Seems like such as easy question to answer. The average, normal person would quickly say “my kids,” or “my family” or “being healthy” and so on. I bet those answers are about what you came up with when you first read the question too.
It’s just that I’m not buying those answers. I’m not calling anyone a liar who recites those quick and easy answers, it’s just that I don’t buy that’s what is really important to most people. Why would I say that? Because their isn’t too much proof to suggest those answers are the truth.
One of my basic philosophies is that your time, your energy and your money go to what is important to you. So if kids and family and being healthy was as important as most people say, it would follow that is where people would focus their time, energy and money. Follow? Well, it isn’t happening. Look around and you’ll see that people are clearly not putting their actions into the important things in life. People are putting their time, energy and money into lots of things but more often than not, it’s the temporary, the mundane, and the instantly gratifying. The ridiculous occupies people’s time, saps their energy and seduces the money from their fingers. And the media helps with that fascination. But I don’t blame the media because they only give us what we beg to see. It’s not their fault they are capitalizing on our preoccupation with the stupid; it’s our own. Watching stupid stuff on television is voluntary participation. No one forces you to sit there and see who the newest stupid celebrity is and what he/she is doing. You choose to do that. People choose to participate in things of no importance and neglect what is really important. I dealt in great detail about this problem in my book, The Idiot Factor: The Ten Ways We Sabotage Our Life, Money and Business (formerly titled People Are Idiots and I Can Prove It.)
Are there exceptions? Of course there are so don’t get all fired up and write me a bunch of comments about how wrong I am and how my premise doesn’t apply to you. Fine. You may be the exception. Read this and be satisfied with how none of this applies to you and find some satisfaction in pointing the finger of blame at everyone else.
“I get it, Larry. So what is important?”
Your obligations are important. What does that entail? Your relationships, your family, your bills and other financial commitments, your employment and your health. Don’t just say “of course” to this statement. Look closely at each of these obligations and consider that the word really means that you are obligated to do take care of these things to the very best of your ability. And I don’t mean with your words, but with your actions!
You are obligated to do the job you were hired to do. It’s not important that you be happy or enjoy it, it’s important that you do it. That was the agreement you made when you took the job, so do your job and be thankful you have one because millions of people don’t.
You are obligated to be as healthy as you can so you can live as long as you can and not be sick and become a drain on your family physically, mentally or financially. You owe good health to your family and to yourself.
You are obligated to pay your bills – on time and as agreed to. That is money you gave your word you would pay when the goods or service was extended to you, so pony up and do what’s right. Even though we are in a recession. Even though money may be tight. Pay your obligations before you do anything else. Don’t go to the movies, out to eat, or buy anything other than what it takes to survive; instead, pay your obligations no matter what it takes. That’s the important thing to do.
Here is the most important thing and your biggest obligation: your kids. We are a world in crisis. I know it and you know it too. There is no other decent way to describe it: we are in a mess! How did we get in this mess? The mess happened because we either didn’t care enough to keep it from happening or we weren’t involved enough to know it was happening. Either way, we allowed it to happen. We are to blame. And we have to take responsibility and fix it.
The best, long-term solution to turning our world around is to create a society that knows how to be honest and do the right thing in every situation. No more situational ethics but real ethics based on honestly and integrity. We have to create a society that knows how to earn money, save money, be charitable, invest and enjoy their money as well. We have to raise kids that grow into adults who know how to give their word, mean it and keep it. Who do their job for no other reason than because they said they would. Who know how to treat people fairly and be healthy and take care of the environment. Who become involved in their communities and in their world to fix the problems we face. Who know how take action and work to create change instead of sitting on their butts and griping about the way things are. Raising kids to be and do their best is our obligation as a society. But it is also every parents obligation. To fail at raising your kids and teaching them how to succeed is the ultimate failure as a person. Good parenting is the most important thing any person can ever do. Nothing will make a bigger difference in our world than people raising kids who will become responsible, productive adults.
This message has become my primary focus and my purpose. It is impossible to fix the problems surrounding business and money without addressing the primary cause. I can’t help businesses do better in the future until we create a society that believes in honesty, service and takes their job seriously. It does little good to talk about money and credit obligations until parents teach their kids about how to earn, save, spend and honor their commitments. That’s the problem right now with people and their money, they weren’t taught the things that really matter. That has to change. My work can have no lasting impact on society without going to the source of our problem: bad parenting. That’s why I wrote my newest book, Your Kids Are Your Own Fault: A Guide For Raising Responsible, Productive Adults. This message is what’s important for me. It means everything to all of us that we turn our world around and that is clearly not going to happen with the adults we have in charges of our businesses, our schools and our governments right now or in the foreseeable future. Which means, it changes with our kids. It changes with your kids.
