Scott Schimmel (00:03.47)
Here's the deal, our kids are gonna make a few choices and decisions that actually impact a lot about their life and who they become and who they turn into. We wanna set them up well, right? We wanna make sure that how we guide them, how we kind of give them guidance and advice and walk with them through these pivotal moments, these big life decisions. We wanna make sure that they feel the most informed so that they can make conscious, aware, thoughtful.
choices. So how do you do that? I think on one hand, what oftentimes kids experience from us, the adults in their life is a lot of pressure. So what are you going to do? What are you going to do? And on the other side of that question, if they were to answer it, there's likely they can sense that there's going to be like a rebuttal from us. Well, you know, I don't know about that. So rather, the whole conversation kind of shuts down and out of our stress and anxiety about their life.
They're tied together. The conversation breaks down and we don't ultimately give them the guidance that they need. So this conversation and exercise is going to be better because I know if you're like me, you want to help guide your kids to make free autonomous choices about how they arrange their life, the decisions that they make that will yield the most flourishing success, happiness.
So on one hand, yeah, we can kind of come up to them and say, hey, what are you gonna do? You gotta choose college, you gotta choose major, you gotta choose internship, job, career. What are you gonna do this summer? We can bring that intensity, but we can also do it in such a way that we say, hey, there's actually a process to go through that'll help you make more thoughtful, conscious decisions that will yield the things that you want. Greater sense of self -awareness, greater use of time, a greater congruence and alignment to who you are. So here's the exercise.
The idea is that you would help guide your kids to define and clarify their own personal set of values and not just to define their values, but to rank them. So it's a values and prioritization exercise. And it goes back to this guy named St. Augustine of Hippo or Augustine, however you want to say it. He in this book called The City of God talked about a lot of things, but one of the concepts.
Scott Schimmel (02:27.758)
was that there are two different ways to live and one particular way is where we would order our affections. And the phrase was order or Morris order our loves in a way where we're ranking ones that are better than others because not all values or affections or loves are equal, not inherently equal. The example is oftentimes, as I've talked the past 20 years with young adults about their future.
They'll often say something to the effect of, I don't know what I'm gonna do, but I know I wanna make a lot of money. It's a money focus. And I know as an older person, you know this, you've watched films, you've read books, you've watched the news. You know that a life that is built on the foundation of the pursuit of money will not go well. It will lead to stress, pressure, anxiety.
Shortcutting morality it'll lead to a whole host of things It's not that we don't need them to be self -sufficient and and pay their own bills and be responsible to kind of pay the cost of their own life But the pursuit of money where you prioritize that over other things is a life that's going to be imbalanced And so we don't just as adults. We don't just let kids Figure it out. I don't think that's right
We do recognize the sense and dynamic of autonomy that they need to choose for themselves. That's an incredibly healthy and essential dynamic that they would choose for themselves. But it's not that we're just hands off and say, hey, good luck. Hope you don't blow it. Hope you don't make choices that lead you down a path that you regret or that we're ashamed of. Instead, we learn a third way where we walk with them through thoughtful, reflective conversations, allowing
the model and example of our lives to be a mirror to them and then invite them to reflect and define for themselves who they are, what matters most to them and how they're going to use their values to make better, more thoughtful decisions. Here's how it goes. We let them know, we let our kids know that the stress and pressure they're feeling about the choices that they're making, these pivotal choices that they're making about life are significant.
Scott Schimmel (04:50.606)
And we want to let them know and reassure them that there is a process to go through that will help them make better choices, that will help them feel more confident, more clear. And we tell them stories about our own life. There was a time my wife and I years ago, it was a season where things were intense at home, having three kids at that point. And the job that I had required that I traveled more than was working out for our family. And yet we needed more money.
against that was a sense of obligation that both of us agreed upon that we would express our lives through my career, particularly that would lead others to flourishing. So number one value for us in addition to our kind of sense of faith and core beliefs was that the work and expression of work that we did would be aligned to who I was wired to be. Number one, number two, I need to get off the road. Number three, we need to make more money. So.
with that clarified set of values and priorities, started a longer discernment about my career. I found myself in a conversation one day with a guy that I was introduced to who in that conversation started to recruit me to a job that I didn't know was open. And it was on paper a tremendous match to the kinds of values that I had for my work life, meaning make a big difference.
in leadership and leadership development and helping people flourish and use teaching and training as a primary kind of role in the job. And in this conversation, I started to get really excited. I'm like, gosh, yeah. And we're having this great conversation about the vision of what we could do together. And then kind of towards the end of it, he starts like offering me the specifics of the job and what it would look like to move over. And here's what he mentioned, it'd be a lot more money that I was making at that time.
I mean, gosh, it was just such a surprise. It was like, I don't know a conversation that felt more thrilling up to that point in my life. But in the back of my head, at the last minute, really before I shook his hand and said, let's do it. I remembered the conversation my wife and I just had where we prioritized a value of me being home more. It's something that I wanted, it's something that she wanted, it's something our kids needed. And I wanted to make sure that I was...
Scott Schimmel (07:18.35)
home more, not less. And so I brought up in that conversation, sir, like didn't say sir, but hey, dude, what kind of, what would the travel look like? And he said, it's not that bad at first, probably for the first year it'd be two to three, three weeks a month on the road. And then it would go down to one or two weeks in year two. And I never really heard it phrased that way. Two to three weeks a month.
on the road out of town. And I clarified, are you saying that I wouldn't be here at home for like 15, you know, 10 to 15 days a month? And his expression was, yeah, that, you know, it's not that much, especially for the first year, then it'll drop down. And I remember the sense of clarity that I got. And I said immediately, my wife and I had just decided.
what's most important to us at this point in our lives. We need to stop this conversation now. If that's what the job is, it is a no -go for me. And he wasn't frustrated, but he was disappointed. And he kind of took a step back and said, yeah, it really has to be that. It has to be that much time in the road. And I said, I really cannot take the job. Later in the day, I got home and my wife was asking me about that meeting. I told her story.
I remember saying, yeah, it's crazy. You offered me a job. I didn't even know there was a job opening and the money was like a lot more money than we're making now. And then I said, but I already turned it down. And she said, what are you talking about? I said, no, no. Listen to how much it would be. Listen how much travel it would be. It would be going against our, it would be going, contradicting exactly what we found to be most important in our lives. And she and I had such peace and never looked back.
What a horrible mistake that would have been if we had prioritized money over travel. If we hadn't done that diligent work to reflect on what's most important to us. That's the same kind of thing we can offer our kids. They're gonna have choices. They need to freely choose. But what we need to do is help them figure out for themselves what's most important to them and how to rank those. And so we walk them through an exercise. We let them...
Scott Schimmel (09:40.686)
hear from us the stories where we've done this or blown it and then we invite them to reflect on what's most important to them and let them know that if they do that they will make better more informed choices.
That's how it goes. So lead them in this exercise and help them have the foundation of clarity and confidence to make the best choices for the right reasons.
