Powered by PURPOSE is a weekly email & podcast on renewing your mind by starting with the root of all behavior: your perceptions.
Gain access to transformative personal growth + free resources not available anywhere else but here.
This article was originally published here.
Most parents donât think theyâre teaching their kids anything about work.
Theyâre just doing what responsible adults do:
providing, pushing through, holding it together, paying the bills.
They assume the real lessons come later -
through conversations, advice, maybe a few well-meaning warnings about âhow the world works.â
But thatâs not actually how kids learn.
They learn by watching.
They learn by absorbing patterns.
They learn by noticing what adults tolerate quietly and call normal.
And one of the most powerful lessons they absorb - without a single word being said -is what adulthood costs.
What Kids Learn When Work Drains You
You see, children donât need details about your job to understand its impact.
They donât need to know your title, your workload, or your stressors.
They read tone - energy - and presence.
They notice:
đ How often youâre tired,
đ How much patience you have left at the end of the day,
đ Whether work leaves you enlivened or depleted,
đ Whether joy feels natural or rare
They donât interpret this as âmy parent hates their job.â
They interpret it as:
This is what adulthood looks like.
This is what responsibility costs.
This is what I should expect someday.
And that lesson sticks - it literally gets written into their subconscious code as survival.
When Responsibility Becomes the Limiter
And The Hidden Curriculum of âBeing Gratefulâ
Itâs tricky though, because most parents who stay in jobs they hate arenât doing it out of laziness or fear.
Theyâre doing it out of responsibility - the very virtue theyâve built their entire lives around.
Itâs the thing that makes them reliable.
Dependable.
And respected.
They tell themselves:
This is what stability looks like.
I should be grateful.
This is just how adulthood works.
My feelings donât matter as much as my obligations.
None of those sound harmful.
In fact, they sound noble.
But responsibility without alignment eventually becomes a trap, and over time, while youâre busy doing the âright thingâ and telling yourself itâs fine, something subtle happens.
The gratitude youâre forcing becomes a way to suppress truth.
Responsibility turns into self-abandonment.
Endurance replaces discernment.
And eventually, you realize that the very trait that once protected your family is now costing them something,
Because youâre unintentionally teaching them, without a lecture - that adulthood means tolerating a life you secretly resent.
They learn what adulthood feels like from the emotional climate you live in - not the words you say about it. They absorb as atmosphere that:
That fulfillment is optional.
Calling is impractical.
And wanting more is immature.
Thatâs when something shifts.
Not out of rebellion, but out of love.
You realize - what feels responsible in one generation becomes a limiting belief in the next.
A Story of Contrast, Not Failure
For me, the wake-up call wasnât a breakdown.
It was a contrast.
I have twin daughters who have been full of vibrant unfiltered joy, the kind that sounds unbelievable until you experience them first hand.
They have been energetic, fully alive, and deeply present since they were old enough to express it - which, in their case, was basically infancy.
Watching that kind of joy changes you, and it made something impossible for me to ignore -
They werenât mirroring my exhaustion (thankfully),
They contrasted it.
And once I saw that clearly, I couldnât unsee it.
It didnât make me feel guilty - but it did make me feel extremely protective.
There was no way I was going to let myself be the person who dimmed that light!
But the challenge was that by the time they were born, I had already been miserable in my career for over a decade, and I had been trying to address it for that long as well.
Layered into that struggle was a belief I couldnât quite name at the time:
That wanting both a corporate career and deep fulfillment might be selfish, unrealistic, or naĂŻve.
You donât see many examples of people who have both - so you assume itâs a fantasy.
I spent years trying to make peace with that tradeoff.
Then my kids arrived.
And suddenly, the cost of staying miserable wasnât just mine anymore, and the question changed.
It was no longer:
âCan I tolerate this?â
Instead it became:
âDo I want this to be what they learn adulthood looks like?â
What made it harder was that I worked from home.
There was no commute to decompress.
No transition space to reset.
Even though I technically had âmore timeâ with them, I struggled to context-switch enough to be fully present anywhere.
We had a full-time nanny - someone I paid well so they could have an amazing day,
And I would arrive at the end of it depleted, trying to summon energy I no longer had.
Hearing their laughter fill the house all day - and feeling internally flat - was brutal.
Not because I didnât love them,
But because I couldnât bring my full self to the most important role I would ever have.
Responsibility, Revisited
I knew I had to make a change, because the older they got, the more they would remember.
The more they would absorb.
And the more aware they would become of the example I was setting,
Not through my words and good intentions, but through lived experience.
But I still felt stuck. Stuck by the:
Golden handcuffs
Corporate benefits
A spouse who needed stable health insurance
No clear alternative path yet
And the hardest part?
I knew that if I could just figure out what I wanted, I could make it happen.
Helping others do that was literally my job.
But creatively, I was blocked.
And without clarity, responsibility always wins.
Peace Before Clarity
When I was laid off at the start of COVID, everything shifted at once.
The timing was wild:
suddenly I was home,
suddenly my kidsâ school disappeared,
suddenly we were together - fully, constantly, unexpectedly.
I didnât suddenly have occupational clarity.
What I had was peace.
A deep, soul-level knowing that the life I had been surviving was over.
I could feel God saying,
That chapter is done. This is your life now.
And that internal peace made presence possible.
I never would have attempted to homeschool without it.
That would have been a disaster.
But because alignment came first - not answers - I could show up fully.
With my kids⊠With myself⊠And with the world.
Looking back now, I can see something I couldnât then:
God hadnât been punishing me with confusion,
He was forming me through it.
That entire struggle later became the foundation for the process my current business is built around.
But I couldnât see that at first.
All I knew then was that staying depleted was no longer an option.
Alignment Isnât About Quitting Everything
This is important.
This is not a call to entrepreneurship.
Itâs not an argument for homeschooling.
Itâs not a prescription.
This is simply my story.
Alignment looks different for everyone.
The transferable truth is this: alignment creates presence.
And presence is what people around us feel.
So the question isnât what you do.
Itâs who youâre able to be while youâre doing it.
For some, alignment happens within their existing role.
For others, it requires change.
So itâs not about a specific magical path - itâs the person youâre able to be while walking it.
The Question That Matters Most
If youâre a parent - or anyone shaping younger lives - this isnât about shame.
Itâs an invitation to honesty.
Ask yourself:
What version of adulthood am I modeling right now?
What does my life teach about work, worth, and responsibility?
If someone I love followed my exact path, would I feel peace⊠or concern?
Awareness is leadership, and the legacy you leave isnât just what you provide
Children donât need perfect parents.
They donât need you to love every part of your work.
But they do need to see that adulthood doesnât require quiet misery.
That responsibility and fulfillment arenât mutually exclusive.
That itâs possible to live awake, present, and aligned.
God doesnât call us all to the same path - He has a unique calling for all of us, and
He invites us to live in a way that makes His light visible - and thatâs hard to do when weâre depleted and disconnected.
Alignment isnât always about changing everything,
Itâs about becoming present enough to show others whatâs possible.
Thatâs how generational patterns shift.
Quietly.
Faithfully.
One honest, aligned life at a time.
If youâre feeling this pull but youâre not sure what to do, then consider trying the process I used, so you can more fullyâŠ
Live your life on purpose!
Subscribe to Powered by PURPOSE and get started with free resources not available anywhere else but here!
Sharing is caring! If this resonated with you and someone you know has been working hard to grow, but still feels stuck, frustrated, or disconnected from their calling, then send this to them.
Related Articles:
Kids really do learn adulthood from the energy we bring home, not the words we say
Mmm, Wow! Great stuff!