The Most Accurate Predictor Of Our Kids’ Success

My boys were decorating my office last week. Kyen hung up his freshly painted artwork, while Maverick wrote some wobbly, still-figuring-out-letters, first-grade handwriting notes on my white board. Here’s what they said:

Think good.

Be you.

Be great.

You rock.

Hope.

Love.

I’ve been fine-tuning my messaging since I started coaching and writing many years ago, but I think Mav summed up the most important lessons on joy and success right there on my whiteboard. Not only are his notes valuable for you as an adult reading this, but I find them to be yet another reminder that who we are has a much stronger influence on our children’s success in life compared to what we tell them, how many activities they are in, or whether or not they are on the honor roll.

You see, I don’t go around saying to my boys: “Success has more to do with how you think about yourself and the world rather than the knowledge or resources you have.”

I don’t remind them at dinner time: “Always be yourself. Your authenticity is your power!”

I don’t send them off to school and say, “Don’t settle for mediocrity. Be your greatest self today!”

And still, Mav picked up on some of the best nuggets of wisdom I teach and, most importantly, choose to model daily.

Child development thought leader Joseph Chilton Pearce said, “What we are teaches the child far more than what we say. So we must be what we want our children to become.”

Researcher and bestselling author Brené Brown wrote, “The most difficult thing I’ve learned in the past decade of my work has been: Who we are is a much more accurate predictor of how our kids will do than what we know or understand about the science of parenting.”

Why is this? Two reasons:

First, all humans, but especially children, learn through mimicry. (This is why surrounding yourself with people you aspire to be like is so important.)

Second, we can’t give anyone else, including our children, what we ourselves don’t already have. We can’t give true kindness to others, unless we know how to be kind to ourselves. We can’t teach our children courage, unless we are doing things that scare us and cross our comfort zone on the daily. We can’t hope for a loving, trusting spouse for our child, while we stay in a transaction-based marriage with someone that doesn’t respect us. We can’t tell our children to “Dream big and remember you can do anything you put your mind to,” if we ourselves are playing small in this one precious life we’ve been gifted.

So don’t spend your time on the discipline books and the parenting newsletters until you first spend time on yourself. Do your work. Heal your past when it shows up in the present. Get out of your own way. You deserve to live a balanced life you love. If you can’t do it for yourself, then, please, do it for your children.

Sparkle on, my dedicated warrior.

Love, your coach,

💖Sara