Growing Pains

I started reading a book recently about mindset.

I am only halfway through and I feel like all ready it has changed how I think of life, parenting, my children,

and my business.

It's called "Mindset: the New Psychology of Success" by Carol Dweck.

If you have a chance, pick it up, download it to your Kindle...just read it.

I am the master of my own demise quite often.

I do a damn good job of standing in my own way and convincing myself that I am destined to stay where I am at.

When the going gets tough, I sit down. 

(Literally, I sat down on in the middle of a ski run once, took off my skis and walked down the mountain)

When faced with a challenge, a big rock in my path, 

I have been known to turn around and go back the way I came,

telling myself I was never meant to get beyond it.

It must have been put there for a reason.

There is big payoff to this way of thinking.

I am never wrong.

I don't have to struggle against that boulder and try to push it out of my way.

I know it won't budge, so what is the point?

I get to stay smack dab in the middle of my comfort zone.

I like it there.

It's well...comfortable.

The problem is, by being this person,

This person who is never wrong, mind you,

I was also never growing.

The struggles in life, the boulders in our path,

are meant to teach us.

A one year old learning to walk doesn't lie down and give up when he can't quite get the concept?

He doesn't resign himself to being carried around the rest of his life.

It doesn't even occur to him.

He keeps trying, and falling, and getting back up and trying again.

He FAILS over and over until one day he gets it.

He walks.

It's in the failing and the falling down that he learns to succeed.

As a parent, it is so hard to see our kids struggle.

We do things to shelter them from the strains and pains in life.

We email their teachers when an assignment it too hard, or we help them with their homework

when they are frustrated and they just don't get it.

Maybe we are actually crippling them instead.

We let them say they aren't good at something, and praise their natural talents

when maybe we should be doing the opposite...

Encouraging them when they work and persevere at the hard stuff,

and tell them to be grateful for their natural gifts, but not complacent because of them.

Instead of glowing about their A's and B's in the classes that are easy,

maybe we should really shower them with praise for the B- they got in the class they worked really, really hard at.

They probably learned more in that one anyway.

I am a slow learner.

I have spent many years looking at the face of the boulders in my path.

It is only now, at 44, that I figured out

that while pushing that big ole rock out of my way may be impossible...

nobody says I can't start climbing over  it.

I have weak arms...its not going to be easy,

but slowly and steadily, if I reach and stretch myself

pull my weight up and look past the calluses that have formed

on my fingers and my heart,

even if I slip and fall back a little...

I WILL get to the other side.

It's a fixed mindset or a growth mindset.

Stay where you are or use the hardships to your benefit.

Learn from them. Use them as stepping stones.

Trust the struggle.

Work through the pain.

Reap the rewards.

( I know, I know, you have heard this before. It sounds good on paper, but really are you going to do it?

Maybe not. Definitely not if you don't change your mindset. Change your MIND and change your LIFE.

It's that simple. Now go do it.)