{"id":5804,"date":"2022-02-18T03:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-18T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kerryaclark.com\/blog\/?p=5804"},"modified":"2022-02-18T14:10:03","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T20:10:03","slug":"first-3-stages-of-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kerryaclark.com\/blog\/first-3-stages-of-life\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Three Stages of Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your Future, Your Childhood, Your Work<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Your Life In Stages – Part 2<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Booma, let’s pick up with the question I left you with. Can you think of anything you regret you failed to accomplish in <\/span>the previous decade<\/span><\/a>? I’ll give you an example. One of the activities I regret not having achieved in decade-2 was not taking my high-school typing and keyboarding class. I had no clue how important it would be to type with the appropriate keystrokes in my future. This decision has plagued me for decades. You see, while it’s not impossible to correct, it would have been a whole lot easier to do it when I was in high-school, in class everyday, and accountable for obtaining a passing grade.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is this thought, of how easy it is to put off something in one decade that you’ll need in another, that helps validate why the decade-calendar is so important. For these next lessons on the decade-calendar, we will call it living one’s life in stages. In other words, how would your life be different if you knew that life could be viewed in stages? Let’s talk about it starting at the learning phase of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"Stage 1 (Decade 1) – See the Future
<\/strong>Decade 1 (Age 0-9): This is what I call \u201ctrue childhood\u201d when you have very little control of what happens in your life. In fact, someone else and other outside influences are directing your path. If you\u2019re a person who has influence over someone in this decade make sure you\u2019re giving some thought to what that influence is doing to this soon to be an adult human-being.<\/span><\/p>\n

As a parent who loves her\/his children and wants the best for his\/her children, we agonize over the decisions we make for our children. For example, do we have them in the right school? The right environment? The right activities? Should we push them harder? Should we take them out of public school, place in private school, or home school? The list of agonizing questions are endless. We do so to ensure that our children are growing up in the best possible way and with the best advantages.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I’ve discovered is, in order to feel comfortable in making such early childhood decisions, one would need to see the future. I know what you might be thinking, we can’t see the future, but I say yes you can. Here’s how. Pamela and I live to teach others how to take their life to the next level. We call it having an uncommon lifestyle. In order to see the future, one must turn to their faith. In doing so, we have to think of what that really means. It’s faith. Faith is believing that what a person hopes for will someday be seen with one’s own eyes. <\/span>[1]<\/sup><\/span> In other words, faith is how we see the future for ourselves. Therefore, in order to see the future we must think about the days ahead so that we can match our steps with where we desire to go or be in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n

To make the best decisions for our children’s future, we must be able to imagine (hope for) what we’d like their decade-2 to look like. Ask yourself, what kind of decade-2 person do I want my decade-1 child to be? Where do I want my decade-2 child to attend high-school or college, and begin the steps necessary to move your decade-1 child in that direction. What type of person of faith would I like my decade-2 child to be and start introducing this decade-1 child to the ideas and steps it takes to get there in decade-2.<\/span><\/p>\n

Stage 2 (Decade 2) – Putting Away the Child
<\/strong>Decade 2 (Age 10-19): We will call this \u201cyour teenage years\u201d. While most people take very little advantage of this time for planning and setting a life plan, it\u2019s generally wasted on what doesn\u2019t matter most. This decade is the best time to begin figuring out what you\u2019re good at doing. While society wants to make people in this decade children or child-like, God gives you everything you need to be adult-like in this time. You are no longer a decade-1 human-being that needs directing. You now need guidance in making your own decisions which are based upon the foundation laid in decade-1. You have abilities that are at their sharpest and should be taken advantage of. It is the time period where \u201cthe child\u201d is being put away and the unique (unlike anyone else) person begins to emerge. <\/span>[2]<\/sup><\/span><\/p>\n

This entire decade is devoted to putting the child away. The question is, what is the child being replaced with? It’s said that to become an adult one must put away the child one used to be. If one is putting away the child what then is he or she picking up to replace their childhood? This is where as a parent, we must come alongside this decade-2 human being to begin to help her or him think about and (more importantly) prepare for her or his decade-3. Here are a few decisions that are faced in decade-2:<\/span><\/p>\n