It’s true—hunger, insecurity, a desire to prove people wrong, to prove your worth, these are strong motivators. The desire to make daddy proud has won a lot of championships and conquered a lot of kingdoms.
If your kids knew, like they really knew, that they were loved, that they were good enough, that you were proud of them already, might it temper their ambitions a little? Might it make them feel comfortable and secure and not so driven?
Perhaps. It’s true that the biographies of the greats tend to share a lot of childhood details. But you know what else they share? A lot of unhappiness, a lot of suffering, a lot of emptiness. We also don’t hear much about the folly that that insecurity can drive a person to. We don’t hear about the early burnouts and the flameouts.
We recently talked about Kissinger’s tragic observation about Nixon—“Can you imagine what this man could have been had somebody loved him?” What might your kids be—and not just in terms of raw accomplishment—if they didn’t have to prove their worth? If they knew their parents’ love was unwavering and unconditional? What if, instead of spending their lives chasing trophies or validation, they spent their lives exploring, creating, connecting—driven not by fear or insecurity but by curiosity and joy? What if the foundation you gave them—the steady, unshakable knowledge that they are enough—became the springboard for something even greater than ambition?
So tell them how much you love them. Show them how much you care. Prove to them that they don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Because the world will ask them to prove themselves soon enough. Let home be the one place they never have to.