The Biggest Loser...
When I was a kid, I hated losing…not only did I hate losing at anything, I would allow myself to lose until I won. Countless hours were spent sitting at the kitchen table with my grandfather getting beat at Dominoes™ until the day I finally won. Since then, anything that mattered, I would fight tooth and nail until achieving mastery before moving on. Some call it compulsion, I call it persistence.
Through all those hard lessons, loses and failures, I learned that resilience is necessary to get anywhere in life. It is not always a matter of winning, it is a matter of standing up after losing 1000 times.
Graduate school was the one of the most rigorous times of my life. Spending 60-80 hours weekly between studying and classes, I applied my “no fail” attitude to my studies. I figured, opportunity is not passed by the buckets and it is best to maximize the one presented to me. To this day, I can still speak intelligently to populations I haven’t served in years.
I tell you this World Changer because these are the same principles I apply to each face that enters into my office (well now…on my screen). I refuse to lose, or fail, or fail you as a client. It is my greatest honor and joy to maximize the potential of every sugar I work with. Doing anything less is perceived as a failure. And I don’t accept failure.
I also tell you this World Changer because I want you to take the same approach to rearing your sugar. It does not matter how many times you missed the mark. Or how many times you believe you failed with your sugar. What matters is that you get up 1000 times until you win. This matters because you sugar is watching, learning, and developing resilience demonstrated within the home.
Society has almost taken the feeling of failure away from our sugars. In organized sports, everyone wins. At school, no one gets left behind.
Now, I am all for validating our sugars accomplishments, yet, I am also a strong proponent for tactfully highlighting areas that require improvement, refinement, or effort. This is not mean, it is honest. And it teaches our sugars that anything that is worth it takes hard work and time.
If we continue down the path of teaching our sugars that it is okay to give up, or quit when things become hard, they lose the fight, the grit and the stamina to endure. And nothing will become “worth it” because the perception becomes “everything comes easy.”
In speech and language therapy, it is impossible to make progress without something being challenged. I love telling world changers during the first session that everyone’s world is going to change because something is going to be expected from everyone in the house. I love validating world changers when they want to ignore crying, behavior, or tantrums because the biggest reward is holding out to witness progress. To witness growth. To witness grit established in front of my eyes.
Dead ends are opportunities for growth. When we lose, when we hit dead ends, we can do one of two things…we can pout or we can turn around and find another way to make things happen.
World changer, you have the opportunity to change the trajectory of your sugars life. Seize the moment. Make them work for what counts, and most importantly, work for them like no other because they count. It makes no sense to be everything else to everyone in the world and nothing to your sugar at home.
Find loving community that supports and challenges you. Find a safe place to express your heart as a world changer and write down all the victories (especially the hard ones).
Know that you have the biggest cheerleader on your side. With every question presented, with every concern, with every topic, please know that there was a lot of fight and grit to get to this place to serve you. So let’s continue to keep the party going and challenge every loss with a vengeance.
Until the next time World Changers, Take Care, C
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