I had the thought the other day that maybe it’s sort of the job of any parent to raise their child in a way that leads them towards enjoying the most beneficial activities.
Or, at the very least, that leads them towards choosing the healthy activities even if they don’t enjoy them. I’m not ruling out establishing self-discipline.
But basically, you want to teach your children to love physical activity an exercise, taking care of themselves, settings goals and working towards achieving them, and developing interests and hobbies.
Likewise, you want to discourage (or make unappealing) activities that will hurt them, like smoking, eating junk food, wasting time on too much entertainment, laziness, etc.
Obviously, a parent can simply control what their child does, but if that’s the only method they use, they aren’t really setting up their children for long-term success. Those kids will grow up to be adults, and they’ll need to manage their own lives.
So you want to make it as easy as possible for them to choose the right things later in life.
You want to teach them a love of activity and the outdoors. You want to instill appropriate values in them that will guide their actions later in life. You want to demonstrate good behaviors and model those values in action.
And then I kept thinking.
Isn’t it really the same for yourself?
I’m not a child, but I am in charge of myself and my own future. The concept is really the same, isn’t it?
I need to foster good habits and behaviors and the enjoyment of good things. I need to set myself up to consistently behave well in order to accomplish my own goals and to live a good life.
I feel like this is a useful lens to view much of my life. From this perspective, things like protecting my sleep cycle, sticking to healthy work habits, etc., become a clear responsibility to myself rather than being poorly-defined things to aim for.
I need to foster my love for exercise and sport, getting up early, going to bed early, eating well, and developing hobbies.
And I need to discourage unhealthy behaviors. I need to focus more on their negative impacts, both short-term and long-term.
There’s not a real concrete next-step for this idea, I just think it’s an interesting way to look at things.