I ask that you stop now and take your obligations seriously. How will you know if you are doing that? Measure the amount of time, energy and money you put into an activity and that will tell you whether you consider it to be important or not. Pay attention to that especially when it comes to your kids. Need a guide for doing a better job? Check out my new book, Your Kids Are Your Own Fault: A Guide For Raising Responsible, Productive Adults. It’s the most important thing I have ever written. And if it helps you raise a more productive, responsible person, then I have done an important job.
I guess we are two lucky parents. My wife and I taught are kids (Now 25 & 30) to be honest, thrifty, loyal to friends and respectful to all, not just elders. Well, I’m happy to say they listened. Both have jobs, and the job market in Canada is as bad as there. They both have many real friends, as opposed to facebook friends. We still hear from them regularly, and not to borrow money. We hear from trusted sources how are sons have been positive role models in others lives. For this is what parenting is all about. I chose not to be like my father and it worked. I broke the chain of abuse.
I am not perfect and yes we have to fulfil or obligations.
Mine is to set an example and show my two sons that if you put your mind and body to a task you can achieve it. “What ever the mind of man can conceive and believe he can achieve.”
One of my obligations is to teach and be taught and is set out in the project below.
Starting in end of April 2010 I am walking/cycle from Melbourne to Brisbane. The objectives of this trek are to facilitate workshops in every city and town along the journey to gather and share information for the creation of sustainable communities. These workshops will:
Create a network of local resources that can be shared across the whole society.
Create dynamic links between major population centers and rural country areas.
Create trust that develops positive constructive dialogue which is solution focused.
Develop strategies that work with local industries to develop sustainable businesses and industries.
To be inclusive of all people who want to be involved in the process.
I will also be filming a documentary and gather stories about people I meet along the way to tell their story.
My focus is to facilitate changes that stick because people develop trust and are able to create their own sustainable future that is aligned with the values of the whole community and bring all interests to the table to create the best solutions to the problems that are facing all of us and move toward sustainable futures
I was also a judge on Pittwater’s sustainability awards and I am now looking into what interest there is by councils across Sydney having a city sustainability awards. This would involve individual councils running their own awards then having city wards following on from the individual council wards. This could follow into a state then a national wards.
The whole idea behind this is to engage local communities at the individual level in sustainability in landscaping, building/built environment and business. This I believe would also speed up the process of integrating sustainability into the whole of society.
I do this with a great passion because it is something I have been involved in since the 70’s.
It does matter what our obligations are and one them is to have big dreams and then go out and DO IT.
All the best for the festive season and have great successful new year
Ian Cleland
The Wlaking Man from OZ
I grew up with two parents who instilled discipline and a sense of responsibility in each of their 3 children. They survived the depression and served in the military in WW2. The lessons I learned from them I have tried to pass on to my four children – loyalty, responsibility, fairness, and honesty. My children are grown adults now, the youngest being 24 years old and the oldest being 37 years old. They are all contributing members of society, hold decent jobs, pay their taxes, and are in the process of raising their own families. I have one daughter who followed in her grandparents’ footsteps and served in the military. I am proud of them all and everything they have achieved, and I thank God every day that I have been blessed.
Bill Bray
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada
Hi Larry-
I wanted to say I truly believe I AM a good parent. I am a single Mom who was left by ex-husband before our daughter was born and have raised her by myself for almost 4 years. I never let life get in the way of raising her. I have sacrificed higher paying jobs, long hours away, and NEVER sacrificed spending plenty of time w/ her- teaching her right from wrong. I have been criticized by friends, family, & the like that I needed to do what was best for me and have a life of my own. BUT that never seemed good for me to do & my friends who have husbands and good careers have kids who are going to hell in a handbasket. I can’t spend ore than 5 min. with them without losing my mind and they are only toddlers! Their behavior is deplorable! But my friends do drive fancy cars and have huge homes.
On the other hand, my daughter is a breath of fresh air. Family and strangers alike comment on how wonderful my daughter is to be around. They sometimes get jealous or mad- but they could have the same thing if they put in what I put into it. Pay now or pay later…And I drive nothing that anyone would care to drive!
Question for you, though Larry…How do I put everything into work and everything else too? I struggle w/ that all the time. Let me know only if you can.
BTW, love your work and plan on buying your new book.
Merry Christmas early!
-J
Just want to let you know how thankful I am that you and
your books came into my life this year. I should have seen it
coming, but I slipped into a financial crisis earlier this year,
and thanks to your straight talk, I am much better off today.
It hit home this morning while I was mulling over a cosmetics offer for $65, a no-brainer for a cosmetics junkie and girly-girl such as myself. But when the voice of reason piped up and said, “wow, that’s a lot of money,” I realized that I really have changed.
