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Using Failure as a Growing Tool

A series of post's on leadership in the familyWatching your son or daughter trying to accomplish a task that brings with it a reward that they want very badly is very hard for a parent.  In our school as a child is demonstrating their jumping rope, performing a form or some other skill, many parents have told me they have sat on the side holding their breath, hoping for success.  For all parents though just this one thought:

Success does not mean avoiding failure.

In fact, with the right attitude, failure is neither fatal or final.  It can be the springboard to success.

All of us fail.  The only way we will not fail is if we do not try anything.  The question is how will we fail?  How will we view mistakes?  If we are to be a success we must learn to fail in the forward direction.  In other words our mistakes must not get inside our head and stop us from giving it another try.

When we are teaching our children about success –  we can also teach them about the power of failure.  Learning from their mistakes, thinking about how to improve ourselves and the situation, focusing on the rewards of success will keep our children and ourselves from becoming negative in our attitude and mind.  Failure can be a great learning experience, an opportunity for growth and character building experience.

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Listening Required to be Fair

If one part of fairness means that we will not blame others for mistakes that we make, then it must also mean that we will not judge others until we listened to all sides of the story.  Frank Tyger is quoted as saying, “Listening to both sides of a story will convince you that there is more to a story than both sides.”

Being sure that we listen to everyone, allows each person to have their say from the point of view that they saw the events.   Our personal perspective is always colored by our past experiences, what we want to be true, and relationships.

Being a leader though requires us to listen carefully, ask questions, respect the views of others, in order to make all things fair.  While true for all people and situations, this is especially true for parents as we deal with siblings and friends.  Our children will have their view of what took place in a disagreement and many times we will have either pre-determined who did the bad deed,  or we feel like we do not have the time to listen to all the details and just punish everyone.

Neither is fair, and teaches our children that they do not have to listen to all sides before making a decision.  Setting this example of fairness

will help our children make better judgements of situations and people as they grow up.