Words of Wisdom For My Daughter
Life Lessons
By
Dr. Marshall Hennington
Copyright © 2012, Marshall Hennington, Ph.D.
ISBN 978-1-105-43267-5
Table of Contents
Life Lessons Chapters
Introduction …1
In life you have to make the right choices...5
Have the confidence to trust your inner voice…9
How times have changed in your life…11
Stay away from negative people…13
Pick and choose your ‘friends’ wisely…15
There is a time and place for everything…17
Most people are afraid of success and failure…21
Try and be nice to everyone…23
Be thankful for what you have…25
The father’s role…27
More on the father’s role…29
Why young girls need fathers in their lives…33
Let’s talk about money, daughter…37
It’s a savers game…41
Good ‘friends’ are hard to find…43
9 rules to know about your female friends…45
Always love and respect yourself…49
Tough times don’t last long, but tough people do…53
There are going to be things in life that you don’t want to do
that you have to do…57
Actions speak louder than words…61
Things will change and you have to adapt to these changes…63
Everything has a season…65
Don’t get in your own way when trying to achieve greatness…67
Never stay in one place all the time…69
You have to create your own breaks in life…71
Understanding your purpose in life…75
Always
have a Plan B and a Plan C in place…81
Cut people off when they
go sideways…83
My last words…85
Foreword
To all the parents who have decided to read this book I say to you that you have made the right choice. What you are about to read has not been sugar coated, softened or diluted because anyone who knows Marshall Hennington, Ph.D., understands that I am the exact opposite of these words. I am simply expressing what I have experienced throughout my lifetime, what I know to be my truth and the mistakes that I have made that perhaps we can all avoid in the future. It isn’t easy being a parent, especially in these tough economic times. We may not have it as hard as our parents had it trying to raise us, especially with the limited resources and opportunities they had, however our parents made it through such tough times and we can as well for our children’s legacies to flourish. Fortunately, today’s parents have more literature available at their disposal than our parents had when we were children.
Most of us have been told throughout our lifetime that “knowledge is power” and power can be obtained by either verbal or visual information. I have tried to empower my daughter by speaking to her about how life really works throughout her childhood years. Now it’s time for me to share more thoughts with her on how the world operates by writing this book.
Like adults, children need literary resources to help them make sense of their world. As adults we have an obligation to guide our children and to encourage them to read books that will improve their lives and inspire them to excel in life. Part of the reason why I wrote this book was to provide children and adults with valuable information that can help to shape their lives and give them the guidance that they need to survive in this crazy world. Each and every one of us has a story to tell about our lives, and some stories are more revealing than others. However, parents often fail to share their life stories and the wisdom that they have obtained with their children. As parents we have huge vaults of information stored in our heads, yet we allow generations to pass without sharing this information with our offspring. I intend to break this ridiculous cycle and I encourage all parents to do the same with their children.
I wrote this book for my daughter, Allegra. However there are Allegras in every family and in every city, so just because I mention her name often in this book does not mean that that this book is exclusively for her. This book was written for everyone to enjoy and to soak up knowledge from a viable source of wisdom. The lessons that I have learned will benefit all parents and I am simply giving everyone a few pages out of my life’s playbook to share with their own daughters. Hopefully, some of my life lessons will allow your relationships with your children to be more open and honest and will promote a dialogue between you and your child that is positive. Straight talk is what people appreciate and children are no different, especially since their vocabulary is limited. I don’t pull any punches in my book and there are no apologies that I have to offer. Now that I put that on the table… enjoy the meal.
Life Lesson #1
Introduction
Today is January 26, 2007. I just finished tucking you into bed and essentially making a promise to you about a book that I am going to write called “Words of Wisdom”. I told you before you went to sleep that I am writing this book because since I share with you a lot of information about my past and the life lessons I have learned along with the zillions of mistakes I have made. There is no better way for me to pass on the wealth of knowledge and wisdom I have amassed them to put into a written form so that years from now when you are much older, you can share this information with your children and they can hopefully share it with their children. I figured that since I verbally tell you stories at night time and in the car when I drive you to school that you may eventually forget most of the stories and points I am trying to make. If I don’t put it in a written form these life experiences will just fade into the past and I will have just wasted my breath on things that went by the wayside. I want my legacy to mean something to you and for you to know that my life was not in vain. I care tremendously about the type of father I am to you, Allegra. My love for you runs deeper than any special love I have ever experienced. Therefore, like so many other established men that have lived full lives and left such things as gifts, real estate, money, cars, you name it, to their daughters, I figured that I would go beyond that. While I’m still alive I can leave you something that will withstand the test of time, and that is my life’s lessons in a written form. Share these life lessons with your children one day and have them share it with their children. It’s for everyone who ever wanted to understand some of life’s principles.
This book will be broken down into several categories, starting with childhood, continuing into your teenage years and ending in adulthood. I will share with you lessons and memories (some good and some bad) throughout those periods of my life. Today, I am a 43 year old man whom at times feels 30 years old (when my body is in shape) but mostly I feel my age. I’ve seen doors close that will never be re-opened for me. I’ve also seen people pass away who have had a great influence in my life. I’ve become more humble in my mid-life, no longer the brash maverick that loved to push people’s buttons and constantly challenge authority…. At least not like I used. However, I must admit that I still have difficulty being patient with some people. I am sure you can tell when I drive you to school in the morning and I have minor episodes of road rage because some jerk cut in front of me and I am pissed off and want to go off on him. I also recognize that I am not always a good role model for you and that I am a work in progress even at this stage in my life.
