If you could do ONE thing to secure your children’s future, what would it be?
- Do you want to give them all the things they need?
- Are you willing to do everything so that they will have a good future?
- Make a will so your family will have a good share of your wealth?
To be honest, I learned a lot more about life when I had children.
- Be Better Tomorrow
- Be Good At Managing
- Play The Long Game
Children, listen up. Let me explain the concepts.
Be Better Than Yesterday
This is not some quote that you just put up on the wall to read and walk by. You will not know how you are doing in anything if you don’t have any measures.
So, to start, have clear goals.
This sounds so cliché, but I can’t emphasize enough what having a direction in your life will do for you. You can always change directions later. But you have to move.
Then you need to measure what you did to get you closer to your goal. Be honest with yourself. Ask yourself, “Did I do the things required to move things forward? Did I do my best? Did I help/hurt other people along the way? How can I make things better next time?“
You’ll notice things about yourself when you question your performance. You might notice that you don’t like doing certain things. Maybe there’s a certain kind of environment in which you will thrive more.
These things are what you will change if you want to be better than yesterday.
Be Good At Managing
Managing does not mean you have to be a manager of a company or in your work. This means you have to be good at managing yourself and the things you can control.
If you don’t do the first thing above, you will not know what to manage.
Once you can measure the things you want or not want, then make changes.
The very first thing to manage in yourself is your emotions. Read more about emotional intelligence. This will take you further than anything in your life. Even more than your education.
Of course, you have to be able to manage other people. When it comes to managing other people, you have to have gone through the time to think about them, not just how you can benefit from them.
If you have gone through some self-reflection, you will know that humans are selfish by nature. That’s okay. Learn how to navigate the human emotions by learning about human psychology.
Once you learn about managing other people, learn from each other people. This might even come first because when you have made friends with a network of people who are better and more connected than you, all you can do is learn from them. Build the connection and learn to manage more people by managing your connection with your network.
Play The Long Game
Now, all of this might sound vague and hard to understand. I understand how you feel. You won’t understand it the first time.
That’s why you Play The Long Game.
I didn’t learn everything about life in high school or college. Hardly anything about how to navigate in my doctorate either. But I did learn my soft skills early on.
Some of the skills are confidence when speaking, being more responsible with my actions, and how to talk to people in a small group or one-on-one situation. When used properly, some of these skills translate to your life and the future will come to be.
I do believe in luck. I also believe luck favors the brave.
While you are still young, I am instilling principles of how to talk to other people and building confidence in all of you. If you noticed, I handed you the money and asked you to go buy it at the stand. Some of the children will be hesitant at first. They might even resent you for a while for embarrassing them.
You have no idea you were already building confidence.
I want you to fail. But I also want you to know that I have put guard rails.
So, don’t be afraid to try.
This is a very, very long game.
