Out of the Mouths of Babes

Sometimes kids say things that will surprise us, as adults, by the wisdom they learn and understand.

We went to a New Years roller skating get-together with our children put on by the Awana club they attend.  It is a yearly event, so our kids have each been roller skating 3 times there and once with our team.  I have found roller skating to be a HUGE teachable moment for our whole family.  This year I asked the kids what they learned from their experience and I think their answers are so true of what it takes to be successful anywhere in life.

Terrel (6) said, “Get up and try again”

Geneva (5) said, “Every time you get hurt bad, get up like a mighty person and go again.  Sometimes you have to go through the bad times to get to the good times and have fun.”

This morning I was reading the Game Plan and Do chapter of Resolved by Orrin Woodward and he stated “any person unwilling to look bad will never look good.”  Trust me, and the pictures may indicate, we were willing to look bad before it looked remotely good.

He continued as he talked about the 10,000 PDCA (plan, do, check, adjust) hours required to mastering any given field that, “sadly, most people refuse to execute the PDCA process because they fear feeling like a failure more than they fear being a failure.”  For me, I think I feared looking to others like a failure more than I feared being one.  In a world where pop culture has become normal, how people feel and look is more revered in most circles than the facts.  It takes guts, and produces pain to go to mastery in any field.  The question isn’t if that is required, it is do you want to be at mastery level and get the success that going through the pain produces?

What I know now, and my children learned, is to continue to fail as a part of the process of moving toward mastery in whatever area you have chosen to focus.  Likely roller skating will not be our focus of choice, but the world would be a better place if we all chose an area, applied these principles and proceed “through the bad times to get to the good times and have fun.”

Seize the new year!

Jammie