Write for the Memories (#62)
Write for the Memories
Tuesday Thoughts #62 (View this email in your browser)
My daughter Cadence just turned three months old. If I could talk to twenty-something-year-old Cadence, how could I relay the authenticity of this single moment?
In a beautiful Twitter thread, investor Jim O'Shaughnessy advocated writing letters to our children. One of his regrets is that he never received such a thing from his own dad, noting the difficulties of understanding in their own relationship.
In Jim's case, he started writing letters when his oldest child was seven days old. At a specific milestone, say their 21st birthday, the letters were compiled along with mom's hand-selected pictures and given as a gift.
The idea is to capture how you and your child change through the years. By capturing different snapshots, we remember the moments without the bias of time. It's an opportunity to model how our thinking and beliefs evolve. We can share the lessons life has taught us in relatable, personal messages. And, this allows these intimate conversations to happen at a time when our child is mature enough to understand.
Personally, this is also extra fuel to keep learning and trying to get better. If something should happen to me, these letters provide eternal memories that can live on with my daughter.
To my three-month-old daughter, I wrote about the crazy world in which she was born into, my dreams for her, and a reminder that she matters.
What might your letter say?
Related Thought:
Instead of writing to a child, what if you could send yourself future messages to remember a specific thought or idea? My friend Florian calls it his "DeLorean Diary".
Thoughts on Dealing with Failure:
"A Soldier must be aggressive to survive. Fostering a zero defect climate destroys this aggressiveness. Soldiers who are afraid to take a risk in peace will never take a risk in war. Improper handling of a subordinate who makes a mistake may just cause that Soldier’s death on a future battlefield."
While death is (thankfully) usually limited to the battlefield, how a leader handles failure will determine the survival of their team.
If we want to foster a team that willingly takes on big challenges, we need to maintain high expectations and allow our team the opportunity to meet those expectations while treating failure with fairness and understanding.
What do YOU think?
Thanks for reading,
Scott
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