Welcome to The Purpose Memo, a newsletter where I give you ideas for wrestling your life back from digital technology and living a principled life.
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Read time: 11 minutes
A Podcast For You
I did an interview for a podcast that released last week. Check it out on Spotify or Apple Podcasts (or wherever else you listen).
(See a 50-second sneak peak here.)
“The best motivator in life is having a few people you really don’t want to disappoint.”
The Day My Life Changed Forever
When my daughter was born, everything changed.
Taytum Jordan Welch
I remember looking in the mirror of the hospital bathroom and realizing that the man looking back was different.
Before, it was a disciplined man. A man who had lofty dreams and strong convictions. A man who didn’t want to let himself down.
After, it was a burdened man. A man who knew his life was no longer about him. A man who didn’t want to let his daughter down.
The enormous weight of what my own parents carried while raising me came into focus. For your whole life, you feel like a kid. Then you have a kid, and that kid’s wellbeing is in your hands.
This baby—the one that seemed too small for the car seat I put her in on the way home—is an eternal, living piece of clay waiting to be molded by day-to-day life in my household.
As I drove home (slower than I ever had before), one thing became crystal clear:
I couldn’t leave my children’s development up to chance.
And yet, there’s a question that precedes the whole conversation of raising kids. It’s the question of who, exactly, I want to raise them to be.
After Taytum was born, my wife and I spent three years writing down what we wanted our kids to remember before they left our house. We eventually whittled the list down to nine things (hoping nine would be easier to remember than a hundred).
Nine principles for our kids to take with them long after we’re gone. And perhaps unsurprisingly, nine principles that I need to be reminded of daily.
I hope this list nudges you toward making a list of your own, both for you and your family’s sake.
The Welch Family Principles
We sequenced them intentionally from 1 to 9, so I’ll share them in reverse order.
(9) Adventure Always
Kids are like little golden retrievers: excitable, always trying to play, and perpetually turning the common things of life into some sort of game to be enjoyed.
As mine grow up, I want them to maintain that sense of wonder and captivation with the world that typifies their youth.
I love magic shows. I love live sports. I love traveling and playing games. I love taking risks. I love reading fiction and talking to strangers.
These are the grooves that give life its texture.
“Life is nothing more than a stream of experiences—the more widely and deeply you swim in it, the richer your life will be.”
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”
(8) Wise with Words
Words shape reality and reality shapes the future. The right words at the right time can change a child’s life.
Are we thoughtful, encouraging, and precise with our speech? Or disparaging, lazy, and and careless?
Intelligent people know how to say something effectively.
Wise people know what’s worth saying.
(7) Humility of Mind
Not to be mistaken for being tossed to and fro by every new piece of information, humility of mind is about a proper pursuit of what’s true and right.
It says often, “I could be wrong.” And there are few qualities more respectable than a person’s willingness to admit they were wrong.
Sometimes it looks like an apology. Sometimes it's just vocalizing a change in perspective. Sometimes, as Ted Lasso would say, it’s simply choosing to be curious, not judgmental.
As my kids grow up, I want to model intellectual honesty.
Let it never be said that Dad is “stuck in his ways.”
“The trouble is that most people want to be right. The very best people, however, want to know if they’re right.”
(6) Proper Place Technology
The biggest threats to the safety and wellbeing of my family aren’t coming through our doors.
They’re coming through our screens.
Smartphones, social media, and artificial intelligence have a near infinite capacity to destroy intimacy and human connection. It’s increasingly difficult to use digital technology without being consumed by it.
Guidelines are crucial. A few examples from our house:
Wake before your phone; go to bed after
No smartphones or social media until at least 10th grade (probably later)
No phones during school or church
Prioritize face to face conversations
No screens in bedrooms
The stakes have never been higher and the challenge has never been tougher. But the Welch family will keep fighting.
(5) Unhurried, Non-Anxious
When was the last time you had a conversation with someone who came across as if they had nowhere else to be?
Someone who was so undistracted it almost felt unnatural. No pulling out the phone or glancing at the Apple watch; just making sincere eye contact and actively listening.
