Empowered Legacy

February 2020 - Sharing Your Story

As parents and grandparents age, the missed opportunities to connect with the next generation become more apparent. It almost becomes painful to see someone who used to hang on to their every word drift further and further away, and there are fewer and fewer meaningful conversations.

The divide gets larger especially when it comes to values and family history. Parents start to feel their young person doesn’t really know much about them and what it took to get the family to where it is today. Sure, no family is perfect; but for previous generations, there has always been a strong desire for their children to have a better life than they did.

The hard reality is parents didn’t share with the next generation what they were doing and why. They haven't shared their history, their story, what helped shape them, or what is most important to them.

And what is most important to them is that being alive had a purpose; and that purpose doesn’t die with them.

That the relationships they had were strong enough to endure when no one can pick up the phone to reach them anymore. 

They wonder if family traditions will be lost when they are no longer there to celebrate Christmas or birthdays.

The truth is more than wealth or recognition, parents and grandparents care more about their values being passed to future generations.

They want the lessons learned and the history to be remembered.

Tragedy has been in the news recently about lives cut short. If today was all we had, tomorrow what will they remember? What will remain? What will they know about our story and our values? 

It is not too late. Have the important conversations. Share why certain actions were taken. What traditions have endured and why they should be kept. What is the family history? They may not fully understand yet, but they will. When communicating tradition, values and stories focus more on connection; less on direction. Give them the information, and work with them to understand its importance.  A few minutes can be enough to start.

What We Are Discussing in Empowered Living

A large portion of the training and coaching time will be focused on identifying current paradigms. A current paradigm is a person’s current program or operating system. It is our current way of thinking or way of being. It is the collection of experiences and thoughts which we have picked up consciously or subconsciously which has become our mold or model we work off of - once again consciously or 95%+ of the time, subconsciously.

Paradigms shape our habits, tastes, tendencies, routines and keeps us doing exactly what we have always been doing. This obviously gets stronger as we get older, so we spend time identifying and analyzing if our current paradigms are supportive or unsupportive.

When you want something, but it seems to keep eluding you, there is a conflict somewhere.

Is the young person struggling in their relationships, health, career, financially or with mastering their psychology? We work together to create a shift from their current paradigm to a more supportive one.

We review how the power of taking responsibility for one’s life – thoughts, energy and actions, is vital to move from our current paradigm to the new reality we want to create.

Again, personal responsibility means our ability to respond.

Therefore, knowing we work off a current paradigm, when we encounter new stimuli we bring awareness to our ability to respond in a new way.

This is not always easy, because we are fighting inertia. There have been years of habits and memory of reacting or responding to different situations in a potentially unsupportive way. BUT, the longer we go down a given path, the more often we make a similar choice over and over and over again, making it exponentially harder to make a lasting permanent change. However, in Empowered Living we also emphasize if we fail 100 times each day in the pursuit of something meaningful do the ‘failures’ really matter if we achieve what we’re after?

Worrying about failing or not being where we want to be yet is a distraction from what we can do today to change unsupportive habits.

Many young people worry and have self-doubt because they have a feeling of not being enough. They feel like no matter what they do, it is never enough. As a coach, my goal is to make sure my young people know they can love themselves fully while simultaneously improving their minds, habits and the quality of their lives. A paradigm shift can be made.

How to Connect With the Next Generation This Month

Share a story with them about how your parents (their grandparents) or society was pushing you in a particular direction and how you received it. Did you follow along against your gut? Did you forge ahead on your own making all the 'mistakes' they said you would? What did you learn? What would you do differently?

Another idea. If they still have living grandparents or an elder family friend, encourage them to conduct a video interview for fun with this wise senior. Help them generate some fun and insightful questions. Here are a few suggestions: 

What is your earliest childhood memory?

Tell me about your family members.

What was experiencing the Great Depression, World War II (or any other prominent world event) like? What do you remember most?

What were you doing when you were my age?

What was your favorite job?

What was their first major appliance or piece of technology and what did you do before you had it?

What were your hobbies growing up?

How did you meet your spouse?

What was the biggest challenge you faced in marriage or parenting?

What are your hopes for your family or society?

What is the most value lesson you learned throughout your life?

A grandparent's memories can be surprisingly clear, and often a young person can be more receptive when engaging with a grandparent over a parent. There can be tremendous wisdom which comes from a life full of experiences. Connections can be made from similar experiences as well as gaining a new perspective from unique experiences.

I hope this creates a new opportunity for your family to connect.