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iQuestions Faculty, Dr. Tim Kimmel 
 
 
Question: 
 
My husband and I want to provide more for our kids' future than we 
had by pushing them to be great academically and athletically but they 
don't seem to understand. Is this wrong? 
 
Answer: 
 
So much of our lives are lived in reaction to things that have gone 
before us. If we were brought up, let’s say, in an austere background, 
not much money in our life, it’s not uncommon for us to pursue wealth 
and pursue abundant lives—defined that way with a lot of stuff, 
materialism.  
 
The problem is when we want to impose this on their kids. We want 
them to be the best in school and the best in sports, so that when they 
get older and they’re adults they can really have all the best that 
success has to offer. 
 
May I suggest something to you? If that is your aim you’re probably 
going to have more and more tension in the home, and kids that are a 
lot less excited about living there.  
 
Because you see, that’s a success lie. When we buy into that success 
lie, or the success illusion, we’re really setting our kids up for an 
empty life. 
 
I want to suggest something else. There’s nothing wrong with being 
successful. The problem is when we have to be successful to feel 
complete. The reason it gets us into trouble is because of how we tend 
to quantify success in our culture. 
 
 
 
There are four things that I usually see used as the measuring tools 
for success: wealth, beauty, power, and fame.  
 
We want our kids to get a good job, make good money. We want them 
to marry someone that’s pretty easy to look at when they wake up in 
the morning—looks good in a Christmas photo, makes nice looking 
grandkids. 
 
We don’t want them pushed around. We want them to have control 
over their destiny. And we want them to get recognition for all their 
hard earned efforts.  
 
Once again, there’s nothing wrong with wealth, beauty, power, and 
fame as offshoots of our life. It’s when we need these, when they 
define us, when they are the things that we live for—that’s when they 
come back and bite us.  
 
I want to give you something better. There are four qualities that I 
think when we build these into our kids’ lives then we set them up to a 
live a life that makes a difference, and usually in the process success 
gets thrown in for free.  
 
And that is this: you want to build kids that have a humble heart, a 
grateful heart, a generous heart, and a servant’s heart.  
 
When those four qualities are the bedrock principles of your home, 
when this is what your home is known for, when you as parents live 
these things out—that you are humble people, grateful people, 
generous people, and you have servant’s hearts—that’s what you aim 
your kids to have, those kinds of attitudes.  
 
Kimmel -2- 
 
 
Then you’re aiming your kids not at success, but what I like to call 
“true greatness.” When you aim them at true greatness you’re setting 
them up to make an extraordinary difference in the world.  
 
Here’s what’s cool: the marketplace is looking for those kinds of 
people. They would love to have a son or daughter that was raised in 
that kind of environment, because they can trust them. They can trust 
them with the company, with the company’s money, with they 
company’s employees, with the products, with the reputation.  
 
You set your kids up to be successful without having to aim them at it. 
You set them up to move into a future filled with something far better 
than just a great intellect, great resume and pedigree.  
 
You’ve set them up to be great because you’ve put the great stuff in 
them that makes a difference: humility, gratefulness, generosity, and 
a servant’s heart.  
Kimmel -3- 
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