As a mindset coach for over four years, I have coached over 400 women who I talk to nearly every day who have dug deeply into their greatest fears to find the drive and fire to pursue their dreams. With every mother I coached, I found there was a pattern that replayed over and over again: there was a never ending paralyzing fear that they would not be a present parent if they were to deeply run after their dreams. Many times I wanted to shake these mothers (but didn’t of course) and make them see that the best gift a parent can give their child is that they run after their dreams as hard as they can. Reminder: children do not do what we tell them to do. They do what we do. It is hard-wired into our nervous system to embody what we see. Not what we hear.
I was raised by a full time mother who wanted nothing more than to be a full time wife and mother. I have been driven to be a successful business woman since I was practically in diapers, but my mom, her passion was motherhood. After being angry at my mother for not being a driven business woman, I realized she gave me the most incredible gift. She knew she wanted to be a mother. She was unapologetic about it. She made it happen. End of story. When I realized that my mother embodied going after her dreams and being unapologetic about (even to her ambitious daughter) a deeper gratitude flourished within me for the love and care my mother had given me through the years. But more than anything, I was grateful she set the example to be unapologetic about what you want and to wake up every day determined to be the best at it. For my mom, that was being a mother. However, not everyone wants to just be a mother.
Now had my mother wanted to be a business woman and remained simply and wholeheartedly dedicated to being a mother, it would have been an incredible burden to carry because deep down I would know, just like every child knows, our parent gave up their dreams because of me. The resentment, the burden, but more importantly, the statement we teach our children with this mindset is: I did not live my dreams because of you. Ultimately that teaches our children to give up on their dreams as well. Or we grow up fighting our way to believe it is okay to run after your dreams as an adult.
After spending twenty five years of studying psychology and spirituality, I found that the vast majority of our behaviors, thought patterns, and beliefs come from what we see our parents do. I realized this on a much deeper level when I coached four hundred women and listened their stories of their parents never pursuing their dreams with the grit and gusto they wanted to do themselves. And worse, they feel guilty and ashamed of their dreams and therefore, remain paralyzed in fear of being that absent parent to their children and never living up to their parent’s expectations or their children’s needs.
What this world needs more than anything is children who are going to run, not walk, after their dreams. Because when we do have that in this world, then and only then, will we truly begin to see this world heal on the level that it needs. We do this by beginning with ourselves. We do this by encouraging the parents of this world to do what we hope our children will do and that is to run after their dreams. When we run after our dreams, we put a message into the world, into our children’s lives, saying, “We believe anything is possible. Your dreams are important. Your desires are important. You deserve the life you dream of living.”
When we do this, we can heal our own broken hearts of this jaded world and therefore, we heal our children and by doing so, we heal the world. So for the love of everything that is good…run like a beast after those dreams of yours and watch your children fall more in love with you and life than you never dared to imagine.