Those people tilt the world toward goodness. It’s what I want for my family. To be the ones who make others feel like they matter.
Some people have a calming presence, others exude tension. The world is more anxious and hurried than ever before, which means unhurried, non-anxious people are needed more than ever before.
There are worse things to be on a tombstone than, “Here lies a person who was neither anxious nor in a hurry.”
(4) Gratitude by Default
Gratitude is an underrated problem-solver. If it can’t solve all of our problems, it can certainly solve most.
I used to think that my anger, grumpiness, and feelings of victimization were symptoms of the underlying challenges I was facing.
But that’s not correct. They are responses to those challenges, not symptoms.
A symptom is fixed. A response is malleable.
It’s normal to feel grateful when things are going well, but a more desirable posture is gratitude by default, regardless of the external circumstances. The former requires a “trigger event” to inspire gratitude, while the latter starts each day with an overwhelming sense of it.
I love this quote from Thomas Mitchell:
“One of the secrets of a happy life is the art of exacting comfort and sweetness from every circumstance… People are always looking for happiness at some future time and in some new thing, or some new set of circumstances, in possession of which they some day expect to find themselves. But the fact is, if happiness is not found now, where we are, and as we are, there is little chance of it ever being found. There is a great deal more happiness around us day by day than we have the sense or power to seek and find.”
We don’t have to wait for a good thing to happen to be grateful. We can make it the default.
(3) Sacrifice for Family
Being a Welch means something.
My wife and I are the coaches and the kids are the players—we are a team. Which means we abide by the unchanging principle of team sports: each player has to make sacrifices for the team to win.
As America has become hyper-individualized and the ideal of a multi-generational family has collapsed, we’ve lost the ability to derive our identity from our heritage. We search the world over to find somewhere we belong, forgetting those with whom we share DNA and a last name.
As children grow older, once well-connected family members morph into disparate and disconnected individuals spread out geographically with no real sense of belonging to one another.
My vision for our family’s future is one cohesive family unit operating like a championship team: pursuing a shared mission, engaging in healthy conflict, and putting forth sacrificial effort.
That only happens if everyone buys into the idea that family is worth the sacrifice.
Meaning comes from belonging.
Belonging comes from contribution.
Contribution comes from sacrifice.
(2) Struggle is Opportunity
A haunting reality: my children will experience excruciating pain in their lives and there isn’t anything I can do to stop it.
But that is the dichotomy of suffering—all admirable qualities are forged by fire. We don’t get better when things are easy, we get better when things are difficult.
When hardship comes, we have a choice. Do we wave the victim’s flag or embrace the refinement process? Is struggle an enemy to be avoided or a the path to greater strength?
Ryan Holiday says it well:
“You will come across obstacles in life—fair and unfair. And you will discover, time and time again, that what matters most is not what these obstacles are but how we see them, and whether we keep our composure. You will learn that this reaction determines how successful we will be in overcoming—or possibly thriving because of—them.”
I want my kids to see hardship as the gateway to character, not the obstacle.
(1) Becoming > Achieving*
If the list were reduced to one, this would suffice.
Adulthood forced me to sit honestly with the question what do I want out of life?
I began to realize that what I wanted was not accolades but character (something much harder to acquire).
Becoming > Achieving is a perspective adjustment; it’s making the shift from “I’m doing this so I can achieve X” to “I’m doing this because it’s going to help me become the person I want to be.”
At my funeral, more words will be said about who I am than what I accomplish.
So if my children remember anything, they’ll remember this:
Dad cares far more about who you are becoming than what you are achieving.
“The most important thing in your life is not what you do; it’s who you become. That’s what you will take into eternity.”
*Note: It reads as “becoming is greater than achieving,” not “becoming overachieving.” That would have the opposite connotation.
Nine Welch family principles:
Becoming > Achieving
Struggle is Opportunity
Sacrifice for Family
Gratitude by Default
Unhurried, Non-Anxious
Proper Place Technology
Humility of Mind
Wise with Words
Adventure Always
Nine things for my children to know before they leave the house.
Nine things for me to re-learn daily.
What are yours?
On the wall in my kitchen
See you next week.
PW