Lessons for a father - Unquantifiable Wealth

Image Courtesy: Flickr (Daniel Starrason)

Do me a favor. Read the title of the post again. Unquantifiable wealth does not refer solely to money. It is the possession of things that are valuable to us.

And, who is it that would determine what is valuable to us?

Us, of course.

Having a lot of money might make us rich. Love, faith, honor, duty, friendship, hope, experience and giving are some traits that can make us truly wealthy. So wealthy in fact, that we can change lives.

I consider myself to be Scrooge McDuck sometimes.

Why? No, I do not have a money bin. What I do have is an enormous amount of a lot of other things. 

I have the most beautiful and wonderful family someone could ask for. I have friends that share my life with me. I have a team, at work, that gives me the honor and privilege to lead them. And, all of these people make me wealthier by having trust in me and my abilities - as a son, a husband, a father, a friend, a leader and, most importantly, as a human being.

What I also have are great stories. Stories of people, and leaders, that shared their abundance with others. I have had the fortune of meeting some of these people. They are wealthy beyond belief because they have a capacity to live so they could serve others. They made lives better and provided this service without expecting anything in return.

We might have all the money in the world, but our true wealth has no place in a bank. Our true wealth is within us and around us.

It is this wealth that gives me strength in times of adversity. My wealth allows me to be passionate about things I care for and to find solutions for problems.

I do not have millions of dollars in my possession. What I do have, however, is an enormous amount of more important things; wealth that I am very thankful for.

What about you? What are you most thankful for? Let me know by clicking here.

Lessons for a father - Perception Of Truth

Image Courtesy: Flickr (Jonathan Stroker)

Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. Mark Twain said that, and humor apart, he was right about truth being our most valuable possession.

Let me add something to the great man's words (I hope he doesn't mind): Truth is the most valuable and powerful thing we have.

What if we had the power to mold truth into anything we wanted? Would that make us more powerful than TRUTH itself?

Well, we do have that power. And it is not always a bad thing.

Let me give you an example: If someone were to tell you that the organization that you work at is the best in the world or the product that the organization creates is better than any similar product, would you believe that to be true? How about if someone were to tell you that your son was the most intelligent toddler they ever met? Would you believe the person now?

Almost anyone (person or organization) will probably say they are better than some others at some point in their lives (yes, organizations have lives too!). But, do we believe that, just like we would, for instance, believe that 2 added to another 2 is always 4?

The difference between the 2 cases is good old belief.

It does not matter whether we believe or not that 2 added to 2 will give us 4. It is the truth and our lack of belief in it will not alter it.

If we, however, start believing that what we are creating, the people that we are working with and the organization that we are working as is the best in the world, that is all that matters. Our belief, our perception makes it true for us. Our belief in the intelligence of our toddler makes him a force to reckon with. We become believers and there is no stopping us now!

Perception of truth comes from how we choose to interpret what happens to us. Our interpretation of an event cannot, fortunately, be tied to a set of rules that need to be followed. They our ours. They make us stronger, give us focus and allow us to set goals for ourselves.

Take my interpretation of truth, my perception of reality, away and all I am left with is numbers and logic. I love numbers and logic. I like reason more, and reason tells me that numbers are not running the world, us humans are, and what drives us forward is our belief that we can keep moving forward, that we can get up after falling down or after setbacks and eventually, we will be better than what we are.

Lessons for a father - What We Need

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A couple of years ago, my wife and I started a rule. Before we bought anything we would ask each other "do we need it or want it ?". I did not expect for the little household experiment to succeed.

My reason was very simple: we were not suffering from, fortunately, any financial crisis, both of us work hard and have our own ways of unwinding and, lastly, like any right minded shopper in the world - of course everything we wanted was something we needed.

Mostly because my wife is a genius, and a little because I listen to her, surprisingly, we succeeded. Well, mostly succeeded. There are a couple of things that would fall under the "want" category. But by doing what we did, we were able to clear a lot of clutter from our lives.

Ever since we had our son, that particular rule has been set to the back-burner. Why? Well, try telling a mother that her son does not NEED the new toys or clothes, or the shoes. You will fail and wish you had invested in a better couch. 

Lesson to all fathers out there - never come in between a mother and what she wants to buy for her child. Make it a rule and stick to it.

What I decided to do, almost at the same time as we started following the rule at home, is to take it to work. The reason, again, was very simple. If I offered a service of telling people what they needed instead of what they wanted to hear, I would save them a lot of "clutter".

I did not succeed as much as I wanted to.

As much as we, all of us, pretend to have everything under control and know what is going on, we generally do not. We react to what happens around us and there is only a very small part of our lives that actually functions like we want it to.

So, for someone to tell us, even justifiably, that the project we were undertaking was going to fail, or that our way of handling a situation was rubbish or that we could improve in an area of our life that we thought we were perfect at, is a very hard task to undertake. What made it even harder was that the people had not asked for it. I was providing it, as a service, without them looking for it.

Lesson learned. You could have the capacity to make the next Google but if the people that you made it for are not ready for it, your project is going to be a failure.

When I got the opportunity to have my own team, I craved for and built a team that would tell me, without any hesitation, what I needed to hear. I know what I want. They, sometimes, know better than me what I need.

Now I have a great team at home and at work. What else could a man ask for? Hurrah!!!

Do you have a team that tells you what you need to hear? Let me know by clicking here.

Lessons for a father - The Child In Us

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All of us are born with purity, love and curiosity. With time, however, this usually gives way to other things. Some good and some not so much. What we also lose out on, sometimes, is the freedom to do and be anything we want. Another characteristic of our childhood.

I miss that - those carefree days with neither fear nor concern for the unknown. All we were concerned about was playing more than we were allowed to (just 5 more minutes Mom!!!) and carrying on with a "devil may care" attitude.

Leadership, political correctness, inspiration and goals were something the adults were there to care about. We were there to have fun and nothing more.

Our son reminds me, daily, that it is his time to go through that amazing time and for me to be the adult that has to care about things that do not matter to him. Life has certainly come full circle. He has perfected his art. I am a work in progress at best.

But then I thought to myself, why can't we let the child in us continue to do what it does best? 

Let us continue to be passionate about things we truly care about no matter how big or small they are. Let us not worry about failure and go to sleep exhausted after giving everything we have to whatever it is that we do.

Let us find pleasure in the little things, let us cry and laugh like we mean it, make new and best friends in a day and share with them all that we have.

Let us be curious about things we know nothing about, and be an entrepreneur with a curb side lemonade stand or while delivering the daily newspaper or while selling imperfectly shaped, but usually much better tasting, home made cookies. 

Let us never give up but take failure in our stride when it does happen. Let us all dare mighty things.

Yes, I find a great amount of pleasure in a project well done. But nothing makes me warm and giddy inside like when Mom, all wide eyed and bewildered, used to ask me, after my hard day's labor in the playing field, "what happened to you?".