Robin Sharma presents a short mastery session advising caregivers on raising children to be leaders and high-character individuals. Key recommendations: create a "heroic" home culture (calm, artful environment, books about leaders), prioritize regular family meals (citing research linking meals to better academic, social and health outcomes), and establish nightly bedtime traditions that reinforce identity and self-belief using repeated affirmations.
Chapters
Hi, it's Robin Sharma. Welcome to this mastery session. You're going to absolutely love this one, whether you're a parent or whether you're an uncle or an aunt or whether you have some kind of family, because this mastery session is all about how to grow great kids. Now, you might be saying, Robin, you don't grow kids, you raise kids. But I believe kids are like these incredible flowers. You know, it's. You get the right soil and you get the right sunlight and you radiate possibility into them and they just bloom. And I think this is, you know, you know this so well because you're wise and smart. But if we could only get kids to think like leaders, to shift from victimhood into leadership, if we could only get kids to believe in their gifts and their talents and their responsibility towards originality, if we could only grow kids to be brave and loving and strong and decent and excellent, the whole world would change. So I'm going to invite you, come on, let's create a movement here where we're all about growing these incredible kids who are not victims and they're not complainers and they're not stuck in the past, but they're all about building a better world while they build gorgeous lives for themselves. And if we did this together, we would totally change the world. So let's get right in. And the first thing is build a heroic home culture. So we talk about organizational culture, we've got chief culture officers in our corporations. But as a parent or as a nurturer of young talent, shouldn't we be building great home cultures? I mean, when I've always thought of this, when I get home, it's sort of my sanctuary from a complex world. So we never have the TV on. I light candles, we have flowers at home. I love great art at home. I love minimalist spaces. I love lots of sunlight coming into our home. I don't want stress and complexity and noise. I want nature and peacefulness for my loved ones. So it fosters great conversations and so they feel, ah, I'm home. This is my sanctuary. So build a heroic culture. And part of that is not only getting your spaces right and releasing the messes and distractions and complexity and news and toxicity from your home, but make your home life heroic. My dad did some great things for me growing up. And one of the great things he did for me is he filled our home with books of great leaders and great autobiographies and books on meditation and books on philosophy and books on productivity and lives well lived. And because of that heroic culture. You know, I picked up those books and I wasn't watching the news. I was reading about Mandela and I was reading about Edison and I was reading about jfk, and I was reading about great entrepreneurs and Rockefeller, and that had a huge shape on me because, you know, books are conversations. You want to have a conversation with Elon Musk tonight? You want to have a conversation with Steve Jobs tonight. You want to have a conversation with Ludwig van Beethoven tonight. You want to have a quiet conversation with Mother Teresa or Lady Gaga. Pick up their books and their words will start to influence you. Okay? The second thing I want to offer to you to grow great kids is science has shown that a family meal is a total needle mover. You're going to love this. But according to some of the research I've been reading, the number one thing to have kids who excel in academics, excel in sports, have great manners, and even are healthier in terms of their immune system, get this. It's a family meal. And so in this world where so many parents, so many nurturers of young talent eat alone or they eat fast food, install the ritual of a regular family meal. That is one of the greatest gifts you can give to your children. One of the blessings from my parents growing up, my dad a general practitioner. At 77, he still gets up and goes to the office every single day. He's almost 80 years old. I say, why do you do that? He said, robin, my parents, my patients need me. My patients need me. But one of the things he did, he was always a hard worker. And yet at about 4 o' clock, when we came home from school, he would leave his medical practice, he'd shut it down, and he'd come home and he'd have a family meal with us. And then what would he do? You know, he's great immigrant stock. He'd have a little nap, still wearing his suit and tie, and then he'd go back for another few hours of work. That's the way he ran it. I've never forgotten. For that, I will always love my parents for a family meal and so install that into your weekly routine. John F. Kennedy's father had a great thing around the family meal. He would bring in interesting, thoughtful people, whether they were great business builders, whether they were from the entertainment industry, maybe they were from the humanities or sciences. And his kids were young. And he would say, sit around the family table and ask these great icons questions. And I borrowed that, you know, from a very young age. I didn't say to my Kids, oh, we're having a celebrity over for dinner. You need to go to your room. I didn't say to my kids, we're having someone really famous or interesting or thoughtful or original over to have dinner with us. You need to leave the table because you're a kid. I insisted that they broke bread with our guests. And so people still say to me now, you know, your children, they know how to have great conversations and they're so interested in other people in this world where a lot of children or young adults are like, they don't have conversations anymore because they're raised in front of this white light off of an electronic device. So install that family meal. And the final thing is get your evening traditions right. I'm far from perfect, but one of the things I completely nailed a father was every night as my kids went to sleep, I remembered, you know, that's an opportunity just before they go to bed to plant these seeds in their conscious mind about who they're going to become in terms of their self identity, and to plant these seeds into the fertile soil of their subconscious mind in terms of their self belief. And you know this. But your outer life and your performance and your productivity and your creativity, who you are in the world is just a reflection of the way you see yourself. And if you can rewire a child's self belief, then you know, your performance and your behavior is always going to reflect your internal story. And if you rewire their story so they believe in themselves and they say, you know, I'm going to do some amazing things in the world, and I'm going to achieve mastery in my work, and I'm going to be an awesome human being, then you've gone a long way to help them achieve that result. And so the evening tradition I got right was this. Every night for years and years when my kids were young, I shared four things with them. Number one, the first statement I planted into their soil of their conscious and subconscious mind. Whatever you do, do it well. Number two, whatever you want to be, be it. Number three, never give up. And number four, never forget how much daddy loves you. And you know, like, I repeated that so many times every single night. I got to the place where my daughter, you know, she would say to me, she'd go, daddy, we got it. We don't need to hear this anymore. But now, you know, all these years later, they still remember those things. And I totally know those seeds that I planted every single night really did forge their identity on who they are in the world. So as always, I hope I've been of service to you in this Mastery session. Go on and totally rock in terms of the way you inspire the young generation to be world class, to be leaders, and to do their part to build a better world. Hi, it's Robin. I invite you to subscribe to this podcast and definitely go over to robincharma.com for more information, tools and resources on Mastery, Elite performance and living a world class life.
