I’ve noticed a strange change in myself since Leela was born eighteen months ago. My risk appetite has grown tremendously.

2. How to not let your dreams
die after kids

4. I’ve noticed a strange change in myself since
Leela was born eighteen months ago. My risk
appetite has grown tremendously. This is
completely opposite to what people said would
happen. “Wait until you have kids, “ everyone
would say when Kerry and I took a sabbatical or
started to learn meditation, “you won’t do any of
this. Everything will change”. And everything did
change.

5. Just not in the way we expected. Kerry quit her job
to launch her business, I went part-time to write
The Yoga of Max’s Discontent, now we’re planning
a move to South America or Goa with Leela and
her soon-to-be-born sister. I’m not a hippie. I’m a
conventional engineer-MBA.

6. Why then does my stomach knot with a sense of
futility when I hear people talk about the best
school districts and Mandarin classes and
accelerated development programs for their kids?
Because deep down, I think all of this is useless.
The best gift I can give my daughters is a fully
lived life as a parent.

7. If they see me reach for the unattainable, fall, pick
up the pieces, try again, then fall again, shatter
and re-build myself, that’ll be a better education
than being trained to work in a white-collar
sweatshop by a fancy private school. Or I could be
wrong. I don’t know. No one knows.

8. They have their own destinies and they’ll choose
their own paths. That’s why here I share some
ideas on how not to let go your dreams after
having kids.

9. First off though, these are three pieces of
scientific research on what leads to successful
kids that has shaped my views as opposed to
the “19 ways to be a better parent” kind of
Yahoo articles

10. Kids succeed when they have a
growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset:
Kids who believe that their true potential is
limitless and willfully seek experiences that stretch
them instead of the tried and the true are
statistically proven to have higher creative
achievements than those who believe their
qualities are carved in stone and stick to the
familiar.

11. The Marshmallow Experiment: The famous
Stanford university longitudinal experiment in which
kids who delayed gratification and didn’t succumb
immediately to the “easy choice” had measurably
higher SAT scores, health, career and personal
success twenty years later.

12. The Book study that shows the number of
books in your house is a better predictor of your
kids’ education level than how much you read to
them. In other words, if you read yourself, you
child will pick the habit up even if you don’t do
anything particular to encourage it. Said another
way, who you are is a better predictor of who
your kids will be rather than what you teach
them or want them to be.

13. In short, my biggest duty is to be as much of a role
model I can be for willfully seeking constant
growth and setting big goals and failing again and
again yet resisting the impulse to give in so that
my kids imbibe the same values. And that’ll
perhaps lead to greater success than being forced
to parrot French at age 3.

14. Success itself is a nebulous term though. My
definition changes every couple of years, now I’ve
accepted it as a state of living in full engagement
and passion everyday rather than any fixed end
state, quite consistent with the above

15. If you’re with me so far, now here are some ways I
think you can keep pursuing your dreams with a
growing family.

16. Set a lofty, almost unattainable
personal goal Kerry had gone on a nutrition
conference for three days leaving Leela in my
care when I was in the middle of launching The
Seeker. We spoke on the phone. For 30 minutes,
we chatted passionately about nutrition and online
business models and the struggles of launching a
book in India

17. from the US and hopes and dreams before I
updated her that Leela had her full bottle of milk
and had slept for the night. Leela is the center of
our world and yet, our soul is consumed by our
passionate side projects. Both are true. On that
night, more action was happening on our other
projects.

18. If Leela had started walking that day, the
conversation would’ve switched. Kids take over
your whole life. And they fit into your life. Both are
true. Don’t make it an either-or. Set goals that
stretch you to breaking point and leave you
begging for a respite on your bathroom floor once
in a while and you’ll find life expand to include
both your goals and your kids.

19. Be Independent
I want my kids to know their extended family and
have an incredible relationship with them, the
same way I share a very special relationship with
my grandmother, but I don’t want to depend on
them consistently for child care. On anyone.
Except people I hire and pay. Because if you
depend on a village to raise your child, the village
will advice you and tell you to let go

20. of your goals and “be sensible”. And every time
I’ve taken people’s advice, I’ve lived a lie. I want to
make my own choices, good or bad. I don’t want
to live anyone else’s life.

21. And later, I want my kids to rebel against me and
set out in the world to find their own truths and
leave me and my dogmas crumbling in the dust.
Be independent. Fill your life with love without
filling it with bondage, judgments, and beliefs.

22. Don’t “sacrifice” anything Last night, Leela
had her first stomach bug. I was up from midnight-
4 a.m., then I went to work at 7 a.m. and am
writing this article late in the night. If it were
anyone else in the world, I’d probably grudge
them my lack of sleep. But you don’t grudge your
kids. You can’t. If you let them, kids teach your
transcendence, that rare moment of divinity when
you dissolve completely in an explosion of love.

23. That’s why you need to sacrifice nothing for them.
Do your stuff, your side project, your art, your day
job, everything. And then, do stuff for them. And it
never feels like “doing stuff” because your heart
fills up and expands so much that there’s always
more space in it for them. So if you feel you’re
sacrificing your dreams for your kids, there’s still a
separation between you and them. Dissolve it
completely.

24. Set a ruthless routine
This might be the only useful advice in this post so
trust it (ha!). A couple of months earlier, Kerry and
I realized that we weren’t enjoying our weekends
with Leela as much as we liked our weekdays.
Once we diagnosed the root cause, we realized
immediately it was that old killer: the lack of a
routine. Every weekend was different. Sometimes
we’d meet friends,

25. sometimes not, sometimes we’d call a babysitter,
sometimes not, and we’d try to squeeze in work
as much as we could in the middle of child care,
being neither fully here nor there. Too much
psychic energy was going in creating new plans
and rushing around every weekend. A total mess.
Now, we’ve made the weekends structured and
once again, we’re back to peak performance and
joy

26. Saturday Morning: I take Leela to swim/kids
gym/walking/hard physical activity.
Saturday Afternoon: We see friends with Leela.
Sunday Morning: Kerry takes Leela for yoga.
Sunday Afternoon: We hire a babysitter and work for
3-4 hours on our side hustles.

27. Week after week, we follow the same outline and
plug variety with different people, activities, and
work in this structure just like we do on the
weekdays. Kids like predictability. Creativity gets
unleashed when you operate within broad
boundaries. Make a routine for every day and
you’ll give all of yourself to your kids when you’re
with them—and all of yourself to your projects
when you’re not.

28. Practice willful poverty We’re yet to
practice this one but we’ll be doing it right after
THE YOGA OF MAX’S DISCONTENT launches.
Stoicism teaches you to live on a fraction of what
you can afford from time to time to prove to
yourself how little money matters and not to
organize your life around it. Money usually comes
at the expense of time and dreams get sacrificed
with the lack of time.

29. We want to choose time in the trade-off and live in
Goa or South America with our kids with as little
as we can for a few years. Will their growth suffer
away from Mandarin classes and organic juices in
Brooklyn? Or will they thrive with their parents
living more in conjunction with their values? I don’t
know yet but I have a hunch. Drop me a note in
the comments to let me know what you think. And
let’s keep each other honest with our goals this
year!

30. For more details
Visit us @
http://www.karanbajaj.com/