14 Life Lessons (Things I want my daughter to know)
14 Life Lessons, insights and ideas that have helped me to feel more confident, empowered, strong and in control of my life and health, that I’ll be teaching my daughter as she grows up and wanted to share in case they’re helpful for anyone else!
Table of Contents
My daughter Ava turned 8 last week and I had ALL the emotions. Excited to see her grow, proud of the amazing girl she is, and heartbroken because every day she is less and less of a “little girl.” I jokingly told her I was going to spend the whole day crying.
As we were driving ALL around Buffalo (she chose to pick a day full of activities to do with her cousin instead of having a party) I remembered a note I had started in my phone at some point last year with the intention of turning it into a social media or blog post and never did.
The Life Lessons Question
I was recently working with a team of coaches, and one morning before we started our calls another coach randomly asked me:
“What are the main things or life lessons you want to teach your daughter as she grows up?”
I didn’t even know how to answer that in the moment – because I knew I could probably write a book on it. As the day went on, so many thoughts and ideas came to mind so I saved them all in my phone, and now they’re finally this blog post.
They are a collection of things I either didn’t believe, understand the importance of, or wasn’t introduced to when I was younger that I know now. Some that were told to me, but never really taught or explained in full detail and others that have been powerful epiphany’s, insights and additions to my life – some of them even life changing.
While she isn’t quite old enough to want to listen or understand many of these now, I do try to teach her them in bite sized pieces when I can. Will she listen? Who knows – but my mission is to share what I’ve learned that has helped me grow and live a healthier, happier and more empowered life either way so here we are!
Either way they are here for anyone else in case they’re helpful in any way like they were for me 🙂
14 Life Lessons: Things I Want My Daughter to Know
That our thoughts and beliefs about world around us will determine our experience. I heard quotes like “perception is reality” a million times growing up, but I was in my 30s before I really understood what that meant. Practically put – Our thinking, creates our feelings, which drives our actions and produces our results. We get to question and choose what we think about every single thing, how long and if we focus on it. To be able to do this we have to pay attention and “think about our thinking,” not believe every thought, question it and make sure its benefitting us and taking us where we want to go.
That we create our feelings with our thinking. Other people, things, circumstances and situations don’t make us feel a certain way, our thoughts about them do. The amazing thing about this is – we don’t need to control people or things to be happy. We can create happiness or any feeling, any time we want for ourselves. This also helps us understand that we aren’t responsible for other people’s thoughts, feelings, actions or results – they are. While what we do may influence their thinking, they are ultimately responsible, which gives us all the power in our own lives and them the power in theirs.
That feelings are vibrations in our body and we can handle, feel and process all of them. Emotions are energy in motion and meant to be felt. Stress, sadness, grief, happiness, excitement, fear. When we’re not afraid of a feeling – we’re not afraid to do or try anything, because the worst (or best) thing that can happen is exactly that, a feeling.
To always, always have our own back and love ourselves, no matter what. That this starts with a decision and is maintained with a conscious and intentional practice. That confidence, self love and worth come from our brain and our thoughts, not other people. That there’s NO benefit to talking to or treating ourselves negatively and punishing or beating ourselves up. It does us absolutely no good and actually drives the opposite of what we usually want.
To utilize the power, creativity and uniqueness of or own brain. That there’s benefit in tapping into our own creativity and knowledge because thats where the most unique ideas come from (no one else has our brain or thinks like we think!)
That we’re amazing just the way we are, and that it’s still OK if there are things we wants to change and improve.
That the end destination in life isn’t necessarily to go to college, get married, have a baby and get a job. The end destination is to do things you love and to be a good person who feels purposeful and fulfilled. That we get to PICK what we do with our life – and the opportunities are endless. That other people won’t always agree with our decisions and that’s OK.
To be ourselves and WHY we should want to be.
I always heard this but didn’t really understand what it meant or why I should care and the benefits to me.
I always wanted to be like Sally, Kelly, whoever, because they had prettier hair, more friends, a better body, a more fun life, whatever.
But I didn’t realize –
- Each one of us is literally the only person walking this Earth with the unique combination of skills, gifts, personality, experience, background that we each have – why would we not use it and embrace it?
- It’s literally impossible to impersonate someone else, no matter how hard we try. Instead – we can take what we love and admire about others and use it as inspiration and put our own spin on it.
- Our unique gifts and personality were given to US to do something amazing with that only we can do
- It’s a literal waste of our time (and life, skills, talents) trying to be like someone I’ll never be like – and at best I’ll be a second rate version of them (because I’m not them) AND, there are parts of there life we likely wouldn’t want and that we don’t see
That not everyone will like her and that’s ok – she doesn’t have to spend her life trying to make them. The most important thing she can do is love herself.
That she has more power than she’ll even think is possible and that she truly can accomplish any dreams or goals that she has. She just need to know what they are why she wants them, believe in herself, do the work, be patient and flexible and she can achieve them (we all can!) It’s all a mind game – if we keep our thoughts productive and positive and are wiling to feel uncomfortable and keep going until we succeed – we’ll get there. It just may not be on our timeline or work out in the exact way we planned, but the only way we’re guaranteed to fail is to give up.
That failure and discomfort IS the path to success with anything, and we shoudn’t be afraid of not getting everything “right.” The goal is to learn, pivot, adjust and continuously grow and evolve, not to be perfect all the time. Every time we go through challenges, struggles, hard things, we are getting stronger mentally, physically, emotionally.
Perfection doesn’t exist – so she doesn’t have to try and reach it with everything she does. Done is always better than perfect. B- work put into the world is better than A+ work that never goes anywhere because it’s “not done.”
Don’t fight with reality – we lose every.single.time. If it’s raining it doesn’t do us any good to think and talk about how we wish it wasn’t raining, it shouldn’t be raining, or the weather said it wasn’t going to rain. Things will happen that are outside of our control – we can obsess and dwell, spend all of our time thinking and talking about how things and people “should be,” and try to change the past, or we can accept them as they are, feel the feelings, learn and decide how we want to think about it going forward, and intentionally create our future.
That learning to follow through with what we say we’re going to do is one of the most valuable skills we can learn. If we can do this we can truly accomplish anything. It helps us develop self trust, confidence, mental strength and so much more. How do we do this? With a decision, commitment, practice and repetition. See: 7 Steps to Setting Weight Loss Goals (And Achieving Them!)
That we are strong, powerful, amazing, and can handle and do anything (I tell her this every night)
What are your thoughts on these 14 life lessons? What would you remove or add to the list? Let me know in the comments!
