it will affect the emotional state of a businessman.

So does that mean that businessman should have an average looking spouse so that they don’t have to worry about issues of flirting from spouse? Well my associate feel that is so but I would beg to differ as that is a limiting mindset and having a millionaire mindset means that you must believe in the power of the “and”. Meaning although it may seem sad that a businessman has to have terms and conditions for whom they can love and who they can’t by basing it on criteria, but it doesn’t mean that setting a criteria equals to them not being able to find someone who they would love and yet fitting all these criteria. Which is then the solutions come from a 2 level filtering system where you first qualify those which can pass the rational criteria and you can let your heart take control by choosing the one you like through the 2nd emotional filter.

If you think that love is sad if it has to be so highly regulated, I would say that it will be worse than just sad when you are going through a tough time and have to face an unsupportive spouse which can offer you no empathy nor advice, and much worse having to face divorce. So would having criteria now be a more long term solution to a good life when seen in this light? I would think so. To add on, it is also important for a businessman to search for a potential spouse before they become successful as once they are successful, it will be hard to determine who will go through thick and thin with you.

Some people say that doing business is like having a marriage. You must not put emotion into it which will damage it, yet you have to have so much passion for it that you will love it with all your heart and be able to sacrifice your time and life for it. So perhaps businessman may actually be the group of people who understand and appreciate marriage for what it really is =D. So cheers to business!!!


A good spouse and a good career are mutually dependent. Excellence in both pillars contribute to happiness and success in life

~ James Tan ~