What are you doing with 21% of your life?

The other day I was reading an e-newsletter from a friend of mine, an “etiquette specialist” who trains both business professional and children. Everybody needs to learn proper manners right? Her name is Maralee McKee. In her newsletter, she made reference to a statistic that I had never heard before, and it got me. If the average person lives to be 85 years old, then they will spend about 79% of their lives without their children living at home. For the roughly 18 years that your child lives under your direct care, that’s just 21% of your life. Wow! In our society we all want the “good life”, we want all the toys, all the freedom, all the self-indulgent behavior we can handle…and of course we want it now. The concept of delayed gratification” of saving up for a rainy day, is practically foreign to us. And so, many of us fill up that 21% of life when our kids need to be our primary focus, when they need our focused attention, we fill up that 21% chasing after our own career goals, our own pursuits, sometimes to the neglect and even peril of our children's well being.

I know raising kids is hard work. You make sacrifices to be a parent, lots of them. It’s easy when you are in the throes of juggling work, managing a household, paying bills along with changing diapers, picking up spilled Yoo-Hoo off the family room carpet, trudging off to another T-ball or soccer game, having to figure out a math problem, that you start to ask “What did I get myself into?” or feel the urge to “check out” and simply go shoot hoops or go to the mall. But take a deep breath, back up and remember, you only have a little bit of time to pour yourself into your little one. Think 21%. Before you know it they are gone. You will never get that 21% of your life back. And I promise you, there will be many days ahead when you wish you could. I’ve never heard a successful businessman, politician, movie star or sports hero interviewed on televisions say, “You know, I think I spent too much time with my family. I wish I had devoted more energy to my career.” Nope. If they mention anything at all, it goes something like this, “My one regret is that I wished I would have been there more for my kids.”

So just remember, you’ve got 79% of your life to focus on you. (Well not really but you get my point.) Purpose every day to make 21% of your life really count for your kids. You will never regret it.