On paper, I was the most motivated kid you’d ever meet. Great grades. Eagle Scout. Skipped my senior year of high school to start college a year early. And after serving a two year church mission I went straight through to law school. But the truth is that I wasn’t motivated. I was compliant. The one thing I was truly motivated by was sports and I gave up my dream of being a pro athlete when I decided to skip my senior year. I’ll put the list of shoulds I grew up with against anyone’s, and I checked every box until my mid-twenties. Nine months into practicing law, I quit. From the outside it looked like a crash-out. It was actually the start of the end of my life of compliance. My parents did a damn good job in a lot of ways, and most definitely did the best they could. This isn’t about blame. Sculpting (nudging behavior with rewards or punishment) is the default most of us were raised on. But it took me 10 years to unwind 26 years of shoulds, with a lot of pain and frustration along the way. Anything built on compliance or defiance eventually comes crashing down if you ever want to live autonomously. My foundation had to be jackhammered out and repoured fresh. That’s the hidden cost of sculpting a kid. Sculptors move kids with should and have to: rewards, punishments, control. It works while you’re in the room. You get compliance or defiance. Then you leave, and you get rebellion or apathy. Sometimes that takes 26 years to show up. Gardeners build the soil so the kid moves on their own: 1. Curiosity. Ask why they don’t want to do it, and actually listen. 2. Cause. Tie it to something they care about, not something you care about. 3. Choice, within limits. “Before dinner or after?” That’s why I’m so big on my kids trusting themselves, even over my own voice and opinion as they get older. I had to learn how to trust myself on my own. I’d rather they never have to unlearn anything.

What’s the first thing you feel after setting a new goal? The gap. The distance between your ambition and your ability. Most people quit right there. They decide they’re not good enough. They’re missing one word: yet. Episode 2 of Konversations with Your Kids: three steps to close the gap. I. Competence: get better through repetition. II. Courage: do it anyway, even when it’s scary. III. Compassion: forgive yourself for mistakes, and eliminate negative self talk.

What if your soul picked your parents as the perfect environment to bring about your life’s calling (despite all their mess-ups and shortcomings), and your kids picked you to be their environment? That relieves us of duty from trying to be the author of their story and lets us be the soil and environment that foster the right conditions. Parents tend to get that job wrong in two ways. The Enforcer tries to sculpt the seed into what they want it to be. The Protector won’t let the seed go into the dirt at all. But an acorn can’t grow up until it grows down. It needs the dirt, the pressure, and the struggle. Roots before fruits. So my job isn’t to chip away or to shield. It’s to be a good environment: high standards, high support, and age-appropriate struggles.

Let your kids see you aggressively and unabashedly pursue your life’s call. Like Rilke says: Sometimes a man stands up during supper and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking, because of a church that stands somewhere in the East. And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead. And another man, who remains inside his own house, stays there, inside the dishes and in the glasses, so that his children have to go far out into the world toward that same church, which he forgot.

The greatest lie in the world is that you can't change. Freedom is having the courage to be disliked. Williams WIN (Work Hard, Iterate, Never Quit. Our value is infinite (and we are no better than anyone else). The bravest thing you can say is "Help." Fear of failure keeps most people from chasing their  #thecouragetobedisliked #workhard #neverquit #fearoffailure

A new life requires a death. Keep it metaphorical and you may be on the brink of everything you’ve ever wanted.

Critical thinking principles I didn’t learn until law school (or after) that I should’ve known much sooner. The larger the island of knowledge, the greater the shoreline of curiosity.

At 11 years old, Kobe went an entire summer without scoring a single point in a summer league. No free throws, no layups, nothing. His dad, Joe Bryant played in the NBA but didn’t critique the jumpshot, throw away the Xbox, or give a lecture about how Joe had done much with much less than Kobe. Joe hugged Kobe and said: “Whether you score zero or sixty, I’m going to love you no matter what.” Kobe said it was pivot point of his life. He said it gave him “all the confidence in the world to fail.” And once failing was safe, the work began. Sometimes we get this backwards. We think confidence comes from winning — so we crack the whip because we “love them” and want them to succeed. But confidence means to move forward with trust. And the foundation of that trust has to be that the love that sustains you isn’t being put at risk if you fail. Then Kobe got to work on his own terms. His final NBA game: 60 points. Zero to sixty — on the foundation of his dad’s love.

At the root of confidence is our relationship to failure. If failure is a verdict on our value as opposed to an opportunity for learning—our lives become stunted. And research shows that kids adopt their parents relationship to failure long before developing their own.