My ceiling, their floor.

I want our kids to start at a point I worked my entire life to get to, for their floor to have been my ceiling but...

I have to be careful to let them fail and learn on their own. 

It's a careful balance. 

www.liveitfull.com

Transcript

Richard (00:02):

Hey, you're listening to the Live Full podcast, I believe this is episode 82 in our saga to help people to live it full. If you've listened to the podcast before, if this is your first time, we welcome you go leave us a five star review on Apple, Spotify, anywhere else that you can find us on social media, the real Live It full on Instagram, live it full. We're on Twitter and obviously Facebook kind of is our bread and butter. So if you want to go like us, give us a share. And if you have any question on where to find those links, you can go to live full.com. All of our social media's there, including the podcast blog post which I need to update, but things going well there. But hey, I wanted to talk today a little bit about children. So we talk about faith, family, so number two on our list, finance, fitness wanna talk a little bit about children and kind of the things that I've gone through the last couple weeks and some things I've experienced that are probably old hat to some people, probably you will go through it at some point but just having different conversations with your kids about things that maybe people didn't have conversations with you about.

(01:11):

Cuz our eldest is getting to the point where she understands financial things a little bit better. She understands why we do certain things, why we don't do certain things, what makes sense, what doesn't make sense. And so I'm trying to get her to understand the value of time and money and that relationship. So anyways, but that isn't even all the point that I was gonna talk about. So the other day on social media I had posted, somebody had asked some questions, What are the things that you want? If you could teach your children anything about money, what would it be? And I thought it was a really good prompt, really good question. And of course I broke the rules cuz it said what was one thing. But I went through and said basically I want my ceiling, the highest levels that I hit to be their floor.

(01:52):

Okay? So that's gonna be the premise of what we're gonna talk about because I have to try to decide what is there, what fallacy is in my logic there because they're not automatically gonna start there. Are they gonna start a lot higher than I did? Absolutely. Just because of the way we've raised them. But they're gonna have to put in some work and do some things. But I digress. So back to that. So I had said basically keep your debt in dollars, your assets and everything else. I want 'em to understand compound interest. And that $1 spent is actually a hundred dollars you lose in investments over time. And so it may only cost a small amount of money, but that a hundred dollars or that thousand dollars could end up being a hundred thousand dollars by the time you retire, by the time you need some cash. Cuz I don't think I'll ever retire. But just so anyway, so we're talking about that and I was thinking about, and he had text me or messaged me on Facebook and said, Man I, that's profound that you want their floor to have been your ceiling. And I didn't think it was that profound, but it's a different mindset. I don't know that if people go into life going, I want my kids, I think we all inherently have this where we think our kids need

Speaker 2 (02:58):

To better than we were, but do we actively go after it? And that's one thing we talk about with live It full is that it's intentional living too many times we go through life with no purpose, no direction, no plan. And we wonder why we don't get where we wanna be. We wonder why our kids end up just like us. There's that saying or that thought that like, oh you hit a point in your life where you realize you're just like your parents and there's nothing wrong with that inherently. But I want more for mine. I don't want them to go through these same struggles that I went through with certain things. I want them to go through different struggles. I want them to struggle to scale a business. I don't want them to struggle with credit card debt while they're in college. You know what I mean?

(03:46):

There's a different struggle I want them to go through. But I was thinking about it the other day because I've written a lot of blog posts on failure and I talk a lot about failure and that people who win lose more than those who don't win. That was really cumbersome and wordy. But it's true. You will fail more as a winner than you ever did as a loser. And yes, I'm using loser in a talking about life. One of my mentors once told me, Life is a game. There are winners and losers. And I went, Woo, Mind blowing. You're right. There are people out there that win it the game of life. And there's those that don't. And I'm not talking just financially, I'm talking time, freedom, family, relationships, everything. There are winners and losers. But I was thinking about this is I was going through my eldest, had a tough time at batting lessons last week.

(04:39):

Now those of you that know our story, know our situation, know how she responds. She's much like me. We are ADHD to the core. We have very strong gifts, but we also are prone to emotional responses. And as I've gotten older, I know how to control that on some level. But impulsivity and emotional responses were a big part of that. And so she had a tough adding lesson last week because she failed. And instead of responding to it like, I'm gonna work harder, she shut down in that lesson. And her batting coach he's intense, I love him, but he's not a play around kind of guy. He's there for a purpose. You're paying him to teach your kid to be the best that they can be.

