In 1939, nine years before John Wooden would be hired to coach the UCLA men’s basketball team, a friend sent him a picture with a poem on it to celebrate the birth of Wooden’s first child. The picture is a man on a beach whose son is running behind him, playing in his footsteps in the sand. Wooden hung the picture in his home so he might see it every day. The poem, which he memorized and liked to give as a gift, went as follows:
A careful man I want to be— a little fellow follows me. I do not dare to go astray, for fear he’ll go the self-same way. I cannot once escape his eyes. Whatever he sees me do he tries. Like me he says he’s going to be— that little chap who follows me . . .
You don’t have to memorize these words as Wooden did, but you better internalize their message. Your children follow behind you. They see everything you do. If you go astray, so too will they.