Family Matters: How Has Your Family Influenced Your Mindset?

Family matters in the development of all future generations. They are the foundational social institution in cultures throughout the world. They are the most important institution for developing character in their children. Conversely, families are also a primary source for many of the social ills that plague societies the world over. When family units breakdown and children don't get proper mindset training, individuals are often left to develop coping and resilience skills are their own - a tremendously difficult undertaking. Families matter for individuals, future generations, and society in general.

Family Matters: What are Your Beliefs About Family Structure?

Family matters because the family unit is the bedrock of a healthy society. A family mindset is what is behind a functional family unit. Families have not always been what we think of when we think of the "nuclear family." The nuclear family that is often idolized has really only been the norm for a relatively short time in history. It has always been the ideal according to Christian and Judaic teachings, but has rarely been the norm. That nuclear family ideal is a married father and mother raising their biological children. Family matters when you think about its influence on the generations to come.

For much of human history men had more than one wife and often they also had concubines. Having many children, especially male children, was the desired norm. All different types of sexual relations were common in the ancient world. Over most of the last two-thousand years, societies in the west were moving toward a Christian ideal of family - a Christian family mindset. In that worldview, a nuclear family matters.

While there is a great deal of evidence that the nuclear family ideal is what is best for children and society, the point of this essay is to recognize that family matters and a family mindset that is built on love and has essential communication channels in place is vital for any family to adopt regardless of the structure of that family. It is also vital to recognize how families impact your worldview and your mindset on many levels. The worldview you adopt will then determine the essence of what the ideal structure should be and what acceptable structures can be.

Family Matters: Worldview Formation

Family matters when it comes to the construct of a person's worldview. The family mindset is built primarily on the beliefs and values passed down from parent, and even grandparent, to children. The family unit is one of the, if not the most influential forces on the development of beliefs and values that make up not only our worldview, but all the beliefs and values that drive our decisions and our actions.

Nurture is a major influence on our personalities and the decisions we make that shape our destinies. Because nurture is primarily the domain of families a family matters. Your beliefs around education and learning, justice, civic responsibility, honor, love, faith, finances, government, freedom, and many other topics have been greatly influenced by your family. Most of those beliefs you are not even aware of or aware of how they came to be. They may be beliefs that support your ability to achieve or may be beliefs that have hindered or limited you. If it is the latter, that is quite possibly what has driven you to this site. Your understanding and belief that family matters.

The first task before you is to analyze what your family mindset or family belief systems are. Not only will they include the previously mentioned items but other important ones to consider are what are the roles and responsibilities of people within a family unit? How do you deal with your emotions? What are unacceptable and acceptable ways of communicating anger, frustration, hurt or other emotions? You need to do some deep thinking to figure out what these secondary tier of beliefs (there are many) that drive your family mindset and thus your actions.

Once you have your list, the second task is to evaluate them. Do these beliefs support you? Do they fit in the category of a growth mindset? Could they be leading to a feeling of being unfulfilled or worse, sabotaging relationships, business or career aspirations, your dreams? Those beliefs that are causing the problems need to be changed. On other pages, I discussed how to do that. Doing that will change your mindset. Doing that will change your destiny. Doing that will change your life. Doing that demonstrates the truth that family matters.

There are important considerations couples who are in or are forming a family need to address. Perhaps most the most obvious consideration, but one that gets lost because it is the most obvious is that family matters. It should be the most important influencer on the next generation but too many modern families allow other forces to be the most dominant influencer.

Another vital consideration couples should be seriously considering is their world views and if they are compatible. The more diametrically opposed the world views, the greater the challenge in having a stable, happy, and fulfilling family life for all members. Even within a worldview there can be significant differences that would have to be dealt with.

For example, two people can have a monotheistic worldview and one could be Jewish and the other Christian. One could be Jewish and another could be a Muslim. You can imagine the potential for conflict if an individual who was raised in a strict Muslim family fell in love with an orthodox Jew and vice versa. There would obviously be some important conversations and determinations made around religious views, customs, traditions, and the raising of any children the couple may plan to have if they decide they want to remain a couple. Their family mindset must be compatible. 

Children are obviously another important consideration. Do both want children? How many children? What are each person’s beliefs and values about how to raise and educate the children? Whose moral laws are going to be taught and how? These are important questions that couples often never directly address before committing. Often couples come to believe they have very similar backgrounds and beliefs regarding these issues only to find out once they have children that their beliefs and values might not be quite as aligned as they thought, which leads us to another important aspect of family life – communication and how families communicate.

