Coming into the home stretch on these take home messages. This one comes from Patrick Bet-David.
"Our family is our legacy... Enjoy your home now. One day the house will be there but the people will not. What will you do then?"
To be honest, before arriving at Parker Seminars a couple of weeks ago, I had not even heard Patrick Bet-David's name. His work had never come across on my social media feeds. Evidently, he is fairly well-known in the entrepreneurial world. He began his career as a successful business owner. Bet-David then decided to take the lessons that he learned along the way and branched off into becoming an author, hosting a podcast, and developing a popular YouTube channel to share the lessons that he learned along the way.
The majority of the messages throughout his presentation did not resonate with me the way that other presenters did. This is most likely due to my limited knowledge of his material. However, the quote above did resonate with me. This statement struck a nerve for me, in a good way. We often talk about how our children are always watching. Any parent knows that while they are watching, they are probably not listening as well as you might hope... Children do see all of the things that you do. They will notice the things that you show them, through your effort and your actions, are important to you. That was the thought in my mind when Bet-David said "Our family is our legacy." The things that they see us do are, likely, the things that they will do when they become adults.
So you have to ask yourself - "Is what I am doing right now going to leave the legacy that I want to leave behind?"
Do you want your children to be sitting on the couch, playing on their phone, ignoring the people around them, while eating a huge bowl of ice cream? OR do you want them to be going for a device-free hike, enjoying their surroundings while having conversations with the people who matter most to them?
You get to decide!
The next part of this quote resonated with me for a different reason. The first portion dealt with our children, and the second deals with our future. We have to be aware that someday our children will spread their wings and leave the nest, hopefully after they have learned the lessons that you wanted them to see. We will be left in our home. Hopefully, not by ourselves, but possibly with our spouse, or friends, or other family members. It is very easy to lose sight of the importance of these vital relationships when the chaos of raising children hits. We must prioritize those relationships as we navigate the chaos of raising children. Our spouses, friends, and family are the people that we hope to spend time with, to laugh with, to cry with, and to grow old with.
This goes back to the first portion of our quote - Prioritizing these relationships is leading our children by example. Teaching them that we value these relationships will hopefully lead them to value them as well.
What are you showing your children?
Are you showing them to value the people and things that you think are the most important?
