Maximize Your Influence
Welcome back to Keeping Your Influence through the Teenage Years. We’ve moved past the phases and now we’re going to talk about how to maximize your influence.
No one has more potential to influence your child than you. But notice that word POTENTIAL! You have to work at it! One of the best stories I have heard about someone was about Koby Bryant. When he was on the USA Basketball Redeem Team at the Olympics, the entire team would be out at night partying. But he would stay in, wake up early, and practice. He had a natural gift, but he still worked hard and developed that gift.
Ayren Nelson is on staff here at Hope, and he is an amazing speaker—but you know what he does? Work at it.
So my question for you is, are you working to develop yourself and your own influence? Where are you getting mentally, emotionally, physically, or even spiritually fed? There are a lot of books about influence and leadership out there that all say different things, but one thing they seem to all agree on, is that you can’t pour into others from an empty cup. So where are you going to fill your cup?
Now that we’ve addressed the personal-side of influence, let’s talk about your kids and how you can maximize your influence in their lives.
Number one is key, and it seems simple: Spend time together. This is a non-negotiable. I say it’s simple because I think we would all say it’s important. But does that belief actually align with how we live our lives? Where does your time go? Do you take the time to slow down, prioritize those relationships over accomplishments, to create family rythms and routines?
One of the things I am most looking forward to as my kids grow up is creating Moments in their lives. We really don’t have many rites of passage into adulthood in our culture, and it’s led to this suspended adolescence. But one thing I plan to do is to make meaningful moments with my kids—that we can do together.
When kids turn 11, we take a trip to Houston to see where I grew up and places that are significant to me. At the receiving of the license, fly to NYC for 2 nights, then drive back together. During the first year of college, go on a weekend backpacking trip in Western North Carolina.
Second, a great way to maximize your own influence would be to commit to learning. There are a ton of resources about the teenage brain and development. Download some of the apps they use and play around with them for a few days, exploring what you can do on them. Search the internet for great parenting hacks. There are a ton of ways that we as parents can continue to learn and grow, and my encouragement to you is to simply start somewhere.
The last way you can maximize your own influence as a family is to be united and move together in the same direction. What I mean by this is establish those qualities you want your kids to possess as they are graduating high school. What kind of man or woman, in your dream-world-scenario, are they?
Once you’ve done that, repeat them. Encourage them when you see these qualities. Use our post-game-reviews as a way to talk about how they may have gone away from these qualities. Some practical questions to ask ourselves with our kids is:
- You know what kind of person you want them to become. How does that look as they enter into the social media world?
- How does that look as they’re in 8th grade and distancing themselves from you?
- How does that play out as they’re in 6th grade and experiencing some stuff that seems WAYYYYY out of their league?
- How does that play into their freedom and independence with driving?
These are all things to consider as you aim to move forward in one direction as a family.