Real Legacy Is What You Leave In Your Children, Not What You Leave For Them

Unknown Speaker

Are you ready, ready to release internal pain to find confidence, clarity and direction for your future, to live a life of meaning, fulfillment and contribution to trust your intuition again, but something's been holding you back, you've come to the right place. Welcome. I'm a Ian Hawkins, the host and founder of The Grief Code podcast. Together, let's heal your unresolved or unknown grief by unlocking your grief code. As you tune into each episode, you will receive insight into your own grief, how to eliminate it, and what to do next. Before we start by one request, if any new insights or awareness land with you during this episode, please send me an email at info at the end Hawkins coaching.com. And let me know what you found. I know the power of this work, I love to hear the impact these conversations have. Okay, let's get into it.

Unknown Speaker

You know, Les Brown is one of my favorites. And he was talking about when about power were you gonna pass on to his children when he dies? And he said, If I'm about to die, and I've got a quarter left, I'm going to eat it. Rather than give anything to my child, my children financially.CVM was all about legacy, what you leave in them, not what you leave for them?

Unknown Speaker

What is the mindset you've helped them to have? Have you empower them to be better? Like I said yesterday, what sort of role model Have you been to them? Now, it just landed with me, it's such a pivotal time in my own journey. And also, as my children were getting to that age where they'd gone through that sponge age, right? They were they'd gone past that for those first seven years. And they were looking for leadership and they're looking for guidance. And I hadn't done a great job of that up until then I'd been an angry dad, I made plenty of mistakes, passed on a heap of patterns.

Unknown Speaker

And I've still been able to help them to create change. Now, like I said, yesterday, they haven't been without their challenges, they have certainly had to see different people at different times for their own wellbeing for their own health, physically, mentally, emotionally. And yet, through all of that, they've grown so much. And so much of that has come as we've taken control of so we've no longer trying to manipulate them and control them and, and force them to do what we think they should do. To put that pressure on them, even unintentionally, almost to the point where we've given them so much freedom that they are actually asking for us to give them more guidance.

Unknown Speaker

And for me, that's a great place for them to be because they can self select, then they've seen what their mum and dad have done in terms of getting healing work done, working on themselves, improving, changing how we were to how we are now stepping away from stressful jobs, to prioritize lifestyle to prioritize a well being and to prioritize our time with our children.

Unknown Speaker

And that the proudest moments for me have not come from them. Winning like achievements, where they've come first in suddenly, but rather when they've like my son won the Citizenship Award at primary school, like that's a proud moment because it means he's a good person that's doing his best for everyone else. When I see both of them being helpful to their friends, when I say both of them stand up for themselves and don't tolerate

Unknown Speaker

poor behavior from their friends and from other people in the world. When they don't tolerate people who are not being true to their values, people who may be picking on their friends, they stand up for them there that that's what makes me proud. And I'll give you an example of how

Unknown Speaker

pressure shows up. And you may identify with this. So I was one of those parents who was pushing my son to be better at sport. I was like I need to give him that that that push it I didn't have now all they did was create pressure on him that created an expectation for him well beyond what he was capable of.

Unknown Speaker

So what's been interesting over the last four years, he's gone on this journey of like, okay, well, you're on your own, you make your own choices. He self selected to play at a high level, he may representative teams, and just recently he's made a decision to step away from those teams. Both of his parents were disappointed in that because he's talented. But then

Unknown Speaker

When we see how his eyes light up, when he goes and spends time doing, what his real passion is, which is not football, there's animals. And the difference is just astronomical.

Unknown Speaker

Amazing, when my oldest, my daughter is just going through the, the HSC. So in Australia, that's the leaving certificate with zero pressure.

Unknown Speaker

Now, to be fair, she knows what she wants to do.

Unknown Speaker

But we haven't placed any pressure on her to do well, we've always just only ever said, Well, what's your behavior in your effort, they're the things that you can control.

Unknown Speaker

And again, like I've been so proud of watching her be support for friends who have been on the receiving end of a heap of pressure, either directly from their parents or indirectly, from those subtle elements of control and

Unknown Speaker

manipulation that as parents we bring, and I'm certainly not saying that I don't have elements where that's still the case, because these patterns are so hardwired, and we're still running different ones, so there'd be still elements where that shows up.

