I have been carrying this thought with me since first reading it on a U.U. bulletin board this last Columbus Day. I immediately smiled and then the idea took me deeper. How I wished my parents had understood this but, then again, their own lives as children of immigrants had been filled with the struggle to survive and to be good enough. And how I wished that my teachers and coaches had been able to believe in the benefit of mistakes for learning rather than opportunities for incessant criticism and judgment thinking that such would be source for motivation. What motivated was not wanting to learn but avoiding shame and humiliation. How can one begin to appropriate learning as a self-directed venture, something that could be engaged joyously when driven to avoid external judgment? Thus though successful in playing the “grading game” and successful on the fields and courts of sport, I also did not dare to be adventurous nor dare to think that I could have a single, self-initiated idea of my own. In fact, I left a chosen field of political science in the belief that there was nothing that I could contribute.
I wonder about your experiences and how it felt to be taken to task for your “mistakes”? And then I wonder about the children. They are our future leaders. The world is suffering. We are suffering. We are in need of creative thinkers at all levels of society – governance, education, economics, socially, and ethically. Creative thinking means daring to look in new directions, daring to make mistakes and to learn, daring to acknowledge mistakes and to bear judgment when others are willing to point fingers and ridicule. We have a lot to learn about mistakes!
I’d like to pose these few questions for us to consider:
1. What false beliefs about yourself would you have to surrender in order to embrace the idea that mistakes are nothing more than portals to discovery?
2. If you could do that in all walks of your life – family, partnership, parenting, work, et al – how would that change you? How could it change your relationships with others?
Change starts with the individual and radiates outward. Change is a grassroots affair.
I wonder about your experiences and how it felt to be taken to task for your “mistakes”? And then I wonder about the children. They are our future leaders. The world is suffering. We are suffering. We are in need of creative thinkers at all levels of society – governance, education, economics, socially, and ethically. Creative thinking means daring to look in new directions, daring to make mistakes and to learn, daring to acknowledge mistakes and to bear judgment when others are willing to point fingers and ridicule. We have a lot to learn about mistakes!
I’d like to pose these few questions for us to consider:
1. What false beliefs about yourself would you have to surrender in order to embrace the idea that mistakes are nothing more than portals to discovery?
2. If you could do that in all walks of your life – family, partnership, parenting, work, et al – how would that change you? How could it change your relationships with others?
Change starts with the individual and radiates outward. Change is a grassroots affair.