Ep: 36 Helping Your Children Discover Their Life Purpose and Vision - Part 1

If you're a parent looking for sound, solid advice on how to raise your child in an ever-increasing dangerous world, then this podcast is for you. So here's your host, Richard Ramos.

Hello everybody, I'm Richard Ramos and welcome to the Parent Whisperer Podcast. What I want to do today is share with you one of the more important things I think that we can do as parents or as coaches or as mentors, but in, of course, this case it's parents. And this lesson is something that we teach in my Youth on a Mission leadership training, and I just want to share it with you because I think even as a parent we can help our children with one of the more important things, which is to discover who they are, and then to develop who they are, so that they have a keen sense as early as possible about their purpose in life, and to develop a vision for that purpose. So I call this lesson How to discover your life purpose, vision, and legacy. So I want to share some of it with you. And the first thing that we talk about, and the importance of discovering your purpose in life as early as possible. Now, a lot of young people, I know it's hard for them to know, you know, what they want to do for their life. I mean, some kids know. Like my oldest son, from an early age, he knew that he wanted to be a football coach. He was a football player and he wanted to be a football coach. And his dad is a football coach. I'm his stepdad and I've raised him, you know, when he was little, but he was always in relationship with his father who was a football coach. So he always knew he wanted to be a football coach and he is a football coach and has been a football coach at the high school and college level for many years. And now he's He's the head football coach at Rigby High School in Idaho. I will brag a little bit. He's won 4 out of the last 6 state championships over there. I mean, he's done very well. He's very successful. But the point I'm making is that he knew early on what he wanted to do with his life, his purpose in life, and he had a vision for his purpose in life. And there are some kids that are like that. But there are others that are not. And so we try to help them discover what that is. For example, a lot of times, you know, kids graduate from high school, they're 18 years old, they don't know what they really want to do. So they go to college, and even in college, they're not exactly sure which major they want to take. And then they can take one major and go down that road or that track and then change their mind after 2 or 3 years in college, you know, and that kind of prolongs the college career. So I'm simply saying, as soon as we can help our kids discover that purpose and develop that vision and get on that track, get on that road, that I think is so important. So there's 3 things that I've seen that are principles for successful leaders. successful people in whatever they're doing with their life. And the first one is that they take 100% responsibility for their life. They take 100% responsibility to determine how to develop who they want to be and what they want to do with their life in the fullness of their potential and purpose. So in other words, they're not depending on others. They're not playing the victim, or I can't this because of this situation, or I can't do that because of that situation. Because when you take on that victim mentality, what you're saying is I'm not responsible for my life. Things are the way they are because of that thing and that person and those people and this circumstance. But I like what Stephen Covey— I learned from him a long time ago— he said That we are not the victims of our circumstances. We are the victims of our choices in our circumstances. And I know if you've been listening to this podcast, you've heard me say that before. But that's the first step, is taking 100% responsibility to determine your purpose in life. The second Principle is to believe that I was born on purpose for a specific purpose. And when you have that kind of mentality, you just have this idea, this mindset about yourself that there's a specific purpose why you were put on this earth. And You want to pursue and discover and find and develop whatever that purpose is. So successful people, they just have that mindset that I'm here on purpose for a purpose, and they pursue that with devotion and dedication. And the third thing is that we invest our time and resources in discovering And developing my specific gifts, specific skills, and talents to fulfill my life purpose. So as a parent, when you understand those things and you yourself are practicing those things, that is a great role model for your children to see that you are devoted and dedicated to A single purpose in life. You know what it is, and you're giving yourself to that. You're investing in yourself. And that's a great role model. And that doesn't mean that you can't change things. For example, for myself, I've what I call reinvented myself at least 3 or 4 times. And that's because some of us, we have more than one gift. We have more than one talent. And so we're in one track for a while, but then we realize we want to do something else. And then we changed to do that. But all of it's— for me, all of it has been in service to people. It's been some aspect of counseling or serving or teaching, because that is the best version of myself when I'm teaching, when I'm counseling, when I'm leading, when I'm building other leaders and mentoring other people. So all of the roles I've had in my life, in my career, have been on that track. And so that's the first thing, those three principles and demonstrating those to our kids, encouraging our kids, and those kind of things. Now part of an exercise that we give to help young people, and this lesson is for your older kids, maybe twelve, thirteen, fourteen, and older kids like that, that getting them starting to think about you know what is it that you want to do? For your life. So to help them get in touch with that deeper part of themselves, or that spiritual aspect of themselves, and give them that sense of meaning, which is again important to understand the meaningfulness of my life. So one question in this exercise that we have them answer is, what matters most to me? Or if I was a parent saying that, I would ask my son or daughter, what matters most to you? And that's just something to think about. You're not asking them to answer that right there on the spot. You're asking them that question for them to go away and really think about it and start to write down what does matter most to me. You know, of course, there are going to be things like family and maybe faith and sports and, you know, Things that really matter to them. And that just gets them to think about, yeah, what really does matter to me? Another question, or you could put it to them, is, what do I love to do? Or, you know, what do you love to do? What activities get you excited? You know, there are some things, activities or different things that kids are, yeah, they're kind of doing it, but they're not really excited about it. But there are other things that they get fired up about. They're excited about it. You