Unknown Speaker

What I do know is the more a role modeled, listening without judgment, listening without directing, without fixing, the more of role models my own improvement, the more they want to know about how they can improve themselves. And the less pressure they feel, the more empowered they feel.

Unknown Speaker

And the more potential they have to go and do what they truly want to do.

Unknown Speaker

Normal way things best, normally, things can have a better outcome for them, not what we think is going to help them to earn more money or to have more opportunities.

Unknown Speaker

But what they want to do,

Unknown Speaker

and when you are able to take that pressure off, then they'll ask for help. They'll ask for guidance.

Unknown Speaker

And it does require a leap of faith from you. It does require you to have the courage

Unknown Speaker

to let them direct their future, they will find their way. And if you listen long enough, they'll also be able to guide you on so much wisdom that they pick up without all the baggage that we're carrying as adults.

Unknown Speaker

It truly is game changing.

Unknown Speaker

And I grappled whether I would do this particular

Unknown Speaker

post this particular video, this particular podcast episode,

Unknown Speaker

depending on where you are

Unknown Speaker

taking this in,

Unknown Speaker

because there is an element of society is like weird, don't, don't go out there singing the praises of yourself or your family because it might look well might look something, whatever judgment you want to throw at it. And I nearly fell into that. But I'm sharing this, not to brag, but to open your eyes to what's possible, to hopefully inspire you to want to change, want to change you so that you can help your children to find their own way. So that's something that for me, I wasn't necessarily

Unknown Speaker

pressured into different different areas, but from the

Unknown Speaker

what I saw as the way forward, all of it, get over here to uni, because that's what everyone else does, it seems like the right thing to do.

Unknown Speaker

It may look back at how your upbringing was and you may think

Unknown Speaker

there were certain things that

Unknown Speaker

you were given a choice, but you knew what the reaction might be if you chose a certain way.

Unknown Speaker

Now I'm gonna be I'm gonna be honest, I feel blessed that I didn't feel that pressure from my parents. There were other different elements around control and so on which, which is pretty normal, right? Like they would have grown up at a time where that sort of hardline control and discipline was just the norm.

Unknown Speaker

And

Unknown Speaker

I can imagine all of you listening to this or watching this would have had similar experiences,

Unknown Speaker

in some way, shape or form. So this is by no means a blaming on previous generations, it's just knowing that all previous generations had their challenges. But it's bringing back to again, the thing I talked about lots self control, what can you control here? What can you change to help bring in more

Unknown Speaker

for everyone in your world?

Unknown Speaker

Because to me, our greatest legacy that we can achieve is the behavior and the opportunities and the leadership that will continue to play out for generations, because we can continue to blame old patterns of behavior that had been playing out and playing out or we can create our new ones.

Unknown Speaker

All new elements of inspiration, have positivity of what's possible for the world that ripples out and creates massive amounts of change. That's legacy. That's the legacy I want to leave. That's the legacy that I was inspired to leave when I sat there at my dad's funeral, listening to all these wonderful things that I've done, have all of the leadership and all of the giving that he that he provided in all of his different communities.

Unknown Speaker

And just thinking about that now, what a gift from him.

Unknown Speaker

That he created that inspiration for me. And that's what I'm

Unknown Speaker

putting forth to you now. What sort of inspiration can you leave for your children to be better to want to be better? Not after you've passed, but now, right now in this moment? What can you do?

Unknown Speaker

That does require courage, but it does require some tough conversations with yourself and maybe a partner, but I guarantee you it will be totally worth it.

Unknown Speaker

I hope you enjoyed this episode of The grief coach podcast. Thank you so much for listening. Please share it with a friend or family member that you know would benefit from hearing it too. If you are truly ready to heal your unresolved or unknown grief, let's chat. Email me at info at Ian Hawkins coaching.com You can also stay connected with me by joining the Grief Code community at Ian Hawkins coaching.com forward slash The Grief Code and remember, so that I can help even more people to heal. Please subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform