Avoiding the biggest mistake Shaq ever made off the court

On a podcast with a fellow athlete, Shaquille O'Neal reflected on his life and career. During the conversation, he encouraged other athletes to spend time with their families and loved ones, admitting deep disappointment that he hadn't. Instead, he had focused on other things, like fame and fortune. He didn't emphasize his relationships, which led him to live a life he regrets. He honestly admitted,

"I'm in a 100,000-square-foot house by myself."

Hurt by his decisions and where he placed his values, Shaq is now encouraging others to focus on what he, in hindsight, recognizes as really mattering: relationships.

In 1938, Harvard University began a project called the "Harvard Study of Adult Development." The project continues today, involving some 1,300 individuals from hundreds of families. Researchers periodically check on the study subjects, asking them about their health, finances, families, and friends. They've watched as generations of people are born and grow up, find families, fall in and out of love, succeed and fail in business, and die. It's the longest-lasting, most ambitious longitudinal academic study ever done. So what can the researchers say after all these years? The study "has brought us to a simple and profound conclusion." They say, "Good relationships lead to health and happiness. The trick is that those relationships must be nurtured."

We can all recognize and agree with this. Of course, we want to nurture the relationships that matter in our lives. So why, then, is this harder in practice to accomplish?

Why, despite our best efforts, do relationships fail?

In some cases, money has the potential to amplify relationships. However, it is a genuine thing that money can ruin relationships. While we all likely aspire to use money to enhance our relationships, the unfortunate reality is that money's ability to ruin relationships is very evident across the board. If you're not careful, you can, and will, lose what is most important to you.

Clayton Christensen once said, "There is no evidence that business success will make us happy people or allow us to have happy families." He saw this pattern as his Harvard MBA experience meant that Clayton went to school with many who became notable in business and found financial success. This is what he noticed about those people:

Over the years, as I've watched the fates of my HBS classmates unfold, I've seen more and more of them come to reunions unhappy, divorced, and alienated from their children. I can guarantee you that not a single one of them graduated with the deliberate strategy of getting divorced and raising children who would become estranged from them. And yet, a shocking number of them implemented that strategy. The reason? They didn't keep the purpose of their lives front and center as they decided how to spend their time, talents, and energy.

In other words, despite their prominence and prosperity, Clayton's classmates failed to navigate their affluence intentionally and ultimately lost out on what was most important.

Carl’s Late-Life Realization

After enduring a troubled childhood where he never felt he was enough, Carl spent his entire life building and creating, trying to prove that he was good enough for others and himself. After years of working hard, he had several successful exits and experienced significant financial success. In his mind, he had done it—had proven his worth—and he should have been happy. But he wasn't. It took him until age 56 to realize how unhappy he was. He looked hard at his life and realized that he had no real relationships, was unmarried, and was estranged from family and friends. He decided to turn to a life coach for support. For the first time, Carl wondered if there was something else he could do that would bring him joy.

After working with the life coach, he identified a clear action plan to look outward and develop meaningful relationships. He started to spend his time in service to others, volunteer at local charities, and be engaged in his community. In serving others and building relationships through those service activities, this man was able to get rid of the mental cages he had, telling himself he had something to prove, and a year later, he was much happier with several meaningful relationships in his life.

Carl realized later in life that his relationships and happiness were directly affected by his decisions about how he spent his time, effort, and money.

And it's not just our close relationships that matter—entire generations are at stake.

The Johnson Family

In the nineteenth century, a young pharmacist named Robert Wood Johnson and his brothers started a company by making and selling surgical instruments. The company they founded is now worth billions and has become a household name and brand for selling Tylenol, Bandaids, and Listerine. I'm sure you know it; it's called Johnson & Johnson. The company is, of course, a storied success; the Johnson family, however, not so much.

Massive wealth had an objectively negative effect on Johnson's welfare. Satisfaction with their billions evaded them. They were always looking for more—more cool cars, elaborate mansions, exciting adventures, gold and jewels, and glamorous spouses—and for some, it became too much.

One Johnson son began using drugs in his teens and became famous for wrecking exotic cars. High on LSD, he once drove a brand-new BMW onto a beach. While he got out to exhilarate in the view of the sunset, the car disappeared in a rising ocean tide. In his twenties, he died of a cocaine overdose.

His brother, also a drug abuser, was well-known as a reckless motorcyclist. Within days of his brother's death, he died himself in a high-speed crash. He had just received his trust fund check for $10 million.

The adverse effects of money continued to the next generation. One of the Johnson grandsons became a playboy, jettisoning his second wife at age 76 to marry the housekeeper, who was 34. He built her a 54,000-square-foot mansion on 170 acres and left her his vast fortune—igniting a battle among his six children over the will.

The chaos was yet again passed down to the next generation—one of his sons led a fraught life involving attempted suicide, a bizarre shootout, and a long fight over the paternity of his children. A fellow heir built an underground road from his house to the street; it turned out to be 300 yards long, with a special entrance to his personal barbershop. This kind of mounting extravagance has accompanied an increasing number of broken marriages, attempted suicides, drug deaths, and conflicts over several generations.

Now, the Johnson and Johnson family story is extreme; their extravagance and chaos are on a whole other level. However, through the extreme, we can see money's negative effect on generational relationships. Actual relationships and the health of individuals—both mental and physical—are at stake.

To compound the tragedy, money doesn't seem to last beyond the third generation. The Williams Group performed a 20-year study of 3,200 families and found that 70% of wealthy families lose their resources by the second generation, and a stunning 90% lose them by the third generation. That means relationships suffer for something that is largely fleeting.

This leads me to consider—is it worth it?

There are pitfalls tied to prosperity, and it can be difficult to navigate them. We can begin by a simple realization: relationships are the ultimate priority in life. And, when we treat them as such, we can begin to protect and cultivate them in positive ways.