know, I know for me it was all sports, but you know, there's just a lot of things out there that— and that's what we want them to do is find what is it that just you're passionate about, you really care about it, and you love it when you're doing it. You don't have to strain, you don't have to force yourself, you could spend hours doing it, that kind of thing. And then to ask the question, Write down or list at least 2 special qualities about you. What do you think those are? You're a creative person. You're an artistic person. You're a funny person. You're a talented singer, a talented musician. Just a couple of special qualities about you. And so again, these are questions to just start to get them thinking about their purpose and vision For their life. And then once, if they come up with a couple of things, you know, like, well, I feel I'm pretty creative. Okay, well, let's write down how do you express that? Do you express it when you're around family or around your friends? You know, where is it that this quality about you, where is it that you express it? Where have you shown that to maybe other people? So again, it's just an exercise. And then take a minute to answer the following 2 questions. Number one, what would you do for a month with no demands on your time and unlimited money? That really gets you to think like, wow, if for one month I had no demands on my time and I had all the money that I needed and wanted, what would you do? Just think about it. And then the second question in this exercise of helping young people discover that purpose and vision for their life: list your 5 top values. What do you really value? Things like, you know, do you value success? Do you value wealth, integrity, family, faith? I mean, what are the things That you really value. It's kind of like the first question, which was, what matters most to you? So that's an exercise that takes a while. Obviously, I'm just kind of going through it step by step with you. But each one of those things, it takes time. And you give them time to write it down, to think about, or maybe even to go away and come back and say, okay, what did you come up with? You know, yesterday I asked you this and this and this. Now, in this curriculum, Youth on a Mission, of course, this is a course that they're taking the training once a week, you know, for several weeks. So that's how that works. But I still believe that you as a mom, as a dad, you're in a position to encourage, to, to open up their mind, to ask questions, to get them on that track, to give them that mindset, to be that role model. And that's why I'm sharing this with you, because I know that for me, I wanted to be involved in helping my sons and daughters understand, you know, who they are, and for them to define who they are, and for them to discover their talents. And then I wanted to help them develop those talents. And even now, they're still young adults. They can still change careers or go down a different path. And like, as I mentioned at the beginning, my older son, he said to me, I don't want to coach for the rest of my life. You know, I want in 5 years from now, I want to be doing something else. And he's got a vision. He's a great teacher. He's a good leader. And he wants to maybe begin to speak and teach, you know, the way I do. So that's what this is about, helping our kids You may not be the mentor, but you are a mentor in their life. And we can help them down this road by just asking some of these simple questions. Now, there's another part to this. I'll give it to you in the next episode, but I want to give you one more exercise that we give, and that is for them to write down their roles in life. What are your roles in life? Because we all have different roles. I mean, I'll just explain mine because that's just easier for me. So I'm a husband. I'm a husband. I'm a father. I'm a son. I'm a student. I'm a team member. I'm a staff member. I'm a business owner. I'm a leader. I'm an uncle. You know, those are all roles that I have in my life. And so, you write those down. But then, you kind of narrow them down to maybe the top 5 roles or 4 roles. And when you write those out, you know, in my case, it would be husband, father, leader, Teacher, and then when I think about each of those roles, I write what are my goals? What are my goals as a husband? What are my goals as a father and my goals as a leader, etc., etc., etc.? And you can see how this is a very thoughtful thought process. That people have to go through and walk them through. This takes time. This takes thought. It's not something that you're going to do in 10 minutes, that your son or daughter, they're not going to do this in 10 minutes. This is something that takes time. It could be over weeks, over months. But my point is that you are helping them. You're being instrumental. In helping your son and daughter, your children, and one of the more important things, and that is to find and discover who they are, what their potential is in their life, what is their purpose, what is their vision for their purpose, and then to begin to develop it. And that requires an investment of time, an investment maybe of finances. But it's a great exercise to get them in that mindset. That they're not just here, you know, kind of like just being, as I say, you're either living or being lived. You're either a piece of wood in the ocean of life being tossed around by every wave and storm, or you're a boat with a rudder and a sail, and you have a direction. And even though the winds blow and the waves come and go, you have a direction. You have a rudder, you have a compass, you have a sail, you have a destiny, you have a direction. And that's what we want our kids to be. On and not wasting time. I mean, again, we can have fun. There's nothing wrong with having fun and having a good time and, you know, fooling around doing this or that. You know, we all have our hobbies, but that's not the same as when you are on point on your purpose and you're being successful and you're making progress. That's how we want to see our kids. As soon as possible. This is not a pressure job. We're not trying to rush them. It's really about the development of a mindset. You are here on purpose, with a purpose. You have a powerful potential. You have a destiny. And we're going to help you discover that and develop that. That's one of the important roles of being a coach in the life of your children, or a mentor if you want to look at it that way. You've been listening to the Parent Whisperer podcast. I'm Richard Ramos. Thank you for your time. Please subscribe, leave a review if you have any questions. Please send me an email. I would love to hear from you. How are these podcasts resonating with you? If there's any subject or topic or question you have that you'd like me to address, I would do my best to do that. If you want more parent resources, you can go to my website, richardrramos.com, and you'll find there books and some free resources, some videos, and I invite you to do that. Thank you for listening. And as always, remember, Parents on a Mission is not for bad parents. It's for good parents who want to get better. See you next time.

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