1. Learning how to think is much more effective than learning what to think
Much of what happens to us in life is a direct result of our decisions, and if you’re unhappy with your life for any reason, it’s a sign that it’s time to change the way you make decisions. This is also true for your children, and it’s important that they grow up learning how to make the right choices for themselves without your guidance.
You can demonstrate and show them how to get on the right track, but in the end, their life story will be written by them. You can walk alongside your children, but not in their place, and a day will come when you won’t be by their side, and they’ll stand at a crossroads needing to decide for themselves. Therefore, it's important to teach your children how to think, not what to think.
2. Everything is hard before it becomes easy, and you grow stronger over time
One of the best things you can do for your children's development is to let them do things on their own, feel independence, responsibility, and experience real freedom that allows them to explore and experience the world on their own terms. Life’s journey is one big learning process, and what’s hard at first becomes easier with persistence, not giving up, and in general, we become stronger through each such growth experience in our lives.
For example, your child might get a little lost on their way home on the first day of middle school, but after a few times, feeling perhaps scared or confused, they’ll eventually learn the way home and also how to deal with similar feelings and situations in the future.
3. Worry is the biggest enemy of personal development
Worry doesn’t help much; it mostly robs us of happiness and joy, keeping us occupied with nothing but anxiety and fear that come with it. Children have very vivid imaginations, and they too may suddenly fear things that we parents don’t find frightening. We need to remind them that worry is just a product of imagination and that they can use that same imagination to create other, more desirable thoughts. This tool will help them in the future and in their personal development.
4. Thinking of things to be grateful for every day will make you happier
We all have many things to be grateful for even if it doesn’t always seem that way. So not only is it worth teaching your children to be grateful for the good things in their lives, but you can even suggest they start a “gratitude journal”—a journal where they write down five things every weekend that happened that week for which they’re grateful.
Dr. Robert Emmons from the University of California, Davis tried this with his students, having them write a gratitude journal for 10 weeks. By the end of his experiment, the students were more optimistic about their future, and during the experiment, they even got sick less than average. If your child is old enough to write a journal, help them start one, and maybe start one yourself as well.
5. Don’t seek happiness—seek meaning
Chasing happiness is not the same as being happy. Happiness itself is a fleeting emotion that exists only in a specific moment, and not always. This is a subject that tends to confuse young and old alike, so most of us chase after small moments of happiness, which are really moments of joy, while happiness exists only when we experience lives full of meaning and daily progress.
It starts with the question “Why”—“Why do I do what I do every day?” And when the answer has real meaning, we live our lives on our own terms, making every challenge much simpler and easier. It helps us push ourselves forward without complaining about the hardships.
6. To move away from what you don’t want, you must get closer to what you do want
If you tell your child to stay away from the cookies, what do you think they’ll think about? The cookies, of course. But what if you suggest something else to engage them? Chances are, they’ll forget about the cookies. Remember that the more you focus on not thinking about something, the more you end up thinking about it, and this philosophy holds at any age and in any situation.
If we try only to avoid what we want to stay away from, we’ll carry a heavy weight that makes it hard to go far. Instead, we should focus our energy on another goal we want to achieve, and naturally, that weight will lift as we move toward it.
7. Lack of effort blocks success much more than lack of intelligence or talent
It doesn’t matter if you’re a genius or have a bachelor’s, master’s, or PhD—you can’t make any real change in your life or the world without putting in some effort. There’s a big difference between knowing how to do something and actually doing it. Remember this yourself, as it’s your job to praise your children and encourage their efforts—not their intelligence. When you do this, you’ll emphasize the actions your children can take and the energy they need to put into their work. This is important because it teaches them to persevere and make progress, and that hard work isn’t impossible—it just requires more effort.
8. Things won’t go as planned, but you can prepare for that in advance
Today’s youth often receive many opportunities to break through and succeed, yet for each person who reaches the top, there are dozens more who fail along the way, despite their desire, ambition, and effort. Help your children understand that if this happens to them, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Unexpected obstacles always come and try to divert us from our goals, but they test our strength or, on the other hand, actually help us choose a new and better direction. Your child might eventually arrive at a place they never expected to be simply by keeping an open mind—after all, new ways to succeed are constantly emerging thanks to modern technology.
So if your child’s future doesn’t go as planned, what should they do? They should focus less on the future and more on the present, understanding what is helpful for them right now, and they will know how to use it to their advantage in the future. The main thing is not to shy away from new experiences that bring new skills and tools into our lives.
9. You can travel a long distance with small steps
Most people waste their time on things that aren’t important, like playing games on their smartphone, scrolling through social media, or passively watching TV. If you do these things every evening for a year, you’ll likely start the following year in the same way, exactly as you were at the beginning of the previous one.
However, if we do one small creative or enriching thing every day—like a small drawing, a walk outside, learning a new skill, or meeting new people to build professional connections—by the end of the year, you’ll have at least one thing to be proud of and also unique experiences worth remembering. When asked “What’s new?” you can say “I built this” or “I learned that,” and of course, the sooner you start, the more experiences and skills you’ll accumulate. So it’s essential to pass on this lesson to your children now.
10. Goals don’t help create positive change—habits do
What’s the difference between a goal and a habit? As parents, your goal is to be a role model for your children, while the habit is the time and energy you dedicate to it daily. Here are some other examples: if you’re an entrepreneur, and your goal is to build a large and successful business, then your habit should be a regular work routine, along with improving your management, marketing, and sales skills; if you’re a writer and want to write a novel within a year, then your habit should be a daily writing routine.
Now, imagine if you ignored your goals and focused only on habits—would you still get positive results? For example, if you were trying to lose weight but ignored the goal of losing 10 kg and simply focused on healthy eating and exercising daily, would you get results? The answer is yes, so remember that goals are great, but without healthy and useful habits, you’ll never achieve them. These habits need to be part of your routine, like brushing your teeth and showering every day.
