You Are an Elder

Generally speaking, there is a universal respect in all cultures and throughout history for elders. Elders have seen more and done more. They are wise. Not always, but almost all the time. There is a crown in gray hairs that commands respect. Use it.

Stories

Your age has provided you with lots and lots of stories to tell. Grandchild love stories! They love hearing how one uncle used to keep a toothbrush in his glove box to brush his teeth on the long commute to work only to have his son tell his dad he has been using it to clean his soccer cleats for months.

Second Most Powerful Relationship

A child’s most powerful relationship is with their parents. Their second most powerful relationship is with their grandparents. That is a lot of power. Make the best use of that power when you are with them. They will read your letter because you are that important to them.

You Write Your Family History

Only you can write your family history. You were the one that lived it. You hold the pen that writes the family history. It is in your power to include and exclude. It is in your power to see the positive or negative. History is written by the victors. Writing your letter makes you a victor.

When you think of writing your memoir, you think of looking back at your life. Memoir is looking backwards. In the process of looking backward something very strange happens – you write stories that give you a sense of resolution for your future. Writing your memoir allows you to make your past clear and understandable. You clear up your past and deal with it successfully. It is a great paradox that looking back helps you look forward.

Almost all therapy is doing just that – processing or thinking about the past until it makes sense so you can have a better future. So, in a very real sense, writing a memoir is very much like a therapy session. Making sense of your past thoughts and behavior begets a better tomorrow.

When you write a letter to your grandchildren, you do more than make a list of your actions. You write a story about them. Your story follows a pattern. It could be the hero’s journey or a love story. You make sense of your past life by writing it as a story. Without writing your story, you are left with moments of joy or sorrow.

Write your own story. Make sense of your past. It will help you make better decisions today so your future can be better. It will also help your grandchildren make better decisions in their life.

If you don’t write a letter to your grandchildren does that mean you love them less? No.

It does mean you missed an opportunity.

There are many ways you can express love to your grandchildren.

Gary Chapman’s book “The Five Love Languages” is an excellent book with a very helpful idea on how best to express love. The basic concept is that everyone has a different love language. Chapman cites five major categories: Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, Words of Affirmation and Physical Touch. Find the one that resonates with your partner and provide it. If your grandchild’s love language is Acts of Service and you provide only the remaining four, you will struggle to satisfy their need to be loved effectively. Find your grandchildren’s love language and use it.

However, you have limited time with your grandchildren and even more limited time with your great grandchildren. Eventually, the only way to express love is through written words after you are gone. Maybe it’s only one the five, maybe it’s not the most effective love language for your great, great granddaughter, but it is something.

There is an amazing process that has changed world-wide manufacturing that can be applied to writing your letter to your grandchildren. It is called Kaizen.

In manufacturing it the process of continuous improvement through small incremental changes. It was first fully utilized by Toyota and now they are the largest car manufacturing company in the world. It works.

One Kaizen concept that can be used successfully to write your letter is the idea of small changes. In his book “One Small Step Can Change Your Life” Robert Maurer writes about how when a person is faced with a very large task (like writing a life story) the brain immediately reacts with fear. This fear comes from thousands of years of evolution and comes from a person’s ‘lizard brain.’ It is the limbic part of the human brain. It reacts in less than one second to anything that triggers fight or flight. It is much, much more powerful than people think.

If you say to yourself, “I’m need to write a 500 page memoir”, the lizard brain kicks in with a vengeance. Part of that powerful reaction results in shutting down the full use of the prefrontal cortex. That is the part of your brain that plays a central role in your cognitive control functions. The part of you that successfully solves problems.

What triggers the lizard brain is fear. Writing 500 pages is too much. However, if you tell yourself you have write one paragraph, your lizard brain doesn’t panic. It doesn’t consume you with fear. It is not a threat. You react from your prefrontal cortex and not from you lizard brain.

The pattern changes from large challenge to fear and eventual failure to small challenge to calm thinking to eventual success. 

Use this Kaizen concept of picking small achievable goals that lead to eventual success through continuous small steps toward overall improvement and success.

You can write one paragraph leads ultimately to a successful letter to your grandchildren.

You hold in your possession the pen that writes your life story. 

When you let other people get you angry or upset, you give away your pen. You let them write the story of your life. You give up your own power of story telling and give them the power to write your story. 

Hold on to your pen.

Never let other people write your life story or tell you what you are worth. Write your own story. If they try to tell you that you are unworthy or that they are superior – hold on to the pen and write your own story of self-worth. Write your own hero’s journey. 

Never give up the pen to write your own story.

“If you’re not writing your own story, you are a character is someone else’s.”

Chris Brogan

 “When writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else hold the pen.”

Rebel Thriver 

 “There comes a point in your life when you need to stop reading other people’s books and write your own.”

Albert Einstein 

 “This is my life… my story… my book. I will no longer let anyone else write it; nor will I apologize for the edits I make.”

Steve Maraboli     

“Whenever you’re down on your luck, and when things aren’t going the way you like, remember that you are the author of your own story. You can write it any way you like, with anyone you choose. And it can be a beautiful story or a sad and tragic one. You get to pick.”

Sarah Jio

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We all want leave a legacy. To make a dent in the universe. To have our lives mean something. Even if it is a small thing. We want to believe that our life made a difference.

This is universal. Every person that ever lived has thought this and wanted it. The pharaohs that built the pyramids wanted this. Alexander the Great fought for this. Gandhi worked for this. Ask any older person facing death this question “Did your life make a difference?” They will answer “I think so” or “I hope so.”

You can leave a legacy by writing a letter to your grandchildren. 

People have an innate curiosity about their family history. Stories about great grandparents are much more interesting than stories about people they don’t know. Your story will be read by family generations from just because you are their ancestors.

You can leave wisdom. You can can leave stories that will be read and remembered. Your story, your letter can provide guidance and inspiration for future generations.