Kristin Colier

Posts Tagged ‘business’

I’ve got two elementary school-aged kids who just came home with report cards. Two very different kids, two very different strategies for navigating through school, and life. Two different parenting messages to convey.

Tip One: Give yourself a break. My 11 year-old daughter was extremely disappointed to have one B among all her A’s. She is a “pleaser” and anything less than perfect can be very upsetting. Call it a first born, Libra or “girl” thing, it doesn’t matter. I wish she would ease up on herself a bit. Mistakes are not a thing to be dreaded, they are to be learned from and then move on.

She is sometimes paralyzed to try new things for fear of not being great at them. She gave up on trying to ride a bike for fear of falling. We all know, the older you get – the harder it hurts when you fall. Both physically and metaphorically. But the best rewards come from trying the most challenging things and living to tell the tale.

In business as in life, only when you are being challenged are headed in the right direction.

Tip Two: Do your best. And then we have my son, second born, Taurus, Year of the Newt, I don’t know what the reason is, but he is the proponent of the philosophy “good enough.” He goes through his homework as fast as he can – often making simple mistakes – and not re-checking his work. “He’s not working up to his potential.” As is the standard teacher line.

But on the other hand, he is not afraid of failure. He’ll try new games, and keep practicing until he’s really good. He learned to ride a bike and then next wanted to learn tricks on it. The falling was one step closer to the success.

So where is the wisdom in this when he is getting C’s and D’s on his report card? He must learn to differentiate between accepting setbacks gracefully as a byproduct of ambition and only striving for mediocre. You might land in the same place – but the neural pathways created by the experience are entirely different.

I don’t require straight A’s from my children. I just want them to do the best they can, accept challenges as part of process and forgive themselves along the journey. The sooner we all figure this out, the more successful we will be.

Cheers.
-Kristin