Child’s age is the best age to curate the right mindset for facing challenges!
Challenges bring the best out of ourselves. There is no great personality who did not face any challenge. All had to face them. But what makes them stand apart is, they never cribbed about challenges or difficulties. They never complained or gave excuses. They accepted them with a smiling face and open arms. Because they know, challenges are part of life, and no point in cribbing about them. Instead accepting them brings that positive attitude which helps in overcoming these challenges. It’s all in our mindset.
The more we get afraid of challenges, the more it will make us fear. The best way to counter any fear is to face it. Challenges seem heavy and burdensome, when we don’t have the right attitude and approach. On the contrary, they seem easy and just an extra step, which provides some experience, improves our wisdom and takes us further towards our goal.
What we parents can do at home –
Coach children what are meaningful challenges and what are meaningless challenges – This differentiation is important. Otherwise our mind loses its energy in meaningless ones, only to stop taking that effort. We can give clear examples to differentiate the two. The meaningful ones can be – making the desired habit change, improving oneself to desired state in some subject or activity, building confidence and facing one’s fears etc
Make them aware of the Lazy mind and the active mind within us – The lazy mind stops us making any extra effort. The active mind, and our inner voice give us that strength to deal with that challenging situation and show up well. Let’s educate children that the lazy mind will always try to resist any effort, so they have to choose whether to listen to the lazy mind’s voice or the active mind’s voice within them. Afterall, children only have to make the choice
Being dejected is not an option. Only Problem solving – We try to be protective when the child faces a challenging situation. Then we aid them fully and take the challenge onto ourselves. In this process, they tend to lose their problem solving capacity as they start relying on us. Instead, when the challenge is not big enough to give external aid to the children, let them figure out their own path, what they can do now, what road ahead they see, what possibilities they can explore. We just need to encourage them to be a problem solver
Rationalize panic – Children will panic when any challenging situation comes in their way. Their lazy mind stops the effort, and their anxious mind gives all sorts of negative thoughts. We parents have to keep our calm and not panic. We have to demonstrate to children that panic will not get us anywhere. Ask them to just stay relaxed, calm down, absorb what is happening, and reflect accordingly on what they can do or what can be done. Panic is a habit not to be formed. We need to curtail it. It becomes very difficult to break the panic habit
Accept it – Motivate children to accept the challenging situation with open arms and a smiling face. Ask them to be mentally prepared, as challenges will come every now and then. Ask them to imagine the life of an ant, which has to face and walk through many challenges, saving their lives alongside gathering food for their queen. Acceptance make us strong. Half of the thing gets solved if we accept it positively. It allows our active mind and inner voice to start preparing for the challenge. So, the focus now turns, not to avoid the challenge but to get ready for it and make necessary efforts
Ask children to be honest with themselves & critically pen down their weaknesses and strengths – This small exercise will help children to become more conscious and self aware. The weaknesses listed down will make them work to get over them. That’s a natural tendency. Understand their weaknesses and help them get over the same. When we are pretty clear about ourselves, our anxiety, our negativity reduces
In a challenging situation, never think of success or failure. Just work and take steps that need to be taken to face it – Just initiate. Without bothering about failure or obsessing with success. Just focus on the necessary action. We also should not put that burden of failure or expectation of success when we give them challenges. Just ask them, if they have the guts to take the necessary steps or not, instead of asking if they will be able to do it or complete it or not. Anchor them towards the process and not the outcome. They will feel more confident to take on challenges when that baggage of result is not there.
Ask them not to set too high expectations for themselves or overthink about any challenge – Setting high expectations will succumb us, and overthinking will make us drown. Just going with the flow, doing the right necessary thing should be motivated. Always reinforce that the result does not matter, what matters is that they are strong enough to take any task or challenge or face any difficult situation. Make them comfortable that no one is judging them.
When they fail, make them realize that they are not bad. Demotivate any self trash talk – Children have maximum tendency to indulge in negative self talk. Our brain is wired like that. While cajoling children after their failure, though we do tell them fundamentals of dealing with failures, but do emphasize specifically on not doing any negative self talk. Make them realize that they have 2 choices. Either to curse themselves and become weaker, or just to learn from mistakes and emerge stronger again.
Motivate to fix thinking, before any problem – For fixing any problem or challenge, first fix your thinking. Half of the challenge or problem gets sorted when we fix our mindset and thinking. When children face any difficulty, ask them what they are thinking. If their approach is wrong, help them to correct their thinking/approach and motivate them to be a problem solver. We need to trigger this right thinking quite often for it to become entrenched
There is no challenge that can stop us. It’s we only who stop ourselves.
