Champions have a childlike curiosity, and tend to approach the world with a mindset that says, ‘teach me.’
-Steve Siebold
177 Mental Toughness Secrets of the World Class
As soon as I hear the word fail comes into my mind school days. When it was very common to think and relate the failure with repeating a year and become a failure. Now being a mom and with three kids at school, I feel very closely the importance of not repeating a school year.
As a mother it is also important to teach them that failure is not what determines who we are or where we can go. While it is true a failure can get our attention and stop us, what matters is what we do with that failure? I mean, we can fix it and learn, or find someone or something to blame.
If we focus on blame, then failure is bad, because we didn’t gave to ourself the opportunity to learn and find that we need to improve for next time. While, we teach our children to fear of failure, afraid to make mistakes.
The weird thing about being afraid of making mistakes is that, like it or not we all make mistakes because we are not perfect and NEVER be perfect. That is, we are teaching our children to be afraid of doing new or different things, because when we are learning something is more likely to get wrong.
What if we try to fix it? That is, instead of pointing fingers, trying to find what we can do to improve. How about if instead of punishing our children for a bad grade, we teach them to correct what was wrong or what they did not learn.
A few nights ago, waiting for my husband to arrive I saw a movie «Homeless To Harvard The Liz Murray Story.» Next day I sat down with my kids to see the same movie, there are a couple of strong scenes, because it was a good way to teach them what Liz could achieve even when she had many factors working against, daughter of drug-addicted parents with AIDS and as the title says homeless.
After her moms’ death, Liz decides to return to school. On her first assignment she got an A-. Although it was a good grade, Liz approached her teacher and asked him, what she had to do to transform this A- into an A. Of course, as I already knew this part was coming I told my kids to pay attention.
At the end of the movie when Liz scholarship to Harvard win, my kids asked me how it was that she could do this. Then I reminded them that Liz was not satisfied to the A-, she understood that only was up to her continue to strive to improve. Although the living conditions were not good, Liz is an example of how to turn a failure into a victory.
I know that my children did not understand the whole movie and I got to explain many parts, but the main message was clear. We also took time to talk about drugs and homeless people.
I know my kids are still young, I have a long way to go, but I feel that learning from failure – mistakes is something we should teach when they still young. Our kids need to understand that sometimes we like it or not the results obtained may not be the best. As parents must teach the importance of standing up again and again and give 100%. Not an easy task, but I feel that is a task that can be life changing of our kids.
Practice may not make perfect, but it does create consistency in performance.
Steve Siebold
Another article that might interest you is, Which are the most important lessons for our kids?
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