If You Want Your Child to Succeed, Teach Them This

I did not sign up for being a life coach.

Yet here I am with 15 years of unpaid experience. Am I any good? I have no clue. I still have 3–4 years before I learn if I am.

Others tell me I am, but I’m afraid they only see the pretty picture from the outside. That is not the entire truth. They don’t see the bad days or struggles that go into working on such a long project.

You see, I have a 15-year-old daughter. Most of my job as a parent now is guiding and coaching. I’m also divorced from her mom, so much of my work has been done as a single parent with shared custody.

Based on my 1 of 1 experience, I’m qualified.

Emotional Control

Many adults can’t handle their emotions, but teenagers with hormonal changes and outside pressures from peers are on another level.

Mood swings aren’t uncommon. Something that seems small to us adults can seem like a life-ending event to them.

You can try and talk them off the ledge as much as you want, but odds are it’s brushed aside. We’ve all had moments of being so worked up that we can’t think straight. We learn to cope better as we get older and more experienced.

The older I get, the more I use the phrase, “You’ll understand when you get older.” I cringe every time, too.

Thanks, Dad, good talk…

Mindset

I’d say my daughter’s most significant struggle is giving up before she has started. It’s something I constantly work on with her too.

Soccer is her first love. She’s very good at it. But I could take an extended unpaid vacation if I had a nickel for every time she said before a game she didn’t think her team would win due to their lack of talent or the other team’s skill.

Her thought usually isn’t based on any factual evidence. She’ll hear from someone that the team they are playing is excellent. Sometimes, she’ll see a team ranked higher in the standings and assume they are better.

They are better, so they’ll beat us, she tells me.

It’s a reflex at this point to tell her to go out and play her game. Shut out all the outside noise. If games were so quickly decided, they wouldn’t bother playing them.

It then turns into a discussion about giving up before you start. About believing in yourself and your abilities. About giving it your best, no matter what you think.

It still amazes me to see someone internalize negative thoughts in real time, especially when you know, personally, that it’s a horrible habit to pick up.

I keep plugging away and reminding her not to talk herself out of something before it happens. That goes for soccer and any other goals she has in her life.

We all struggle with believing in ourselves at times. It’s natural. That does not mean that you don’t press forward regardless.

It also doesn’t mean that my message doesn’t go in one ear and right out the other. But still, I persist. She’ll never be able to say that I didn’t try my best to help her notice negative thought patterns.

Awareness helps create change.

The Most Important Thing You Can Teach Them

I mention emotional control and mindset because they tie into what is the most important thing you can teach your children if you want them to succeed.

It’s discipline. I’m not talking about the “spare the rod, spoil the child” type of discipline.

I’m talking about the discipline it will take to accomplish your dreams. Everything you want is going to take work. You either do the required work or you don’t.

Think about all the times you’ve quit on something. Think about all the times you’ve stopped BEFORE you started because of the faulty messaging you gave yourself.

Is it more than you care to admit, and are you filled with regrets? Deep down, you know that you would have succeeded if you developed the discipline you needed or applied more of it.

That’s why you need to drill the importance of discipline into your child’s head. They’re less likely to see that failures aren’t from a lack of talent or some pre-destined outcome of failure.

It’s because they didn’t stick with it.

Being disciplined in your pursuits requires emotional control. You won’t always FEEL like doing the work. You had a bad day or arguments with your boyfriend or BFF, so you don’t feel up to doing whatever it is?

Continuing your pursuit is likely to make all of that fade away. Choosing to mope about things doesn’t bring you closer to your destination. Deciding to put the feelings and emotions holding you back to the side and getting to work anyway will.

You aren’t going to know ahead of time whether you’ll succeed. Maybe you won’t, but failing doesn’t mean what you think it does. It’s not an end. It’s an opportunity to learn and grow.

You have to embrace the uncertainty and keep moving anyway. You have to understand that talent is excellent, but skill with hard work is what makes you great. Sometimes, hard work alone can put you where you want to be if you don’t have much talent.

The only way to find out is to remind yourself that every day you take a step is a win. It’s a vote of confidence in yourself and what you can do. That is your mindset.

The more you show up, the more likely it will be that you’ll reach the destination. But you have to see that your mind will try and derail you.

Good things will happen if you make a plan and stay disciplined enough to follow it through. It has a compounding effect. You build momentum by stacking small wins.

You find out what you are truly capable of by staying disciplined.

Your mind will often look for the eject button than you’d like. Let those negative thoughts roll off your back like water. I don’t feel like doing this workout today, but I’m going anyway.

I don’t feel like working on my goal today, but I will give it 5 minutes anyway. I want to keep watching TV tonight, but I have to get up early tomorrow for XYZ, so I’m going to bed.

Your mind will throw speedbumps in the way. You’re just going to move around them or go over them slowly. Either way, you’re still charging ahead.

You won’t worry about what other people are doing, thinking, or saying. You’re focused on what you can control: doing the necessary work.

You can tell I’ve given a lot of these pep talks.

There are plenty of other essential things to teach your children. But discipline will, far and away, have the most resounding positive effects on their lives.

Imagine your child knowing that anything is possible if they stay disciplined. How fantastic will their life be?

If you are having trouble imagining that, imagine what YOUR life would be like if you had stayed disciplined in chasing your goals.