(05:33):

And she knows that and she doesn't happen often, but she, she's shut down on him. And I could see it happening. My business partners were there cuz their kids are there. They could see it happening. But in the moment there's not much I can do and I can preach to her all day long. We learn from failure, everyone fails, successful people fail more than people that don't ever try. I promise will you only have to succeed one time to make it work. And so I can tell her that. I can tell her that. I want you to start here because I started here and I learned through failure, how to win as a parent. Do we try to take away that failure from 'em? Do we try to take away that pain? Do we try to take away that hurt to where they don't fail And she takes it way different than any of my other kids would. They may just laugh it off and say, You know what, I'll try again and be better the next time. Or it happened. I didn't do well.

(06:38):

She wants to be good, not good. She wants to be great. And that's one thing I love about their batting coaches. He asks them questions all during there. It's not just technical mental cuz most of softball and baseball's mental. It's that six inches between your head that hurt you the most. It's not physical ability. He said, What do great hitters have? And one of the kids said, Balance. And he said, No, they have great balance. He's teaching them to be great. You have to be great at the individual things. But she failed. She struggled with it on the way home. She sat in the backseat of the car and was like, I don't deserve to sit up front. She's very hard on herself. But if I try to take away that pain, if I try to tell her it's okay baby, you did a great job. Am I failing as a parent? Am I failing at the one who wants her to start higher than I did? And so she's gotta learn on her own. As much as I want her to start where I finish, she's not ever going to until she puts in the work. And that's hard because as a parent, I want her to be able just to step into a role.

(07:45):

And I think that's why second and third generation businesses fail. You see these businesses that were built by grandparents or parents like us and that will be grandparents someday. They're built by a generation. It doesn't matter what generation. I think there's people who build in from baby boomers to Gen X, to millennials, to zens, whatever you wanna call us that are in between. And in Gen Y there are gonna be builders. There are gonna be people who do things. And you can say that generation's lose. That generation doesn't do anything. Or they, they're living off their parents' coat tells whatever. There's gonna be 5% that do it in every generation.

(08:22):

And a lot of times second and third generation businesses fail. Sometimes they go to another level, but it's rare. Why? Because they're plugged into roles in those businesses and they don't have to learn how to fail. And so as a parent that wants my child to start in a different spot than I did, I have to be careful of placing her there or placing him there because they have to do it. There is no wisdom in the world that I can give them that will set in their psyche as much as experience. We talk about that you get wisdom from experience, right? From making bad decisions from failing. I can't take that away from 'em. And that's so hard.

(09:11):

It is. They have to learn how to fail and how to respond to it. Now here's the difference. This is where we can step in. What we didn't get from the people around us when we were young is that person saying, yes, failure's real. Failure sucks, but you have to fight through it. You have to be better. And the only way you're gonna get better is to keep failing until you succeed. So I will be that voice in their head. I will be the one that pushes them because the world doesn't care. The world doesn't care whether they succeed or not. But I do. And so this week was my son's birthday. It was a big birthday for me. He's five. I can't tell you how excited he is to be five. I don't know why it was such a big birthday in his head, but he's been real excited about it for a while.

(10:18):

And he asked me, he said, Dad, the one thing that I really would like is to stay home with you today. I'd like us to do some stuff. So I said, You know what? Let's make that happen. And I did spin all day with him. Went out and hunted a little, I'd say hunting. We scouted, looked for some deer, glass, some fields. Got to see what was out there at a really good time. And as we came back into town, he's been asking me for a pocket knife because I always carry one. My daddy carried one, my granddaddy carried one. I think men that carry pocket knives or different breed especially for those that maybe aren't out in rural parts of the country, but they're meant that get things done. I think it's symbolic. There's something there that it's it's different now. Some of y'all are gonna come at me and be like, You gave a five year old enough. Yes I did. So is that irresponsible? Somebody's gonna tell me that. I promise somebody in the comment. Somebody's gonna email me, somebody's gonna DM me and say, Well that is very irresponsible of you. Good. Maybe irresponsible for your kid. I trust him.

