Are You the Example You Want Your Kids to Follow?
Written by: Kurt Schliemann4 min read
Updated: 05/29/26
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When I was 35, a question began gnawing at me.
“What do you really want to do with your life?”
I had a good job. I had reached a senior level. I had been lucky enough to marry an amazing woman. We lived in one of the most beautiful cities on earth — San Francisco. We didn’t have kids yet, but it was in our plans. On the outside, everything was about as good as it could be. And yet…
I wasn’t fulfilled. I couldn’t shake the feeling that my talents and purpose were disconnected from how I spent my days.
But the money was good. And that was worth a lot. We lived a good life, we had everything we wanted. So I found a way to convince myself that this is just what responsibility looks like. “Having it all” is probably a pipedream.
I’d been sitting with the question for 3 years, without an answer. Then — in December of 2012, at age 38 — my first child was born. He was born at 12:45 in the morning on the 13th. We missed a 12/12/12 baby by 46 minutes. No matter. We were overjoyed, to the moon. Having a kid was not an easy road for us. Not at all. A story for another time.
We celebrated all night and all day, running on fumes by 9pm that night. The nurse offered to take our baby to the nursery so that we could have a good night’s sleep. We happily accepted. It may be the last good night’s sleep we’d have for a long time, we thought*.*
We powered off our phones so we could sleep through the night. When I turned mine on the morning of December 14th, I had 7 missed calls. All from my mom. Before I even called her back, I already knew. “Your father passed away last night. A massive stroke.” He had just turned 71. All he had wanted, for years, was to be a grandfather.
I remember the daze of wandering through the airport that morning to catch the next flight back to Boston. Alone, longing for my wife and newborn son to be with me. The news was wall to wall with a different tragedy — a shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, CT that had ended 26 innocent lives. And there I was, nowhere close to being able to begin to process any of it. Each moment felt like the worst kind of nightmare. How could any of this be real?
The days and weeks that followed were some of the most painful — and joyful — of my life. The roller coaster never seemed to stop. And the juxtaposition of it all — the loss of my father, the birth of my son — began to slowly open something in me.
I had lost the man I was performing for.
And I had gained the person who would learn from watching me.
With my father gone, I no longer had someone to make proud. Someone to build an in-law unit for. To send on a trip to Hawaii. To repay for all that he had done for me.
And with my son, I had someone I was now responsible for. Not just in the feed, clothe, bathe, and love kind of way — that was a given. It went way deeper than that. I was responsible for his heart and his soul. For what he would come to believe was possible. For who he would decide to emulate.
And that’s when the question finally got so loud that I could no longer avoid it.
Did I want my son to grow up believing that it was ok to chase money if it came at the expense of your soul?
Somewhere deep down, I knew that my actions would speak much louder than my words. I needed to model for him a man who loved what he did, made an impact in the world, and carried that energy home with him every night.
I just hadn’t done it yet.
If you’re somewhere in that gap right now, feeling the pull but not yet acting on it, here’s what I want you to hear:
It took me 12 years of searching, false starts, and detours I didn’t anticipate. I’m not telling you that to discourage you. I’m telling you because I don’t want you to use the length of the journey as a reason not to begin it. Because I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Howard Thurman said: “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive — because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”
Your kids need the same thing from you. They don’t need you to have it figured out. They need to watch you refuse to stop looking.
One thing I’ve learned as a father is that your kids are always watching. Even when you think they’re not. Especially when you think they’re not.
My son is now 13. He has witnessed the whole journey. He gets to see me live into my passion and my talents. He gets to see the energy it gives me, the aliveness I walk in the door with. And he has also seen the struggle to get here. He knows it probably won’t be easy — but he’s also watching me show him it will be worth it.
Your kids don’t need the money, or the success. They need to watch you choose yourself. Maybe for the first time.
I know how scary it sounds. I lived it, and I came out the other side. I now believe you can have everything you want. In fact, I think it’s your duty to seek it out.
So what are you modeling for them?
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