How to Measure Your Child's Success
Yesterday my teen son announced his 4th nomination this year, as a finalist in film - 2 national awards and 2 local awards. For four different films. I was bowled over.
It wasn’t him being a finalist that overwhelmed me. It was the way he got there.
When I was a little girl, I did the right thing (mostly). I studied hard, and watched my parents work hard. Went to university for my accounting degree and did further study to become a chartered accountant.
I followed a path that was mapped out and dominant in today’s culture.
I had great roles, earned very healthy 6-figure salaries, won lots of recognition awards, and felt dead inside. I regularly worked way too many hours and burned out. I later understood I suffered quite extensively from depression and anxiety, only I didn’t label them as such then.
When my company responded to my request to help me change my career, they engaged an external career coach. Upon completing that career coaching, my coach (the owner of the career coaching company) offered me a job and I went to work for her. A spark in me was lit.
Whilst I’ve had to learn the skills of running my own coaching, and now an online course creator business (I’m still learning). Facilitating transformations with my clients came relatively easy to me, and has just gotten stronger and more precise over the years. At first, I couldn’t believe the results I was getting with clients, getting to the root cause of problems that had existed for them for decades in just a few sessions. But what I learned early on, is that we are all wired for something that comes relatively naturally to us. It can be so natural that you don’t even recognise it as your thing because you just do it without knowing and are really good at it.
Throughout my accounting career, my ability to help people connect, and understand themselves and each other, was expressed in organising inter-departmental social events and later becoming a change manager and helping teams work through big changes. So there were sprinkles of the real me…It kinda reminds me of the phrase, “Wherever we go, there we are.” The real me was always there, but limited in expression.
Today it’s all I do and I’ve never felt so alive. My pervasive depression and anxiety has dissolved away. Of course, I still feel depressed and anxious at times but it doesn't take over like it used to.
So I absolutely vowed that my children would not grow up following a path that wasn't true for them. I knew, from my own experience, this would also directly impact their mental health. I did not want my children to have external success at the cost of their mental health. We are growing up in a culture of adverse mental health because we allow external success to be more important than how we FEEL inside. We are so disconnected from who we are.
I wanted so much for my children to grow into who they truly are. It’s taken a lot of skill to get here and a hell of a lot of unlearning on my part to parent my son in a way he feels connected to who he is and has the mindset, courage, and resilience to follow his path.
This has been a long journey, but his success has come from him expressing what is in his soul. He feels alive. He’s motivated. And yes he makes a huge effort, sometimes late into the night and weekends but he’s not pushing himself to do it. It’s not costing him his mental health. He is expressing what lights him up and getting rewarded for it.
This is my measure of success for my child.
Much love,
Dina xx