(11:16):

So we stopped at the hardware store that sells case knives Cuz Case are kind of my favorite heirloom. You know what my daddy carried? Maybe it's a Chevy Ford thing. But I like them and I let him pick out what he wanted. He picked out a beautiful little, it's not big enough. Little tube blade case. Get red bone worn. Look. It's pretty little enough. And I told him, Can't open it without me. I don't want you using it for anything without asking me first. I can keep it in your pocket. Can't take it to school when we're home, you have it in your pocket and we can if you need help with something, you don't play with it without. It's not a toy. It's a tool. And it's very sharp. His case. Knives outta the box. Come real sharp. We'll shave your arm kind of sharp.

(11:57):

Well, like most children do, he didn't. 100% listen to me. And probably five minutes after we got home, he cuts his finger as he's trying to shut that knife without me. After he opened it, it wasn't bad. Put a bandaid on it. You could tell he had some contrition and remorse in what he did. It was a good learning opportunity. Did I think that he was gonna do that? 100%. I knew he was gonna do that text. Some of my buddies a picture, kinda laughed about it and said, I told him don't play with it. Next thing you know he's got his finger. He learned if I never give him that knife and never let him cut his finger, does he ever learn that we have to allow our children to fail. We have to learn. Allow them to do dangerous things safely.

(12:54):

When you hover on them over them on the playground to make sure they don't, nothing happens. They'll never learn how to step away. They'll never take that faith, that faith to leap across the monkey bars because they're afraid of falling. Like the first time a kid gets up in a batter's box, they're afraid to get hit. Especially when they're young and they're like in 10 softball, 10 baseball, 12 u where pitchers are just learning how to pitch. They're a little wild. You're gonna get hit with a ball. That first one scares the A Jesus out of them. But after they get hit, they realize it wasn't that bad and they stay in the box. Same thing. If we don't ever allow them to fail, they're never gonna know what it feels like. They're never gonna know what it feels like to recover from that. And I would venture say in life, 90% of things that we do are failures didn't work the first time.

(13:44):

A lot of people just quit cuz they don't like that feeling. And there's days that I want to quit things, days I know, but it doesn't matter how I feel. Feeling emotions are liars, fear, doubt, anxiety. Those things creep in and they lie to us. We've gotta learn how to overcome them regardless. I mean, I think that counseling is a great way to overcome some of that. I think that good nutrition exercise, there are things that will always help you overcome that fear of doing things. Fear of failure. I think talking to people who have failed and succeeded helps a lot. Find a mentor. That's a big part of what we talk about.

(14:31):

But for them. So I'm gonna get back and wrap it up here with what I started talking about. But for their ceiling or their floor to have been my ceiling, they're not magically gonna be 18 and start where I finish or 20 or 30. I've gotta help them get there. I've gotta help build them. Gotta help them fail so that they will succeed. I've gotta let 'em cut their fingers every once in a while. And as a parent, that's the hardest thing to do. Now I know M will not go back and play with that knife without me. If he does, I guarantee you he'll be a little more careful, a little more cautious.

(15:16):

And I know that Macy had a great batting lesson this week. Why? Because we talked about it every day in the past week. How do we respond? You wanna be great. You have to learn how to respond to failure. You wanna be the best. You're gonna fail more than everybody else, including the second best, I promise. And you don't have to be great all the time to be one of the best. That's the thing that people miss. The best baseball players in the world. And I'm a sports guy, so I'll, I'll use analogies sometimes like this, but the best baseball players in the world, they fail seven outta 10 times and get paid millions to do it.

(16:00):

Millions. They're the best. You'll go in the Hall of fame if you consistently hit 300. I mean, to me, that's one of the best analogies you can ever use. How many times you're gonna fail at the plate a lot to be the best. You only have to succeed maybe three of them. That's a big deal. It's a big deal for us to understand that. And a big deal is part of living at full is doing what you want to do when you want to do it. And having the freedom to do it well, to get to that point in life, you gotta fail a lot. You gotta try things that don't work. You gotta have businesses that may fail or you'll find it's like Thomas Edison said, I didn't fail 10,000 times. I figured out 10,000 ways not to build the light bulb I wanted to. It only took the last one for him to create something that without we'd be in darkness. Right. Thank you for listening to the podcast. I hope you got something out of it. God bless and I hope you continue to live it full.