#BigParentingIdea — Your Work Ethic Is The Single Most Important Thing You Leave Your Child With
By: Lukasz Laniecki
Tags: Life, Parenting, Passion, Work, Children

Parents care a lot about their children’s future and yet the majority of them forget that the single most important ingredient of their children’s lives, the cornerstone of their happiness, health and relationships, is their attitude toward and their relationship with work.

There is no denying that work will be the biggest part of their lives. Whether we’re chasing the conventional success (money, power, status, etc.) or any other success (because we decided that we will pursue other goals) we will need to put in the hours.

Work is what gets us there. Nothing else will.

You can play the lottery, you can hope that you will inherit a fortune when your parents pass away, but if having money isn’t your only purpose in life, and it isn’t for most of us, you will still need something else. You will need the work.

Work is being portrayed as something we don’t like. We say things like “If you love what you’re doing it doesn’t feel like work.” Our stereotypical image of work is that it sucks and that we all would be much better off if we worked less or if we didn’t have to work at all.

That’s bullshit!

Work is the most noble and most vital part of our existence.

It’s through work that we contribute to the society. It’s through work that we add value to other people’s lives. It’s through our work that we usually help others.

Work is at the centre of our lives. The fruits of our work are the most important things we can share with others. Any creation that has ever been made, any masterpiece that we admire, has come to existence because someone worked, not because someone sat on the front porch, sipped beer and talked to friends. Heck, we couldn’t even sit on that front porch without someone’s work.

We stress the importance of being among people and interacting with each other (socializing, going out with friends, finding a work-life balance), but we almost never stress the importance of work.

Work has become this nasty, unwelcome part of our lives. The necessity we all have to put up with.

People dream about winning the lottery or suddenly inheriting a enough money to retire. They fantasize how they would never again have to work a single day in their lives. Worse still, they share those fantasies with friends and family thus polluting their minds with this crap.

They tell their children that they should enjoy their lives while they’re still young. That the best years are our childhood years, the teenage years and our 20s. That’s usually a time when we still have adults who care about paying the bills and providing for us. Thus our message is clear “Enjoy your life while you still can.” That’s a hell of a motivation, isn’t it?

When you’re being primed to hate work from as early as elementary school (or even kindergarten) what can you expect in terms of your attitude toward work later in your life?

Parents who do this make a massive mistake. They forget that their broken relationship with work is not enough of a reason to sell their children on a notion that in general work sucks.

They forget that we always tend to see more of the “reality” we’re part of. When we hate work we are far more likely to believe that that’s just the way things are in this world and sell our children on this bullshit life philosophy.

Ever had the impression that after you have bought your car or stroller, suddenly you were seeing more people in this particular car or moms (or dads) with this particular stroller? It’s not that they all suddenly decided to buy this particular brand (after “hearing” that you too bought it) but we simply start to notice those cars and strollers more. They’ve become part of our reality and that’s why we pay more attention to them rather than other brands.

If you aren’t that lucky and haven’t yet found the work you love, don’t tell your children there is no such thing. The fact that you haven’t found it yet doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have such relationship with work.

Life becomes easier and way more pleasurable when you get to do the work you love. So spare your children your flimsy wisdoms about how much work sucks (because it doesn’t) and don’t deprive them of the chance to develop a deep, meaningful and beautiful relationship with their work.