I have been lucky enough to be coaching a boys basketball team for the last 18 months and with all the boys being under 14 years old I started to notice that sometimes they would only remember the mistakes that they had made when playing a game.
This got me thinking about how I react to live, projects, work etc and do I see only the negative in what I have completed. In simple terms I am a perfectionist (not a good triad to have in all instances) so Yes I see the mistakes or parts that I am not 100% happy with.
My beautiful wife pointed this out to me on many occasions, one in particular, where I built a cubby house for my boys when the where younger. It is 8m long by 3.5m wide and includes a cubby house, hidden trap door, built in sand pit, deck, viewing platform and their own stairs to our back door. In short something the boys loved and was safe for them to enjoy. When friend’s family come over they usually say how awesome it is. Yet all I saw was the mistakes I made, not major just little simple mistakes I made with timber not lining up together or at the edges of the decking area.
So for me I saw the 5-10% that I was not happy with, not the 90-95% that was spot on that is safe, fun and enjoyable for all of us.
I noticed this in the way we as parents can react to test that our kids take at school and how we react whether as a joke or a direct comment about what the did not get right. An example of this is when I was growing up my dad used to say in a joking form ‘What happened to the other 20%’ referring to the 20% I got wrong on a test I received 80% right for. Even though this was not meant in any nasty way it stuck with me as not being good enough and this stayed with me for a long part of my life.
So it got me thinking how can we really change the way we personally look at what we get right and focus on that so we can build from there.
Back to the basketball team, I noticed that the boys would always drop their heads after a game they had lost and understandably they where disappointed they had lost although they had made some huge successes personally and as a team. So I remembered about how a seminar I went to years ago talked about always point out the good, then points to work on and finally finish with what was the BEST part of the game. I saw them leave from a game with their heads held high and proud of themselves so next game that came back with high energy ready to play a better game than last week and play as a team.
I was listening to Walter Bond speak and he talks about our job as parents is to ‘Lift our kids up’, meaning to change their perspective on the world and to see it though different eyes or to see another solution.
How often do we do this as adults, how often do you lift yourself up to see the world from a different perspective, to see how far you have really come.
I know for myself I will beat myself up inside for the things I got wrong or how I could have do better, kids are no different they have already seen the mistake and beat themselves up they do not need me to make a big deal out of it again. Point out what they got right, what you are proud of them for doing and wait to see the change in them.
Remember it is your Fun Active Life.
Ben & Kathryn
Jaycasfit – Inspire Greatness
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