Family Matters: What are Your Views on...
Family Communication, Governance, Finances, and Sex?

Communication in a functioning family matters greatly. A family mindset around communication is often overlooked because we are often unaware of what our mindset really is regarding the best way to communicate in a family unit. We fall back on the mindset we developed by modeling our own family dynamics. Our family mindset becomes a product of our upbringing.

Family communication and governance is hardly ever discussed or talked about or even paid attention to when getting to know your partner’s family. How do decisions get made? Who is the ultimate decision maker – does their have to be an ultimate decision maker? What if the couple disagrees on a major financial purchase or how best to discipline a child? What if they don’t see eye to eye on the use of video games, what can be watched on television, the role of sports? How is that to be resolved? Is their general communication occurring between the couple? Is the communication effective or ineffective? The answer to all of these questions is a central part of your family mindset. 

Governing a family matters.  How family government is structured and implemented is often done ad hoc. The couples who are forming a family ideally will have discussed some of these important issues in marriage counseling; however, in the modern world more and more couples are irreligious and do not go through marriage counseling which typically is done by a Rabbi, minister, pastor, or priest or some other religious figure. More and more couples are also simply living together foregoing marriage altogether and either not having children at all or doing so out of wedlock. Furthermore, there has been an explosion in single parent households, in particular female headed single parent households. That is far from the ideal and rarely done with intention.

Finances and how a they are handled by the family matters. Finances can disrupt a family’s unity. Finances are part and parcel to family governance. Much more will be written about this in the millionaire mindset training, but suffice it to say each member of the family – father, mother, and children, especially as they get older – need to understand the rules, procedures, and expectations around spending and earning money. Far too often families spend with little planning, forethought, or communication between members of the family. This is never a positive, but the greater your resources the greater the ability you may have to weather the storm that can come from the lack of communication or lack of follow through regarding the norms for spending (or earning) money.

The last major component is always the elephant in the room – sex. Far too often as children, finances, work, and other stressors come into play. Sex and the expectations or norms about frequency, romance, and the sexual acts can begin to take a toll if not dealt with. Again, the communication within the family structure is crucial for dealing with the challenges that arise, including the sexual needs of the partners.

Family Matters: The Influence of Your Family History

You personal history related to family matters tremendously in how you function in a family. Are you currently married? Are you in a relationship? Are you divorced with two or more families? Do you consider you family life to be strong and united or dysfunctional and stressful? Is it just okay but could be much better? These are just some of the questions you need to be asking yourself. Your family mindset plays a key role in how this important relationships component to your life plays itself out.

Recognizing that there are no perfect marriages and families, it is important to note the necessary components that go into making them functional if not ideal. Once you identify areas of your family life that are less than idyllic the process of fixing or improving that begins with open, honest, loving, communication. This can be very challenging for some and is why there are professional marriage therapists and counselors. It is also why having a foundation of love is so crucial. When love becomes the foundation of your family mindset these conversations will be far more fruitful but they are crucial because... family matters.

You can see how a love mindset interplays with every voussoir of the mindset of a champion arch and every aspect of your life. When you exhibit those 13 love characteristics and have ingrained them into your very core, these difficult and courageous conversations can happen and you can place you on the road to a wonderful and fulfilling family life – even if you have had a rough history or not so positive family mindset.

Before I accept a client in my Personal Life 101 program, I insist on meeting and talking with the person’s significant other. They need to be on board because of all that we go through in the year’s program. In our growth mindset training academy training on the family mindset, the hope is both couples and even an entire family will go through it together which is why I offer significant savings for couples and families.           

One of the common challenges for people who become involved with someone is their personal history around family. There are far more families that have significant issues around competing worldviews, dealing with raising and educating children, communication and governance, finances, and sex than there are who have a well-functioning family model. Because our primary way of learning how to be a good husband, wife, or parent is through modeling, it becomes a challenge for many to break any difficult patterns of behavior that were modeled throughout their early lives. Then you add layers of competing worldviews from outside your family backgrounds and it is a wonder we have any functioning family units today. The bottom line is this. Love conquers all.