I want you to know that although you are only 8 years old, I am not going to write this book in a child-like manner for you to understand what I am saying. Some of the information you will understand now. Other things you will understand better when you are more mature. I am not writing this book to speak down to you; I am writing this book for you to step up your game and take on life’s challenges head-on (using the wisdom I have shared with you).
Before you went to bed tonight and I told you that I was going to write you this book, you asked me if I was scared. I really did not know how to answer the question because I was so surprised that you asked me such a question. Part of the challenge that I have with writing this book is that I will need to dig deep inside my past history and pull from both some good and some bad experiences. I am not scared to write the book because I have so much love for you that to not express it to you in a written form would be nothing less than being a selfish and self-absorbed daddy! Of course, I have been called worse things in my life and to tell you the truth, more than half the bad things I’ve been called are probably fitting.
I have been thinking about writing a book for years, however, I was never inspired to stick with a particular book title until God allowed me to see that the book title was right in front of me for all these years. I just needed you to inspire me to write this book, which you have done. As you recall, your daddy had a heart attack on April 22nd 2006. Luckily, God didn’t choose for it to be my time to leave this place. Yet he did allow me to recognize once again that life is too short and it can be taken away at any moment. God gave me another chance to be with you and I plan to leave you a legacy of wisdom.
Life Lesson #2
In life you have to make the right choices
Daughter, I have been telling these words to you since you were a year old because one wrong choice can be the difference between success and failure or even life and death. You cannot make the right choices all of the time, because no one is perfect and we all make mistakes throughout our lifetime. The trick is to not consistently make bad decisions and choices over and over again without correcting your mistakes. That is called insanity. However, your daddy has been guilty of doing some rather insane-like things myself, due to not correcting my own mistakes. Yet one thing that I have learned over time is that when you make a mistake, recognize it, admit to it and figure out why the mistake was made. Then do everything in your power to avoid making the same mistake again. You have the power to control your actions, thoughts and behaviors and I expect you to do so.
My greatest life lessons have not come from any achievements I have attained but rather from the failures, heartaches, and setbacks that I have experienced. I am proud that I graduated with four degrees from prestigious colleges, walked-on as starting linebacker in college at UC Berkeley, have a successful practice in Beverly Hills, was featured in numerous magazines, including Newsweek, and have been a guest commentator on all the major television channels giving my expert opinion. Yet the one thing that drives me to fulfill my full potential is the same thing that has kept me out of jail, from being strung out on drugs, and from being another tragic statistic. That one thing is learning from my past mistakes, which I am still learning to do since temptation is all around me everyday. Each day that I wake up I consciously have to tell myself to not get into trouble and to try to do the right thing. I am serious daughter-- you may need to do the same mental gymnastics to consciously tell yourself to do the right thing on a daily basis in order to stay on the right path and to stay out of trouble. Every day that you open your eyes you have the power to determine how your day will be for you. It’s all about your state of mind and the choices you make throughout your day. You have to choose to be happy. No one can give you a happy pill and ‘voila!’ make you happy through the rest of your day. Only you have the power to decide what your day will be like—if it will be crappy or happy depends on the decisions that you make. You have to make the right choice to be a happy person. It starts with your attitude. Everyday set the dial of your attitude to the happy station.
However, this is not to say that bad things are not going to happen throughout your day. They will, but only you have the ability to control how you will respond to them once they occur. This leads me to share with you one of the major mistakes I made by making the wrong choice when I was around your current age. When I was 15 years old, I had a horrific tragedy occur that would forever physically, emotionally, and psychologically change my life for the better and for the worse. The year was 1980 and it was a hot summer day, I had just left my friend Frank’s house in West Los Angeles. I was on my way back to the duplex we lived in when I had to wait at the corner of La Cienega and Olympic Boulevard for the stoplight to change in order for me to walk across the street. As I was waiting for the light, my gut instinct told me to look both ways before stepping into the street. I did not pay any attention to my gut (which was really my internal voice) so I decided to walk into the street since the light read “walk.” I started walking into the street without looking both ways and when I got about 10 feet into the cross walk I heard the sound of a car racing through the intersection. The last thing I heard was a big “boom”. At that point I felt the worst unimaginable pain I had ever felt in my life. I was struck by a Corvette traveling over 50 mph through the intersection. Upon impact, my body flew into the windshield and the broken glass penetrated my skin. After soaring through the air and landing about 100 feet from the scene of impact, I found myself lying on the hot summer concrete. I began losing a lot of blood and my body went into shock as I started to lose consciousness. When I awoke, I was in the hospital on the operating table with several doctors trying to pick pieces of glass out of my neck, shoulders, and back regions. I had to have emergency surgery and the doctors didn’t know if I was going to live. I stayed in the hospital for several days and I wore a neck brace while I was on bed rest for weeks. Although I healed, the damage was already done. My neck and shoulders developed excessive scar tissue that looked horrible, and I felt disfigured and very self conscious. Even after having numerous cosmetic surgeries as an adult, I still did not have the confidence to wear certain clothing that would display my ugly scar tissue. I wore shirts with collars for over 20 years because I was so afraid, ashamed and embarrassed to show my ugly scar tissue on the back of my neck. 20 years later I had a few follow up surgeries that removed the scar tissue and now I can walk around without shame or embarrassment and with self confidence. However, it took over 20 years for me to get to this better place in my life.