I had a discussion about parenting yesterday during a keynote with an incredible group of high-performing female financial advisors. One of them asked, “How do I get this understanding and these skills into my kids, even my five year-old daughter?”
Raising kids is an amazing experience. It’s like trying to steer a car with someone else sitting behind the wheel. Especially when you’re unsure of your own directions but trying to display confidence while a backseat full of people tells you how to drive. Whether or not you have kids, let that analogy sink in. It’s pretty close.
The takeaway from the conversation was this: do your best to equip them with skills and protect them from real catastrophe, but not from hardship. Above all else, equip them with the skill to make their own choices rather than compliant and obedient choices to someone else’s expectations of them, even your own. No matter how badly you want something for your kids, it will always end up their choice eventually.
They will become who they choose to be, not who you want them to be. Our job as parents is to equip them well to make that choice for themselves.
Embrace the chase. Do the work.
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