When we met with a group of students who had pushed past large challenges in their lives to change direction, we told them, “You are not your family tree. Your past is not your destiny.”
We have the capacity to learn, to grow and to change our mindset. We can do it, and we can teach it to our children. But we need to move forward in a positive way in our own lives, take care of our own bodies and minds, before we can serve as a role model to our children.
Motivational speaker Tony Robbins says, “What’s the reason people say they failed to achieve? … Didn’t know enough. Didn’t have the knowledge. Didn’t have the money. Didn’t have the time.
“The defining factor is never resources, it’s resourcefulness,” he says.
We make lots of mistakes. But we have a terrific capacity to learn, to grow and to change our direction.
If we learn from our past and move on, we can set a new vision for our future and be in a better position to teach our children.
In order to be effective guides, we need to have some things in place in our own lives. These include finding something we love doing, either as work or as a hobby, taking care of ourselves through good food and exercise, and fixing our vision so that we can define what a meaningful life means.
Once you get these things in place, you can set expectations for your children and teach them some important values for their lives – values like honesty, kindness, respect, gratitude and persistence.
By taking action in our own lives to create a vision and shed the past, we can move from excuses to positive direction, both individually and as role models for our children.
Tom Tozer and Bill Black are authors of “Dads2Dads: Tools for Raising Teenagers.” Contact them at tomandbill@Dads2Dadsllc.com.