Simon T. Bailey | How to Be the Best Parent

Simon T. Bailey - Invest in Love

Simon T. Bailey’s life was thrown into a tailspin when his daughter muttered these 5 words: “I’ll just come back later”. This is the story of how one daughter made her father question everything.

Transcript:

Children up until the age of four are operating at the genius level. The same group of children were studied in their early 20s, and only 10% were still operating the the genius, or what I call the, "brilliance level," and in their late 20s, early 30s, only 2% were still operating at the genius or brilliance level.

The question you have, like I had, is where did this genius or brilliance go? It didn't go anywhere, but it became buried by a society that says, "Color within the lines, sit down, give it back, you can't do this."

By the time a child is 17 years of age, they have heard, "No," 150,000 times, and only, "Yes," 5,000 times. The more you continue to hear what you can't do, where you can't go, and who you can't become, there is a neurological path that is created in the brain that causes individuals to shut down.

I have gone through a divorce within the last year, and my two children, Daniel and Madison, they are now my greatest joys. Madison came into my office not too long ago, and she said, "Hey Daddy, what's going on?" I said, "Hey baby girl, how are you?" I was preparing to go on a trip out of town, and I was busy scurrying around. I was not totally focused on her.

She says to me, "Daddy, I see you're busy, I'll just come back later." I said, "Okay, baby girl," and I get on the plane later on, and it hit me that I missed a moment for spending that quality time with my baby girl because I was emotionally clueless, and emotionally unavailable, because I was so busy trying to make so much money that my ladder was against the wrong wall.

Their mother said to me, "You give everybody the best of you, but you give us the rest of you, and I don't want the leftovers anymore." What I recognized, I was modeling something for Daniel and Madison that you got to go after it, you got to get all this stuff. I had the house, but I lost the home. I had success, but I had no significance. I had power, but I had no purpose, and I had money, but I had no meaning.

What I discovered, if I continued to model that behavior for my baby girl, that she would marry a joker like me who ignored her like her dad did. What I recognize is that I had to move from hearing Madison to listening to Madison, because the same letters that spell the word listen spell the word silent. When I have that time with my baby girl, I'm dialing in, "How are you?" And I'm modeling something for her brother as to how he's supposed to treat a woman.

Women don't need us to fix anything, they just want to know are we emotionally available and emotionally dialed in to know where they are. When it is time for you to make a U-turn and shift into your brilliance, we will have to come to a place where we're willing to do the work.

It's not who you are that holds you back from brilliant success, it's who you think you're not that holds you back. Sometimes we focus on who we think we're not instead of who we are. Now, now, through pain from learning that relationships are more important than money.