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11 Jan 2024

Riding the Waves of Life with Determination

Every challenge you have faced and the choices you have chosen to make has created who you are today.

Picture yourself as the captain of a ship. Sometimes the water is calm and the choices are easy. Other times, the calm waters give way to crashing waves, intensifying the difficulty of your choices

Knowing your destination is crucial for guiding your ship in the right direction, and this holds true in life as well. Being clear about the person you want to be, the character traits you want to process, and the goals you want to achieve, gives clarity when navigating through tough challenges. You have a destination and even if the massive waves of your circumstances try to throw you off course, you persevere and continue moving towards your ultimate goal.

When you aren’t clear about what matters to you, it’s easy to allow circumstances and the emotions they trigger, dictate your actions and choices, which leads to a feeling of being out of control. Acting with intention instills confidence.

By respecting your goals, and acting in alignment with them, you will find yourself making small choices every day that help build the person you imagine.

Remember, it’s your choices, not your circumstances, that truly define you. Consider who you want to become, the traits you want to embody, and the goals you wish to fulfill. This now becomes the destination that guides you.

What I know is: All is possible when you choose to be determined, put in the effort and most importantly – BELIEVE in YOU ALWAYS – even when you are in the midst of a fierce storm!

Until next time…

27 Jan 2020

Praise Effort Regardless of the Results

My husband coaches our son’s hockey team. His coaching philosophy is one I admire and wholeheartedly believe in. Here’s what he shared with the parents early in the season:

“We’ve been praising the full effort of the kids and are less concerned with who scores… not that we don’t acknowledge the goal, we praise how the goal came about.”

I love this concept and think this coaching technique can carry through to how we as parents and educators interact with kids on a daily basis.

Consider doing this: Praise their effort regardless of the results.

For example, your child or student receives an A on their recent test. Do you say:

A. ‘Wow! You’re really smart!’  or…

B. ‘Look at what you have achieved. You chose to put in the effort and be determined. Excellent work!’

More and more studies show that choice B is more beneficial for kids. Using the theory of Carol Dweck, a psychology professor, choice B teaches our kids a growth mindset, while choice A encourages a fixed mindset.

With a growth mindset, people approach challenges knowing that they have the ability to learn and to improve every day if they put in the effort. With a fixed mindset, people believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talent, are just fixed traits. They have a certain amount and that’s that. Their goal becomes to look smart all the time. (Wikipedia)

I think there’s more to unwrap here…

How do you teach children a growth mindset and the value of effort?

Let’s use hockey as an example.

When players understand the importance of being open to learning they become confident enough to put in the effort to embrace new skills. They start to realize that, even though they may not have learned all the skills, it doesn’t mean they never will, it just means they haven’t learnt them YET! This mindset gets them ready to take on the challenges of training and development. And regardless of whether they win or lose, they learn to value the experiences.

This mindset will look like this:

‘I will put in the effort’.
‘I like to learn new skills’.
‘I am a problem solver’.
‘I can overcome challenge’.

Praising effort helps kids see the importance of the actions they took. If they know that being determined to go after the puck and staying focused on skating with a full stride helped them score a goal, they’ll know to stay focused on practicing those skills in order to score again. If we tell them, “You’re so talented! Great goal!” how will they know what they need to do to score again? How will they know which character traits they used to get there?

By attaching specific character traits to their efforts we show children that character based choices matter and what their effort and character looks like in action.

How do you shift your words to praise the effort in every day situations?

Here are some examples:

  • Great job! (what made it a great job?) You were so determined to learn your spelling words!
  • You’re a good friend. (what makes them a good friend?) You showed generosity because you shared your snack.
  • Way to go! (what did they do?) You were kind. You held the door open for them.

The more we focus our praise on acknowledging the efforts and the character traits used to achieve the desired end result, we teach children that the journey matters—how they succeed is just as important as succeeding.

Exercise: Start to praise the effort instead of the results with your own kids or students. Pay attention to how you praise and pause in those moments…what character trait could you add?

Want to share how you’ve changed the praise dialogue for your family or school? Tag me on Instagram with an example of how you praised the effort to teach your child/student about a character-based choice they made. Let’s work together on this!

Until next time…

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