Finding your child’s essence
How harnessing our DHARMA can help us nurture joy
Thanks for reading Raising Good Humans on Substack! My first book, The Five Principles of Parenting: Your Essential Guide to Raising Good Humans is now available for preorder here. All pre-orders will allow for access to exclusive LIVE events and will be eligible for exclusive bonus content this Fall. I am SO GRATEFUL for you and SO excited to get this book out into the world!
After the last few years of working on my new book, the 5 Principles of Parenting, it brings me complete joy (and satisfaction) to see how these principles resonate with work outside of the parenting space. This week on the Raising Good Humans Podcast, I spoke with Suneel Gupta, author of EVERYDAY DHARMA: 8 Essential Practices for Finding Success and Joy in Everything You Do. Suneel’s work to discover lessons and themes in the spiritual Eastern world, and his beautiful writings about practical takeaways for the everyday, mirror the principles of Relationships, Reflection, Regulation, Rules and Repair so perfectly.
It took decades, if not centuries, for science and spirituality to realize they were on the same team. - Aliza Pressman
The concept of DHARMA, defined by Suneel as being one’s essence, feels so intertwined with our goal as parents (especially for those of us raising adolescents). How can we help our children to find their essence? To find inner satisfaction and joy, while under the pressure of external achievement? AND, how can we be their guides and mentors on this journey if we haven’t found our own DHARMA?
One of the ways in which this concept resonated for me was the obsession we have in focusing on a child’s future occupation. As Suneel and I discuss, traditionally, we ask our children what they want to be when they grow up. This simple statement, said millions of times a day across the globe, implies that our children need a profession to define their essence - their success, their achievement, their satisfaction. Sometimes, we even take pride in their answers with a, “What a great goal,” or “You go for it.” But this statement asks our children to get in touch with what the rest of the world expects of them, instead of focusing on the internal. What if, instead, we asked about what brings our children joy, and focused on how they can express that in a variety of occupations? Could we actually help them reach their goals more effectively if we helped them to set them without being exclusively goal oriented?
Job satisfaction, life satisfaction, satisfaction with our kids, doesn’t just come from the achievements we make. It comes from the actions that we take. - Suneel Gupta
One of the key underlying messages in the 5 Principles, is the idea that failure, mistakes and mishaps are an essential component of growth and learning. Without taking the wrong turns, stumbling, and painful moments, our children cannot find their true way. Fear of failing, or of messing up, prevents our children from taking risks, from putting themselves out there, from truly finding success. Often, instead of motivating our children to work harder, this fear gets in the way of children achieving their external goals, resulting in the opposite experience than many parents imagine.
I had a mentor early in my career who told me that, “You want your kids to feel loved for who they are and not the splendor of their accomplishments.” Today, perhaps more than ever, this continues to ring true to me and to the experience of so many parents. Though we care (some of us more deeply than others) about our children’s overall success, can we use our connection, our relationship, and our role as parents to help them find the essence that propels them?
When you're expressing your essence, you come alive in a brand new way. You feel confident, you feel creative, you feel energized. And when you're not, you feel lost. You feel depleted. - Suneel Gupta
My hope is that seeing this concept from a new perspective - from the idea of essence, of DHARMA, of the inner joy and peace that our children have naturally when they are young - gives us another way to access the connection we need with our children, and to abandon some of the focus we all have on achievement and external reward. Now, more than ever, our children need to feel loved for who they are, and not what they may one day become.
A quick reminder to pre-order my first book, The Five Principles of Parenting! In it, I’m helping you to translate science into everyday challenges, and when you pre-order you get special benefits - including a virtual seminar, and custom content specifically made for you. AND when you pre-order, you are helping me SO MUCH. Every single person who pre-orders the book, helps book sellers and shops to see that demand is high and convince them to stock The Five Principles of Parenting on their shelves. I need your help to make sure that happens, and so I promise special benefits to make it worth taking the lap to pre-order today.