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To many a man, and sometimes to a youth, there comes the opportunity to choose between honorable competence and tainted wealth. The young man who starts out to be poor and honorable, holds in his hand one of the strongest elements of success.

- Orison Swett Marden (1850-1924)
American author and founder of Success magazine.

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Photo courtesy of lisaschaffer

Our youth is our future. A great nation remains great when it fosters principles of success in its youth. When I watch a child with agility and unbound curiosity, I am astounded by the creative existence of spirit that I rarely see in an adult.

An infant learns at phenomenal rate that most adults can only dream of. What transpires as this infant grows into an adult and live a life of  mediocrity ? It is often a baffling and most thought provoking subject that inspired me to write this article today.

As I dwell deeper into this subject, I’ve started to focus on the 10 pillars of character building and habit formation that fosters success in youth. A youth that our founding fathers have envisioned taking this great nation to its pinnacle with sense of creativity, personal responsibility and without fear to dream what seems invincible mysteries of life.

As a father of two young daughters, I’ve to foster importance of these habits to facilitate their journey to excellence in life.

Pillar # 1 Fear not fear of failure

Children know no fear. Their mind fly though unbound possibilities, they learn at an incredible pace with shattering number of failures. Are they real failures though ? I realize that first and foremost duty of a father is to put aside the heavy mask of fear that hinders most of my creativity. I shall allow my children to break that bicycle in an attempt to learn how to ride. My daughter, Niki, is a great tennis player. She has passion for the game from the early teen years. Often, when she fails to win over an opponent not as adroit and master at tennis, she breaks into tears. I remind her that it is not the outcome, rather it is an endeavor that matters most in life. When she fails to win, she learns what it takes to overcome her mistakes. It makes her humble and cleans her mind of complacency.

Pillar # 2 Learn to share

Children often have jealousy from infancy. Jealousy and envy are byproducts of sense of competition from early age. Teaching kids value of sharing is essential to foster compassion and creative imagination rather than fierce competitiveness. Simple act of sharing clothes, sharing games, sharing books create sense of bonding.

Pillar # 3 Money doesn’t grow on the tree

Ironically, our schools do not teach value of money. We, as collective society, can prevent immense financial distress if we foster importance of money. We can teach them by example that it is important to live within means. Kevin has series of blog posts - 6 concepts you must teach your children before age 18 to teach them value of money at an early age. My kids, both in high school, have been learning how to invest. They are being mentored by one of their friends father who is an investment broker. I’ve thought of fund raising for the school to foster investment not just in a stock market but also allowing kids to use the funding to start a business. This can teach lessons of responsibility-as, they have to be accountable to repay back the loan and report profit/loss and entrepreneurial creativity-as, they are inspired to be self sufficient.

Pillar # 4 Learn to earn

This concept is to expound more on the thought of self sufficiency. Our society has been tilted over the time towards more government solely for the sake of not being held responsible for our own needs. It’s astonishing that most people tend to sacrifice their freedom for the fake security. I, strongly, believe that children have to learn how to earn and be responsible for their own needs. They have to earn for their first car, they have to earn for their leisure expenses. I’ve found that if you pay them for the household chores they perform, they will become wiser in their spending habits.

Pillar # 5 It’s OK to think out of the box

I have great conviction for this sense of freedom to think out of the box. Adults have too many stereotypical beliefs that often disguise creativity. If we hamper our children to view the world with our eyes, we will not have Henry Ford or Thomas Edison in 21st century. Both Henry Ford and Thomas Edison attributed their success to the infinite power of imagination and perseverance to turn ideas into reality. They mastered how to cherish failures. One of my friend’s children are encouraged to celebrate failure with pizza party. He requires them to analyze failure while enjoying pizza and learn from it. I thought that was truly out of the box thinking.

Pillar # 6 Every action has equal and opposite reaction

Newton invented this law in 16th century not knowing that it has profound influence in our personal growth. We choose our actions, yet we, as an adult, have terrible habit of blaming everyone but us for the mistakes. There goes on the whole notion of self-sufficiency and personal responsibility. If we teach children the importance of conscious choices we make in life by example, they’ll become conscious about their actions. For example, my daughters have to go to bed early and wake up early to prepare their own lunch for the school. This is the idea that they’ve embraced well yet when they forget to wake up early and prepare lunch, they realize the significance of discipline and consequences of their action.

Man must cease attributing his problems to his environment, and learn again to exercise his will, his personal responsibility. -
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) German theologian, philosopher, and physician.

Pillar # 7 Remove “but” from your lexicon

In infancy and youth, our lexicon is rather small. As we grow, we add toxin words that poison our mind with excuses for under achievement. World is full of mediocre, self professed underachievers who do not understand that they do not need more power, they do not need more strength, they do not need more money to be successful. It’s exasperating but the word “but” is killing more people than cancer. We shall teach our children not use a word “but”. You can be creative by asking your children to count how many times a word “but” was used in their conversation and in which context. You’ll amaze your children if you both sit down and analyze all the “buts” and try to replace them with “How can I?”.

Pillar # 8 Character matters

This is so dear to me as it espouses the learning of humanity that they seldom learn in school. By inspiring them to learn simple act of humanity, we can foster best of their potential. I was touched by 5 little things challenge by Bruce. I believe that his challenge fosters character building - honesty, integrity and selflessness that goes long way.

Pillar # 9 Have gratitude

Gratitude = Grate + Attitude. Yes, having sense of humbleness for having life and an opportunity to make difference is the founding pillar of successful youth. We live in one of the richest nations on earth yet our schools are failing miserably. There are multitude of reasons for that but lack of gratitude is surely one of the principal reasons why our kids are not achieving success. They have sense of instant gratification in a society that moans about every small inconvenience it faces. It took 71 years after invention of telephone for 50% of our households to have a phone. It took over 50 years after car was invented to have 50% of households to have a car. Yet, today, we get exasperated if our electricity is out for one day.

Pillar # 10 Kick some goals

This is my favorite. I post my goals on the bathroom door and in my bed room and challenge my children to do the same to teach them the essence of goal setting. Allow them to have their own goals no matter how crazy these goals seem to you. Your children will learn sense of purpose by having these goals. Of course, participate and mentor their goal setting activity by providing words of encouragement no matter how silly these goals are. It’s not important how specific their goals are, it is important that they learn the value of seeking higher purpose in life and ascend their journey to live life fullest of their God given potential.

Do you have a pillar to share ? Let’s make foundation of our future stronger together.

Youth! There is nothing like youth. The middle-aged are mortgaged to Life. The old are in Life’s lumber-room. But youth is the Lord of Life. Youth has a kingdom waiting for it. Every one is born a king, and most people die in exile.
-Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet and dramatist.


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To Your Success,

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Written by: Shilpan on 2008-04-10 at 1:02 pm
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