A new book by billionaire businessman Patrick Priestner is listed on book-selling websites in the Biography & Memoirs section, but it could just as easily appear in the Business section due the depth of lessons and wisdom the author gleaned in five decades of business success.
In Priestner’s first ever book, Notes for the Children, A Journey on Life’s Broken Road, he offers poignant reflections on the interconnections between family, relationships and the persistent challenges of leading a thriving business.
Refreshingly, Priestner makes no attempt to sugar coat just how difficult it is to find a balance between personal happiness and business success.
He also candidly shares the harsh realities of his difficult upbringing with an alcoholic father and a mother with addiction issues of her own. One could easily argue that simply surviving and having anything resembling a normal life would be considered a massive success given the stories he shares about growing up.
Yet it quickly becomes clear to readers that Priestner was driven to become something more that just average.
After dropping out of university, he started selling cars at 18 and eventually leveraged his skills, charisma and talent to become one of the biggest automotive moguls in North America.
This is the part where you’d expect to read about his fierce, cut-throat business tactics focussed on crushing rivals and doing whatever it takes to come out on top.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Priestner demonstrates over and over that it is compassion that drives his success. But in order to harness its power, he first had to learn how to be compassionate to himself.
“How can we show compassion for our children and parents, if we are unable to find compassion for ourselves?” he writes. “If we can’t accept our own faults, how do we accept the faults of others? If our compassion does not include ourselves, then how can it be complete compassion?”
He did not always possess that wise perspective. As a young man, the same demons that hampered his parents lives started to affect him. Priestner readily admits to a drinking problem that was harming his business and poisoning his relationships.
Through introspection and self compassion, Priestner changed the way he interacted with people and himself. He focused on mindfulness and a devotion to Buddhism to balance business and family life.
The results would come in time, but it was not an overnight transformation. While he conquered his drinking problem his first marriage did not survive.
“It took a while, but I’ve come to understand that too much of my time was spent dealing with significant anxiety, situational depression, heightened anger, too much craving, incessant guilt, too much drinking, and constantly beating myself up. Like so many of us, I was trying to deal with all these emotional issues but not looking in the right places for the solutions that would have provided long-term relief,” he writes.
In time, Priestner paved a new path for himself and found a happiness in life that must have seemed improbable to the boy whose father constantly belittled him and his siblings, was fired for stealing from his employer and constantly moved his family while on the run from various internal and external failures.
While a change in mindset and self-compassion underpinned his transformation, Priestner is adamant that self vigilance is critical to staying on the right path.
“I still need to give myself little attitude checks. If I forget, even for a day or two, this attitude veers a little over the wrong side and it takes some self-awareness to check in and improve my thoughts, feelings and actions,” he writes.
By taking a small step back, it becomes clear that Priestner’s life lessons can be applied as successfully to personal relationships as they can to maintaining and growing a business.
For Priestner, the result of his philosophy is a family of five children and four grandchildren, a successful second marriage and a business fortune that has given him the latitude to pursue several philanthropic passions.
In that vein, the proceeds from Notes for the Children are being directed to Well-being Canada, a non-profit organization started by Priestner, and his wife Diana, to provide mental health and wellness tools for youth.
Notes for the Children, A Journey on Life’s Broken Road is available at Amazon, Indigo and Apple Books.
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