[ad] Lessons We Need to Teach Our Kids

We all hope and wish that our kids will go on to live out their lives happy, healthy and fulfilled. But many of us fail to teach our kids the incredibly important lessons needed to achieve this type of life.

Being happy, healthy, fulfilled and ultimately leading a “successful” life takes a lot of learning, hard work, and commitment. Instead, we raise children to believe that everything will just magically fall into place one day and when it doesn’t that child loses faith in the system, and us. 

It’s imperative that we start to teach our children the most important lessons in life that we and our school systems fail to teach them from the very beginning. A happy and joyful life is earned, not given.  

Self-responsibility

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Taking responsibility for yourself is the most fundamental lesson we can teach to our children. So many children in our modern world of excessiveness and indulgence do not understand this important trait. A Lack of self-responsibility can lead to so many issues in terms of our physical health, mental health, relationships, work ethic, financial security and more. 

Taking responsibility for yourself is the single best thing you can do for yourself. Once you stop allowing your surrounding environment to take control of your life you can put the control into your own hands. 

Once a person learns self-responsibility they start to make real positive changes in their lives, They eat more nutritional foods, they exercise more, they treat others better, they work harder, learn more, and accept their imperfections. The world is not against us, it is for us to take control and navigate around the world we have been handed to us.

Integrity

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A lack of integrity in our society is the result of so many problems we see around the world today. Many of us fail to keep our promises to loves ones or friends. We choose to let people down, go back on our word, fail to fulfil our promises to ourselves and others. We also fail to finish the things we started.

When we lack integrity we become untrustworthy which has dire consequences for the personal relationships in our lives. Friends start to avoid us or “ghost” us and family members become disinterested with spending time with us. Good solid relationships are built on authenticity. You want people in your life that you can depend on and vice versa.

When we have integrity we naturally gravitate towards others that also value and exhibit integrity. This helps us to form trustworthy and long-lasting relationships. 

Vision

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We often speak to our children about what they want to be one day but we rarely discuss why and how they are going to get there. The most successful people on this planet, whether a charity fundraiser or entrepreneur, all have one thing in common. They have a solid vision of where they want to be and they have tons of goals set to help them get there. 

When our children say they want to be doctors, we say “that’s wonderful” but we should be supporting that dream by helping them to create a vision for their future. This doesn’t have to be set in stone but the idea that they are working towards something give a child an unreal amount of structure in life. Even if the vision changes, they will be learning invaluable stuff they never would have learned without that vision.

We should support our children’s visions and help them to find a way to achieve it.

Finances

Photo by Guillaume M. on Unsplash

You may have grown up with parents that were very good with money or those that weren’t. Either way, that impression has been left on you and your current relationship with money is defined by it. 

Many of us go through life with a scarcity mindset. We believe there is never enough money, that more money is always best and that is just the way things are. This toxic relationship with money affects every single area of our lives including every decision we make. For some of us, that means holding onto every last cent and never letting go. Others simply may just never have any money and are always in debt. 

Won’t we don’t teach our children about money is that is a tool that can work in their favour and help others if managed and used correctly. The vast majority of people out there were never taught to save 5-10% of every paycheck which over the course of 40-50 years can have a profound effect on one’s financial security and future.

Instead, we teach our children that they constantly need to strive to make more money no matter what the cost and then when they attain it we fail to teach them how to properly use it. So many of the problems we face on this planet including hunger, poverty, and corruption are the result of our toxic relationship with money.   

Nature

Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash

While many kids will be thinking right now about the mobile games we’ll all be playing in 2020, many of them won’t be thinking about what adventures they can have outdoors this year. Ours and our children’s connection to nature have so many benefits to our lives that it is essential we help them to connect to nature from an early age.

Appreciating, understanding, and empathizing with nature can help our children start to think about the protection of our land and the animals we share it with. In a world dominated by headlines about climate change and species extinction, connecting to nature is imperative for our next generation. 

Nature can help to reduce stress which is important in a world rapidly becoming more stressful and creating more of us to suffer from depression and anxiety than ever before. Being in nature regularly can boost your immune system helping to fight against all manner of illnesses and disease. 

Most of all, nature can instil a huge amount of empathy in a person. This can help them to improve their personal relationships, treat people and animals with respect and spend more time protecting our planet than helping to destroy it.

This is a collaborative post.