Being a parent doesn’t mean you give up on your dreams. We’ve talked about this many times. What kind of message would it send to your kids to see their parents quit on themselves? What kind of house is it to grow up in where Mom or Dad aren’t growing, changing, aren’t taking risks, aren’t fulfilled?

And yet, we also understand that it’s not about us anymore. Before, sure, we could take every risk and pursue every opportunity. But things are different now. There are people counting on us, people affected by our decisions.

Lane Kiffin is an ambitious football coach. After stunning early successes, he fell quite a ways down the coaching hierarchy. Then he steadily fought his way back up near the top of his profession, leading a great program at Ole Miss. His family found security and stability there too, one of his daughters especially so. But then another, bigger job beckoned. Should he give it all up to go for it?

His daughter decided to speak real honestly to him about it. “I would understand if you’d been a coach your whole life and you’ve been chasing the big job and never had it and this was your one shot,” she said, pleading with him to stay. “But you’ve had that before. So what’s more important? When you had me, you gave up the right to always make choices for yourself.”

It was brave. It was right. “That was pretty mature of her,” Kiffin reflected, “because I did make choices for myself. I didn’t think about what was best for the kids. So when she said that, it really hit me. How could I hear that and then tell her, ‘No, I’m going to go.’”

We didn’t give up our dreams or our ambitions when we had kids, but we did give up the right to be wholly selfish. We have other people, other priorities to consider now. It’s not that we’re tied down, it’s that we’re rooted, we are balanced out.

We can make better decisions now–decisions not just for ourselves but for the whole family.