Merry Christmas to you (or substitute the appropriate holiday/religious observance of your choice). Best wishes to you and yours for the coming year!
Well Larry, I seem to agree with you on most of your post. Raising your kids is the most important thing you can do in life.
Like many who have commented my wife and I too have spent the TIME (and yes the money/they went to the finest schools) to nurture our kids from childhood to young adulthood. While raising our kids were were in a financial position to provide our kids with almost anything they could ever want but it was our opinion that we should only provide them with what they need and instead spent our time with them in many different ways.
My wife and I are contemporary individuals who also run a contemporary religious household, one based on traditional religious values yet a household resilient enough to tackle contemporary challenges, especially the problems teens face on a daily basis. We are an educated famly, but unlike many of our peers we did not rely solely on our church or their schools to raise then and instill values. We proactively spent the time to speak with and equally important live by our values.
The return on our efforts shows daily in our kids. You see my comment isn’t meant to be a self serving thump on my chest type of comment. No I meant exactly what I said, the time we spent with our kids, and the values we helped instilled in them are apparent almost everyday. You see in this most recent recession we’ve had a reversal, a severe reversal, of our family fortune.
First through the closure of our business in mid 2008 which included the loss of our savings and all retirement accounts, and through this the loss of our entire multiple million dollar net-worth) my kids have responded with love and grace. The initial shock to our new reality was not easy for them to accept, nor were the drastic changes we needed to make to their lifestyle (and ours), but they processed it and responded by asking what they could do to help.
My two kids, who never had to worry about money issues while growing up or through high school immediately embraced the changes they needed to make. My oldest was away in his first year of college when we went through the business closure and he found out about our financial problems while home for the holidays that year.
We had always promised our kids we would send them to any college they were accepted into as long as they kept up their grades. Within months we had to ask our son to come home and attend a local college to save money. And with our financial situation not improving (YET, I know it will) the business closure we had to tell our daughter she would not be able to go away to attend a college but rather attend a local college. Where they dissapointed, yes you bet they were, but they embraced their school and their rather drastically changed lifestyle.
Had we as parent not shown our kids from an early age what is important to us, that is spending time with them and showing them through a living example what character values are important, then we should expect for our kids to have responded differently. However, because we spent the time and put forth the effort to install in our kids a moral compass of sorts they have shown us how we should also respond to our own challenges.
The students have impressed the teachers. In the face of what feels like insurmountable financial obstacles our kids have shown us how to respond to challenges with Pride, Poise and Courage. Our kids are now attending college and will soon be productive members of society.
Larry,
As a father of a 4 year old, I look forward to reading your new book. I have enjoyed reading each of your prior books and am sure you will have great additional insight into parenting. Keep up the great work, and keep fighting the good fight.
Mr. W.
Your advice rocks. I have a quibble, though. In one of your books you advise guys to never wear a fanny pack. I wear one all the time, because the state I reside in requires gun owners to carry concealed. During the summer months, it’s the only practical way to carry a medium to large piece without a revealing bulge in your clothing.
So if you’re walking down the street and see a man with a fanny pack on his hip, directly underneath his gun hand, remember it’s not a fashion no-no. It’s a holster.
Keep up the good work.
G.
Hi, Larry–
I just finished your book entitled No Time for Tact and I loved it! I especially appreciated the entries that emphasize reading. Since I am a manager of a library branch, that was wonderful to read! Thank you for your straight-forward, no-nonsense pearls of wisdom!
Best,
Lori
marimba50@yahoo.com
Love this line, Larry: “People are putting their time, energy and money into lots of things but more often than not, it’s the temporary, the mundane, and the instantly gratifying.”
You are absolutely right. My “instantly gratifying” issue has been food. I order a couple Big Macs, large fries, etc. etc. and it makes me feel good while I’m eating it.
Then I feel awful because not only have I stuffed myself, but mentally I feel terrible because the cycle doesn’t change. It’s keep repeating itself.
Is fast-food really my top priority? Well, if you do the math (as you tell us to do), it — at least — falls into my top five priorities of the day.
Or it used to be anyway.
I found your “People are idiots” book at the airport over the holidays and it has made a profound difference in how I lived my life in the first month of the 2010.
In looking at how I used my time during January, eating fast food has been replaced by eating healthily and working out at the gym for at least an hour 27 out of the 31 days of the month.
I feel much better. My wallet feels better. And I lost eight pounds.
You talk about momentum in your books. I’ve got it. The only way I can keep it is to focus on the changes I’ve made in my life.
I want February to be a repeat. Only fitting that I write this on Groundhog’s Day.
Thanks Larry!