don Miguel Ruiz Jr: The Path of Wisdom
They got into Stanford, yes, but most of them came from this helicopter mentality that it’s Stanford or nothing. If you go to a community college or go to UC (University of California), you’re not successful. The only way is to get into Stanford. The east coast has Harvard and Columbia, the west coast has Stanford. You see how these kids—yes, they might be book smart, but they don’t know anything outside of that. This book was written to us parents – all right, how do we raise a child that is going to function in society. How to get rid of the anxiety of what’s going to happen to our kids if something were to happen to me? The answer is knowing that they can survive. That requires trust. That requires taking that step back and let them see what they can do. For me, that was the healing of anxiety, the purpose. Realizing it’s their purpose.
With my son, we move the goalpost—I’m using a sports analogy here. It’s not going to be 18. It’s going to be 21 or 27 or whenever he is ready. I have friends who went to university and graduated with my degree, and about 5-7 years later, they changed careers, including myself. It’s already taught me that not everybody practices what they learned at university. They change careers halfway through, so what’s the hurry of pushing my son to hit this mile marker at 18? He’s going to find it in his own way, and it’s going to be different from my daughter Audrey who is in a totally different situation. She is getting straight As, and she has this desire to be competitive. As a parent, I’m kind of riding the wave of my daughter’s competitive nature, and she’s getting straight As, and it’s only because she has this competitive thing about her, so I’m like, I’ll step back.
My wife does something brilliant. She says, If you do this, this is the consequence. If you do that, this is the consequence. Which do you choose? Then she steps back and lets them choose. So this book really helped me understand what I’m doing as a parent because one of the secrets we parents don’t tell our kids, especially people who don’t have kids, admit that we have no idea what we’re doing. We’re doing the very best with what we’ve got. As soon as we get used to being the parent of a one-year-old, they turn two making everything we knew about parenting irrelevant because the child has changed. They turn 4, they turn 8, they turn 12, they turn 30.
When I held my son in my arms, I realized I didn’t know what I was doing. I read the book, What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I took the class, I could swaddle a baby pretty well. That’s when I realized my parents had no idea what they were doing is the moment I saw them as my peers. This book encapsulates that answer. All right, how do we help our kids because if you see them as our peers, then all of a sudden, the pressure is a little bit different? It’s about seeing human beings doing the best with what they’ve got. That’s when I reengaged. It’s an eye-opener for me. It helped me shift my approach and motivate my kids to go to school and be educated. I found their strengths and what they’re passionate about and use that as this guiding light into helping them figure it out and not be afraid.
For example, my daughter has a homework assignment right now – the classic how to drop an egg without breaking. You can’t use this, you can’t use that, and my desire to go in there and help her, I have to resist. I have to take a step back. This is not my assignment. This is hers. The only thing I told her was that your teacher told you a list of what you can’t use, all right. Stop focusing on that and start looking at the things you can, and the answer to how to protect an egg from falling will show up for you. But first, you accept the parameters that the teacher says you can’t use. What can you use? At that point, I step back and let her figure it out. It’s her grade, not mine.
Sandra Sedgbeer: Interestingly, helicopter parenting has become the norm within a couple of generations. You go back a couple of generations, and kids would leave school at 14, and they’d be adults working, and they were treated like adults.
don Miguel Ruiz Jr: and I’m part of that generation where I can feel a little bit of the helicopter parenting in my parents, and then, I hit middle school, and my father said, all right. From now on, it’s your education. You apply for all these things. I’m not going to use it for you. It was daunting and scary, but I did it. I got a full scholarship to the University of California for 5 years, and I had to apply every year for it. There’s something to be said about giving someone the ability to make choices and experience consequences. You gain confidence, and that’s the gift.
Before the interview, we talked about your grandson and how he educates himself through watching YouTube, and my son does the same thing. He learns languages through YouTube. Whenever he’s interested in something, he goes into it and research. If he’s afraid of something, he looks for it on YouTube. Spiders – he got stung by a bee. He now knows everything about bees and wasps and why he has allergies and that kind of thing. The book also helped in this way—my son’s autism affects his speech, so he’s not Asperger’s because his ability to speak was impacted by autism. He didn’t really start speaking until he was 5 or 6 years and sentences around 8. Now he’s talking abstract thoughts, but he’s mostly mimicking dialogues he sees on YouTube and on TV. That’s his conversation—whatever he sees. With that in mind, people have been trying to teach him math for many, many years. He can do it in a certain way, but he cannot do it in another.
Sandra Sedgbeer: If somebody asked you to give them something to inspire them on their journey. Whether it’s a spiritual journey, whether it’s a personal quest for knowledge about self-knowledge, which is the book you would recommend the most?
don Miguel Ruiz Jr: The person who asks me this is always morphing. If you’re a parent and ask how to raise an adult, out of all the books in front of me, that’s the one I recommend the most. Of course, The Four Agreements by my papa helps so much. How to Raise an Adult is a book I’ve recommended the most because I can talk to my peers who are also my parents and all my teachings—they ask me about The Four Agreements and ask me how I can apply it with my kids? The closest book I’ve ever read that comes close to being the parent book of The Four Agreements is How to Raise an Adult. Don’t take it personally, don’t make assumptions, always do your best, be impeccable with your word—that one. I would say it’s the number one book I recommend.
Sandra Sedgbeer: What is your biggest fear?
don Miguel Ruiz Jr: My biggest fear is that of a parent. What’s going to happen to our kids if something were to happen to us? It’s something I remember telling my father years ago when he was still struggling after his heart attack and wanted us to thrive. Wouldn’t it be beautiful to see your sons thrive while you’re still alive, so you can say that we might raise our kids to thrive and be successful if we were to pass away, but how beautiful would it be to witness it? So you can say that it would be good to know that one day, every relationship in our life ends, but that day is not today.
But just like we will all die—I’m going to die, my wife’s going to die, my parents are going to die. The moment you accept that’s going to happen is the moment you no longer waste your time worrying about that day. I’m going to enjoy this day because I’m alive. If you understand this concept, every relationship I have will end—by choice, life, or death. My life, for example, would be my girlfriend and me in college when I graduated, she moved back to Berlin, and I stayed in California, and this was before Facebook or any social media, so the breakup was…we didn’t break up as we never said it. We just said goodbye. I left her at the airport, and she flew away. That’s a separation by life. By choice is the one we all know: a breakup. It’s not you, it’s not me, it’s whatever. One day my wife and I will see each other and close our eyes.
The moment we accept that is the moment we can stop wasting our time worrying about that day and enjoy this day to say yes to each other. Just like in life, life is saying yes to me right now, just like I’m saying yes to it. Why waste our time? And like you’d say in the show Game of Thrones: What do you tell the angel of death? Not today. Well, not today. I’m enjoying life. I would suggest people face not just their mortality but also the end of everything we know, just like the belief that we’re witnessing the transition of the industrial age to the knowledge age.
Continue to Page 3 of the Interview with don Miguel Ruiz Jr
