Mistakes & Failures – An Exercise In Happiness
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To hear that “we learn and grow” through our mistakes and failures is one thing, but to react to a mistake or a failure in a positive way when perhaps someone around you isn’t so quick to let you “live it down”, especially for a kid can be a challenge and quite a blow to their self-esteem and self-confidence.
Though difficult experiences in a young person’s life are necessary to boost resilience and to grow into strong minded, self-sufficient adults, they can sometime instill self-limiting beliefs and doubts that can have a strong effect on future choices to accept challenges, face fears and live their life to its fullest.
Activity #2 in The Ultimate Kid’s Guide to Happiness suggests that your child write 5 “I am…” statements describing strengths they already have. You can help them by reminding them of times when you saw them display compassion and empathy or leadership and fairness or teamwork and passion and motivation.
This recognition will help dispel limiting beliefs and doubts possibly in the making, replacing them with empowering and motivating beliefs about themselves and the world they are starting to discover and explore.
An Exercise in Happiness© goes into depth that Mistakes are Not Failures and Failures are Not Mistakes and teaches them to create their “Amazing Me” list as a constant reminder of who they really are.
In addition to written goal setting and writing their Action Affirmation, recognizing their own strengths and virtues and committing to using them more starts to reveal more of the benefits of giving your children An Exercise in Happiness© .
‘Children Are What They Learn’ and these teaching resources through ‘KCDA’ seem to be a parent / Teacher’s best of tools / product they could invest in, as care givers / mentors to children / adolescents / teens / young adults. Then again, the greatest of teachings isn’t 100% fail proof, as we all make mistakes.
To ‘Unlearn’ what we have been taught and ‘relearn’, while keeping the values and good stuff with us, we have to sift through many ‘Mistakes & Failures of the [our] past, coming to grips that we may have a few more yet to experience. After all ~ we are a product of our beginnings as a child and would not be who we are in life, without what we have been through and progressing to. Our legacy to the next generation is our experience. What they choose to do with that gift, is their choice.
Knowing the youth of this world are our ‘Next Generation’ ~ ‘Future Leaders’, we better be leading them down the right paths and not repeating ‘Our Mistakes’, that has put the world in such turmoil / trials & tribulations.
Daniel Goleman’s best selling book, Emotional Intelligence, showed me another ‘Add to my personal library of wonderful references to truth of in-depth research’, in the near future.
Bandi,
Thanks so much for your great comment on this post. I agree whole-heartedly that we as parents and care givers owe it to our children to show them how WE have learned from our mistakes and become who we have become, and that they will do the same. I wish I was shown as a child how to dispute the negative beliefs I developed about myself through my explanation for my mistakes, and that each failure is a stepping stone to greater happiness, success and achievement of our dreams.