“But it ain’t about how hard ya hit.

It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward.

How much you can take and keep moving forward

Rocky Balboa – “Rocky V”

Parents voices echo in their children’s head forever. I have no scientific study to back me up, but I do have a lifetime of hearing voices in my head to  verify this truth. I don’t think I’m alone in experiencing this phenomenon. I have read about it and see it in hundreds of films. There is something very universal about these voices and therein lies great power.

I had a wonderful experience with my daughter many years ago. She when to the movies on a date and saw “Ocean’s Eleven.” It was filled Hollywood’s most attractive leading men – Brad Pitt, George Clooney and the like. When she came home she told me “Dad, as I watched the movie, I kept hearing your voice in my head. Be critical when you watch movies. Are these people doing good things? Are they stealing and are they hurting other people. It was a fun movie, but I kept hearing your voice in my head.” Wait, what?! While my teenage daughter was looking at Brad Pitt and George Clooney on the screen, she was hearing my voice about people doing good things or bad things? I was blown away. She was listening to me all those years! I bet you  bottom dollar that she still hears a few of my words today streaming something. 

I was working out with weights as a teenager and my dad told me “It’s not the first 15 reps that count. It’s the last five. When you are really hurting, when you really want to stop – that is when you build muscles here (pointing to my bicep) and here (point to my head).” I hear that voice in my head today when I am struggling hard to finish the last five miles of 100 mile bike ride or writing the twentieth “How To” document for huge project at work. His voice will always be in my head. He continues to motivate me and help me today. That is the enormous power of a parents voice.

You have that power when you write it down in your letter. Those words will echo for years and years. Stories about overcoming great difficulties will be used as inspirational fuel for years and years. There is a great natural power to parent’s and grandparent’s words to drop deep into the mind and memories of children and grandchildren. They will become a trusted tool. A mental tool that can help them when they need it. It can help them when they need a reality check, when they depressed after failing, when they looking for answers about life, when they are frustrated at work and when they think they are too tired to go on. Your words and your stories can help them.

Encourage your children and grandchildren to create and repeat words of truth, strength and encouragement. Tell them that it will work. That inspire of the fact that it seems like words are lost on children like water running down a duck’s back, that they do indeed stick. They hear you. The words sink in. Maybe not all of them and maybe it takes 400 times, but they do sink in.

My oldest son repeats these words to his daughter every night, “You are strong. You are smart. You are brave. You can do anything.” She is only four years old now, but he has repeated those words hundreds and hundreds of times to her just before she goes to sleep. Day after day after day. My son has built a Greek temple in his daughter’s mind. There are four massive Iconic pillars holding up the front facade triangle based on the golden ratio. At the base of each pillar are words chiseled in stone and chiseled into my granddaughters heart and soul, “You are strong. You are smart. You are brave. You can do anything.” Life is going to be hard for my granddaughter at times. But when those times come, she has strong, ancient and beautiful temple she can enter in her mind that will fortify her and encourage her. She will hear her father’s messages echoing in her head.

It can be very, very hard to be honest. 

What helps is defining terms. To be factual is to be specific with all the facts and details. To be honest is to share true feelings and emotions, while sharing most of the details.  You can be honest without disclosing all the specific details. This can avoid conflict and protect relationships.

You don’t want to promise the reader that you are going to be completely honest or factual. That is a very high bar. Promising this is not being honest. 

Besides, a completely factual account of events makes for poor reading. A completely open and honest disclosure of all emotions can degrade to a poor reading as well. It could very well end up being a pity party or a true confessions novel.

The best reading is a combination of selected facts and honest feelings. People love stories. Never let the truth get in the way of good story. 

Is there a better time than vacations?

Getting away from what you have to do and doing what you want to do with the people that you love.

You could write about one single vacation. The freaking fantastic trip that was just so much fun. You got lost and laughed about it. The one meal you will remember for the rest of your life. How the hair on the back your neck stood up as you looked at the Sistine Chapel, Half Dome in Yosemite, crystal clear waters in Hawaii, the  perfectly calm lake you had all to yourself, the coffee you shared with wife on the beach you had to yourselves or looking up at the skyscrapers in New York City. Share the joy and happiness of those vacations that touched your spirit and left deep memories you happily carry with you all your life. 

Vacations reveal a rare and wonderful side of your life. You are out of your routine. You are exploring the far reaches of the earth and of your soul. Be mindful of what you are experiencing in these special places. Vacations provide a very special time to find new Personal Truths – you like lonely beaches, you seek a little thrill or sense of danger, you like row boats better than canoes, you like looking at the surf better than swimming in it, you love talking about how to grow love in your life and you can’t stand talking about politics. It does seem like changes, such as a change in location, lead to additional changes like finding a new thought that makes you very happy.

Take ten minutes out of each vacation day to journal a few thoughts. Just the fact that you commit to writing some new experiences down will help you be more mindful and more observant of the new things you are experiencing.

You can’t make someone else do something they don’t want to, but you can influence them and show them things they have never seen. You can gently turn their head and allow them to see something that have never seen.

