Lessons from parents help create your life story

Once upon a time… Well, isn’t that how stories start? Once upon a time, you were born and your life story started. Recently we celebrated parents with Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. This got us thinking about how the lessons we learn from parents influence our life. These life lessons help us create our own life story.
The first thing we learned as we grew up and had children of our own, is that parenting is an exciting, gut-wrenching and rewarding part of life. It’s much harder than it looks. We’re all imperfect people and we don’t come prepared for parenting.

If you don’t have children of your own, maybe you’ve been a guide or mentor for children. If so, you have played an important part in their life. As we talk about parenting, all these caregivers are included. We approach parenting with hopes and prayers that we can make a positive difference. We hope our children will be glad for some of the learning and forgive us for when we didn’t give them what they felt they needed.

We also hope that you had loving parents. However, some parents aren’t as caring as they could have been. This is no excuse, but often those parents never had loving parents themselves so they didn’t learn how to be a loving parent.

Harry Harlow studied monkeys and showed that when baby monkeys were given only what they needed to survive, like food and water, they didn’t thrive. They also needed loving care and touch to thrive. Yes, it’s true, we all would be better off with loving parents but we are different than monkeys controlled in cages. As we grow up, we get to be the CEO of our life, find caring people to learn from and create our own life story.

So, whatever kind of parents we had, know that they gave us one gift for which we can all be eternally grateful – they gave us the gift of life. We may have learned what to do, and what not to do. It’s our choice. We get to create our life. So let’s make the most of this wonderful gift by applying the positives and avoiding the negatives that we learned.

Henry Ward Beecher said, “We never know the love of a parent til we become parents ourselves.” Fortunately, we both had loving parents. We’ll share some lessons we learned as we were growing up. Even though our parents have passed on, their spirits still live and their lessons continue to guide us on our life journey.

Here are a few lessons I (Lynn) learned from my parents.

• From my dad, I learned the lesson to never give up. His plane was shot down in the Pacific and he floated in a life raft for 3 days before being rescued by friendly natives. He then came back to get his doctorate and be a college professor. These activities showed lessons in resilience and persistence.
• My mom was the epitome of love, faith, kindness, and patience. I remember her saving a little bird and nursing it back to health. She was accepting and caring for others and people of all ages loved to be with her. She also passed on the love of learning to me as she kept up on scientific reading her whole life.

Here are just a few lessons I (Doug) learned from my parents. My parents weren’t ones who “told” me what life lessons were important to learn, they primarily lived those lessons by example. They modeled the importance of having a faith. For our family it was Christianity. Faith continues to be a source of comfort for me. My dad was a quiet, patient, hard-working, humble man whose “word was his bond”. I never heard him say anything that he didn’t believe to be true.

I learned to love music from my mom who was a talented piano player. Mom also stressed the importance of taking good care of health with proper eating and exercise. And she set an example for me that you are never too old to try new things.

We find this anonymous saying to be true, “Love your parents and treat them with loving care, for you will only know their value when you see their empty chair.”

What about you? What life lessons have you learned from your parents? You may have learned both positive and negative lessons. We encourage you to take the positive lessons you learned and use them to create your own enjoyable and meaningful life story.

Chanhassen MN residents, Doug and Lynn Nodland are success coaches and owners of The Balance Center in Excelsior. Contact them at WeCare@SharingLifesLessons.com

© Doug and Lynn Nodland 2021 Articles and videos may be shared in their entirety with attribution.