This is so common in today's culture because we live in a society where the expectations are off the charts.
It happens in school, uh, academic academics, it happens in sports. And I think there's a great lesson that we can learn as a society.
There will always be somebody better than us. There will always be a Michael Jordan on the basketball court.
There will always be a ante, however we say his name, the baseball player
that's just playing for the Dodgers. There will always be somebody who is more skilled, that has more talent. So what is enough for you? And I asked the question because that's an interesting question for us to pose.
How will you know that it's enough?
Because the concept of perfectionism is a dangerous place. It it is dangerous because we can't be perfect. We can't always be the best.
But what is it good enough for you? I put my heart into it. I worked hard. I was diligent.There's something that, uh, Carol Dweck, uh, she wrote a book called Mindset, really good book. And in her book mindset, she talks about the idea of a growth mindset versus a clo fixed or a closed mindset.
And now a growth mindset is, if I work hard, I will achieve. If I work hard, I'll figure out the solution. If I work hard, notice that if I work hard, it's, it's built upon this premise of I'm doing something. I'm, I'm working towards this. The, the ultimate part of that is, is I want them to know that I'm working on something.
Contrast that with a fixed mindset. I'm working hard and I don't get the eight. I got an 88 instead of a 94.
Like my peers, I must be stupid. You got an 88.
That's incredible. That's good. You were, and I noticed how hard you worked.
I'm way proud of you. That's the kind of mindset that we wanna have as parents. So we wanna teach our children effort is what I'm worried about.
I'm concerned about if we put in effort, I don't care what your grades are.
Now, does that sound strange? If you put in your best
effort, that's enough. The message is you are enough. You're trying.
You had a hard week, it was hard to try. That's okay.
Let's pick ourselves up. Let's keep working.
Because what we know is if we put in effort, we eventually get outcomes.
And that's just a reality in life.
If you put in the effort, you get positive outcomes.
It's not always great 'cause we have to teach our children.
Sometimes we suck, sometimes we don't do it right.
Sometimes we fail, sometimes we don't succeed.
And helping our children adjust to the times that we don't do our best.
Everybody doesn't work out the best.
That kind of flexibility is may way better for our mental health than rigidity.
So I'm trying to teach my child flexibility rather than rigidity.
It needs to be this way, it needs to be this way.
Siblings often compare themselves. We wanna take away comparisons. We wanna take out the concept of comparisons and we wanna put it in. We're working hard, we're doing the best we can.
