Find your Purpose and Thrive

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On vacation this past weekend, our youngest son fell in love with Taylor Swift.  What a talented young woman.  She is truly an amazing star.  I have been trying to read articles about her, trying to find out how she was able to be so successful at such a young age.  It not happen over night, it took hardwork, determination, commitment, and parents who were willing to help her realize her hopes and dreams.  I want to become one of the parents that helps my children to realize his/her hopes and dreams.  Watch Taylor Swift on Oprah below.

We are our children’s first teacher and we will continue to teach them for the rest of their lives.  So what does that mean for our children?  That means we are here to help our children to find their purpose in life and to mold them into successful adults.  We are not here to be their friends.  From doctors to lawyers, entrepreuners to business owners, or vets, and stay at home moms, they will become who we help them to become.  Are you ready for the challenge? 

From personal experience, it was very difficult to figure out for myself what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I am still figuring things out.  Each of our children has different likes and interests.  It is our jobs as parents to give them as many experiences as possible.  These experiences can be from a sport they play, music lessons, camp experiences, classes they take, and even the books they read.  This helpes them to narrow down their focus and to concentrate on one or two areas they may want to pursue.

My oldest son knows he wants to do something with computers.  But it is my job to expose him to programming, web design, graphic design, networking, and other things I don’t quite know about yet.  Through camps, school, classes outside of school, a volunteer job, whatever we can find, he will be able to say what parts of computer science he likes and what part he hates.  As he goes off to college he will have a focus rather than changing his major 3-4-5 times.  I changed mine three times and still do not use it today.

Let’s say your child loves animals and says they want to be a vet.  They have no idea what that means.  As a parent our job is to help them to figure it out.  It may mean they volunteer at a vet office.  But it also means that we give them experiences at a shelter, with an animal trainer, they can even work with horses or other larger animals, when they are old enough a volunteer job at the zoo is great.  Through these experiences your child may find that they love the monkeys at the zoo and go into research.  Or, they may still want to become a vet, but of large animals not small animals.  You gave them experiences in which they were able to make their own decisions and find their true purpose and thrive. 

I would love to hear some of the experiences that your children are having.