Self-discovery is something that we think we are doing for ourselves – because it’s “self” discovery! And it does do a lot for us! It shows us strengths and abilities we never knew we had. It confirms our ideas about what we think we’d like to do. It builds our confidence and conviction to develop our talents and use our gifts to bless others.
But there’s a side benefit of self-discovery. Without realizing it, those things we learn about human nature become insights into the strengths and gifts of our children. We begin to see them in new ways and have an enhanced ability to aid them in their own self-discovery. Bit by bit the layers of their personality peel away and their true nature is revealed both to you and to them!
They become empowered by their new-found knowledge of themselves! Their confidence and conviction grows as yours did. Their desire to develop their talents is heightened and they head into adulthood with clarity and purpose.
TO LEARN MORE LISTEN TO THE “KICKSTART YOUR SELF-DISCOVERY” PODCAST HERE!
Full Transcript
I received an email recently from my 18 year old son and I want to read you part of what he wrote in this email to me.
“When I was pretty young, I don’t remember exactly how young, I wasn’t feeling very motivated to read. Mom, you sat me down and told me that you noticed I seemed to be motivated by positive results much more than by negative consequences. So, you said as soon as I had read the Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, I could go see the movie in the theater.
Not only did this develop my love for education further but it showed how much you cared by citing a specific personality trait of mine and giving it a practical life application. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought back to that experience as a profound life lesson about myself?
This specific realization again came to me this week and has changed the way I think about the mission work I’m engaged in. I realized the negative talk about what happens when missionaries break the rules and don’t work hard was killing my vibe and keeping me bummed out about the work. Since then, I’ve started putting positive motivations into my life relating to the work and guess what? The work is super fun now! I actually enjoy it!”
The reason I wanted to share this with you is not so that you’ll think I’m a super amazing mom because I’m no different than you. I wanted to share it because my son is talking about a combination of factors that go back to the very beginning of my journey, when I got super excited about the idea of life mission and I was working on my own education. I was turned on to a couple different books that talked about temperament and intelligences and things of that nature. Those books showed me, along with things I read from Dale Carnegie and other authors, key differences in people’s nature. I realized people are different in so many ways, ways that I had never imagined as a child.
So, I went on this quest as part of my desire to understand life mission and to prepare myself and my children; a big part of which was self-discovery. In my book, The Mission Driven Life, I talk about self-discovery as a very important part of loving yourself. You can see the effect that that self-discovery quest, that I was on, has had on my children. As I learned how people think differently, live differently, value different things and perform in different ways, every piece of that puzzle gave me clues and insights into my own children.
This son, and one of my other children are probably more motivated by positive consequences than by negative ones. I’ve seen stats that up to 80 or 90% of people are more motivated by pain than by pleasure. This particular child, my son, is motivated a lot more by pleasure and as I was studying this back when he was little it made a huge difference in the way that I parented him from then on.
He was potty training and he was really having a hard time (boys seem to struggle with potty training more than girls do). Anyway, he was really struggling and I learned this concept that some people are more motivated by positive rewards than by negative consequences. At that time he was really into cowboys. We had taken him to the rodeo and he just thought it was the end-all. He always wanted to learn about cowboys. He had a cowboy dress up outfit and he would run around the house being a cowboy. When I learned this concept, I took him to a real “cowboy store” and we wandered around looking at things until we found the dream cowboy hat, within reason right? Like within a budget I was willing to spend.
Well, he put that cowboy hat on. He felt it, touched it and looked at it. I told him that when he had been dry for a week we would come back to the store together and we would buy him this hat. Well, guess what? He was dry from that moment on! And that lesson about who he is profoundly affected the way that I parented him.
Today, that principle about himself is still positively impacting his life out in the real world. He realized he was having a really difficult time because he was focusing on the negative so he switched his focus and put those positive factors in place.
This is just one tiny component of self-discovery. And it’s also one tiny component of the MDM Academy that we are going to launch this fall. There’s going to be a lot of cool things that we’re going to do in level one for self-discovery but there’s some stuff that’s in the enrichment materials that we won’t have time to cover in depth in the Academy.
That’s why, I want to do something really fun! I want to take this idea of self-discovery and work on it together with you in a Facebook Live this week. We’re going get on together in The Mission Driven Mom Mastermind Group and we’re going to dive in! This Facebook Life is called “Kickstart Your Self-Discovery.” That’s exactly what we’re going to do. We’re going to talk about some basic components of what self-discovery is and how to kick start your self-discovery quest at your house with yourself. Then you can use this knowledge with your children because it’s really going to make a huge difference in the way that you see yourself, the way you see your children, the way that you parent, the way that you see the world. It’s going to help you on this mission journey to prepare yourself for the eventual calls you receive outside your home.
Please be there on Thursday, May 10, 2018 from 6:00-6:30 pm PST. Please be on time so that we can learn some of this basic self-discovery information together. After my short presentation you can ask questions, we can engage in conversation and work on this together. Please also pass this on to anybody that you think would love to be on that Facebook Live with us, share this post and invite them to the group as well because it will only be for the members of the group that can get onto this Facebook Live event. I know they’ll want to be there with us. It’s going to be awesome!