If your grandchildren read a letter from you they will naturally think, “What about the other grandparent? What about their life story? Don’t they love me just as much?” These are natural and logical thoughts that you can use to your advantage. Tell your spouse how important their letter will be. That your grandchildren will get the wrong impression of them if they don’t write a letter. They will mistakenly think that your spouse didn’t care enough to write the letter, didn’t live an interesting enough life or had something to hide.

One of the great beauties of writing a letter to your grandchildren is that it is only a letter. It doesn’t have to be a 300 page memoir. It doesn’t have to be Shakespeare or Hemingway. A two page letter is still a letter. Job done.

Encourage them to just get started. The sooner the better. Buy them a spiral notebook. “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” Ask them to write two pages a year. That is entirely doable. Baby steps. 

Direct them to this blog site. It is full of inspiration and helpful suggestions. 

Be encouraging. Never criticize. Do not be a critic. Be a supportive coach cheering them on. Anything they write is wonderful. 

Timing is critical. There will be golden movements when they will be more receptive to writing; getting older, the passing of a friend or loved one, a serious illness, a family squabble or moving away from family. All of these moments are difficult and it is the difficult times when people feel compelled to write and make sense of the times that don’t make sense.

Encourage your spouse to start writing their letter today.

Oh, the joys of the holidays!

The traditions.

These are moments in a person’s life closer to their heart than Monday’s or Tuesday’s of the working week. These are the days we get to have things our way. We define holidays, jobs define weekdays. These are the days we share with the people we love and the people have to get along with. Holidays are ripe with writing material.

You can write about the traditions your parents gave to you that they created or were given by their parents. How many generations has this been going on? What new traditions have you created? What are the moments that fill your heart and make your eyes leak? 

It doesn’t have to be Christmas. Maybe you’re one of those people that spend 100 or more hours decorating your house for Halloween. No judgement. That’s what make you special and unique. Write about it. 

Personally, I could write 50 pages about the tastes of Thanksgiving and Christmas, the portability of Father’s Day, the compelling reasons to celebrate birthdays for an entire week, never going out to dinner on Valentine’s Day and the never-ending joys of Groundhog Day.

Share the shape and color of your heart on holidays. Let your grandchildren know which ones you really love and those that are overrated. Get specific on the details. About how fun firecrackers where at nine years old or how your wife’s aunt made a Polish potato salad that rocked your world. 

Write about the people you were glad you saw on holidays and the people you could have done without. Why did you want Aunt Sally to be there and found every minute with Uncle Raul like fingers on a chalkboard. How Christmas has all the stress of buying presents and Thanksgiving has days and days of football. 

Writing your own story is scary work. It’s opening yourself up and putting yourself out there. But it is doable. You just have to be brave.

The first step is killing the dreaded critic in your head. There is no other critic. There are no critics on the outside when you write. There is only the critic in your head. The trick is to find the right words to say to them in your head that makes them go away quickly and completely. 

Here are a couple of suggested things to say to your inner critic to get rid of them so you can move forward with your writing.

“This is just a first draft and I don’t need you for a shitty first draft.”

“I believe in my better angels, not my fearful and draining ones.”

“Ok, I know you are there. I recognize you, but I don’t have to listen to you bad mouthing what I am working hard to do. You just sit over there. You may whine and moan, but I refuse to listen to you. I have work to do.”

“I am making the choice to believe in myself.”

“I wrote yesterday. I wrote the day before that. I am going to write today.”

“The only person that can make me doubt myself is myself. I choose to believe in myself.”

If these work – great, you’re done. If they fall short, write your own. But whatever you do – don’t give up. Find the words that work for you. They will be your magic words. Make your own magic. You have that power. You have the power to create. 

GetRdone!

“The best teacher is pain.”

When you write your letter to your grandchildren the hardest thing to write about may be the most helpful thing to write about – your hardest moments in life. They are the stories that will provide the biggest help to your grandchildren. Everyone’s fine when everything is fine. It’s crises that make or break us. Life is not what happens to you, it is how you react to it. When something goes very, very wrong there is a great golden learning moment to be had for the person that moves on.
How did you get through it? What did you tell yourself? Where did you find comfort and wisdom? What were the paths you could have chosen and why did you choose the one you chose? What did you learn? Did this difficulty teach you how to cope or avoid a similar challenge? Did you become bitter or better?

It may be especially hard to write about a difficult time that was the result of your making or mistake. But mistakes are part of life – always have been and always will be. For as long as humans are humans we will be making mistakes. Throw away shame and pride and write the facts. Tell the brutal truths if you can. If you can’t bear to write about them, then don’t. The point is not hurt yourself, the point is to help other people. 

You have two things going for you when you write about your lessons learned from your own mistakes. First is that time heals. It even heals yours own mistakes. You can laugh a mistake the next day or it may take ten years before you can laugh at it, but the day will come. The second is you get to be the writer. You can conduct your own experiments with truth. You can be truthful and leave some things out. You can put a favorable spin on what happened.  Just know that the more truthful your story is, the better the lesson is for the student.

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