It is very important to understand that making sure your partner and your children feel loved is priority number one to a stable and fulfilling family relationship. To do that well, you need to recognize that not everyone as the same strategy for that. Some people really need to be shown they are loved by having special things done for them or given to them. Some just need to hear it regularly while others need that loving touch or hug. Of course, all of us need all those things to a certain extent, but typically one of those is the most important way of expressing it for that person. We also need to recognize that our go to way of showing love is often how we want it shown to us, which may not be how our child or spouse needs it shown to them. How do you know how they really need to have love expressed? Ask. Listen. Observe.

Every family matters because families are the backbone of a healthy society. A healthy family mindset is at the heart of a healthy family unit. Families are crucial for teaching morality, ethics, communication, personal responsibility, governance and duties. While the idea it takes a village became popular and certainly has some powerful truth to it, a village does not replace the family. Families make up the village and the village can help families in need or crisis. It is a dangerous untruth to accept the notion that a village is a family, is as good as a family, or even is better than a family.

Family Matters: Invaluable Family Resources

Personally, I believe some of the best resources available for families come from the Christian community including Focus on the Family which was founded by psychologist James Dobson. I understand that some of you do not share the Christian worldview and may even be hostile to it. There are other resources for you including secular families. For those with more of a Buddhist worldview there are also good resources. You can find plenty of resources on the internet to match your worldview simply by searching and asking yourself some good questions. I do need to point out that there are some, particularly in the secular humanist movement, who claim to “share the common goal of raising a future generation free from dogma.” That goal is impossible. They too have a set of beliefs and principles around which their attitudes and actions are shaped [their own dogma or their own family mindset] and they want the next generation to share in those beliefs and values. The people in this school of thought have adopted the fallacy that other worldviews don’t want their children to be exposed to the truth, so they can freely determine their own path. This belief is based on ignorance.

Family Matters: Do You Want Your Family to Be at Its Best?

If you understand the importance and value of having a strong family mindset and want to learn how you can clean up your own past as well as help your teens do the same and then create a more powerful mindset for all of you, I strongly encourage you to schedule a private consultation to learn more about the incredible value of our full mindset training curriculum for your family. You can learn more here, but by far the best way to really learn about it and see if we can help is to schedule a private consultation.

On this call we will take about 45 minutes to learn about what your desired outcomes are and your specific family situation. We will have an honest conversation to see if this training curriculum is right for you and your family. If you are a single parent, we would only need to talk with you. If you have a partner, we would expect to have you both on this call.  

This is NOT for Everybody. Here's Who I Can Help: I have no minimum number of clients I need to enroll each month, therefor I'm VERY picky about who I'll speak with, and I have a strict (but reasonable) set of criteria that needs to be met in order for us to proceed: 

1.  You need to be able to and willing to provide structure and discipline for whoever will be going through this training – including yourself. This offer is for those who will commit to following through by creating the appropriate physical space, emotional support, and accountability needed to complete the training. If you are not prepared to lovingly hold members of your family accountable if they haven’t completed their daily tasks - no offense, but this is not for you. If you want to do this for yourself and you are unwilling to find an accountability partner to hold you accountable - no offense, but this is not for you.
2. You MUST be willing to use your influence as a parent and or partner  to guide, encourage, and excite the others in your family enrolled, so they will be an elite champion and complete the training. If you have a history of not being very supportive, or feel like you can’t be an encourager, or worse, are too self-seeking to do what is necessary to help others complete this training - no offense, but this is NOT for you. Establishing a success loop with my clients is VERY important to me and this is a team approach to help prevent our students from being crippled by coddling. Please, be someone who doesn't mess around, and is serious about results. That's it - if you meet BOTH of those requirements, we're good. The next step is to fill out the form below to schedule a time to talk for about 45 – 60 minutes to determine with you and whoever else needs to be part of the conversation (i.e. spouse or partner) about desired outcomes, procedures, and truly determine if this is right for you. 

Please consider joining our private Facebook group: Mastering Your Growth Mindset

Enjoy this page? Please pay it forward. Here's how ... Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it? Click on the HTML link code below. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.

var l = window.location.href, d = document; document.write ('<form action = "#"> <div style = "text-align: center"> <textarea cols = "50" rows = "2" onclick = "this.select ();"> <a href = "'+ l +'"> '+ d.title +' </a> </textarea> </div> </form> ');

Privacy Policy