Shoot for the Moon?

We often hear the following or similar “encouragement”:

 “Be all you can be” - “Achieve your full potential” - “Aim for the top” - “You can have it all” - “There’s nothing you cannot achieve if you work hard enough” - …………

If you aim too high, a life of constant stress awaits you.

But,

If you aim too low, then you will not get the optimum rewards of living.

But,

What are these rewards? And how do I not aim too low?

Constructive failure is the best option 

We learn by getting things wrong. If we never make a mistake, then we never learn.

So,

We need to embrace “learning from failing” as our way of life.

But,

We must try and not make the same mistake multiple times, otherwise we demonstrate that we haven’t learned or are incapable of learning - this induces stress.

We must establish our acceptable stress level limit in life, and ideally fit our correct balance of achievement, life satisfaction, and stress. This is a deeply personal balance which has to be struck.

Often, especially at early stages of life, we do not have a lot of choices - we need to work to eat, and may need to accept a higher level of stress and a lower level of life satisfaction in order to survive, but we can recognise this fact and attempt to improve upon it as we grow in our lives.

Resilience in our children

We might be guilty of trying to protect our children too much - it is a parent’s job to nurture our children, and protect them from harm, both physical and mental. We are now so good at this that our children are often given the impression that if a failure happens, it is always someone else’s fault, as we wish to protect them from failure and feeling bad about themselves. 

However, in life, sooner or later at some point in their future, they will fail and be judged by others for that. If this is the first time they experience this feature of being an intelligent human being in society, then it can do great damage to their view of themselves and will set up negative interactions with others around them.

They must be given the resilience tool of:

“Failure and failing are essential parts of living and growing as a person, first from a child into an adult, and then as a maturing adult - never trust anyone who will not own up to making mistakes - whilst being wary of those who appear to not learn from their (or anyone else’s) mistakes”.

Optimise Ambition

Once we have a level of resilience instilled, we can set our sights on our particular personal version of “the Moon” which we are shooting for.

Decide how far you would like to try and go in your life eg Leader of your country, Nobel prize winner, Olympic champion……or more locally recognised versions of these….or something more modest - say simply “living a good life” - whatever your ambition is. [Note that you must allow yourself to change (either moderate or enhance) your initially held ambition, if at any point you decide to re-evaluate your balance of risk and stress versus reward].

Try and understand why you made your choice (at each stage) - give context to your motivation - do you wish for eg fame, riches, power, happiness, fulfilment?

Assess the benefits for you and any drawbacks eg always in the public eye versus anonymity.

Assess the effort required to achieve your chosen ambition, and your probability of success

Discuss your ambition with your trusted sources and create your ”truth” for yourself. 

Re-evaluate the above at regular (or irregular) intervals throughout your life.

Getting the balance right

Are you fired with ambition - do you crave the limelight - do you thrive on adrenaline situations?

Or,

Are you fearful of being judged by others - are you happy to let others take the risks and trailblaze, with you reaping the benefits afterwards?

What makes you happy and fulfilled - what makes you content with your life?

Revisit the balance of risk versus reward regularly - it will change as you grow throughout your life.

Your attitude to stress is your ally in these discussions with yourself and your trusted people. Often you will need to try something out, to push yourself a little (or a lot) to evaluate your reaction to stress at that moment in your life. Each of us is different, and in particular, our level of exposure to stressful situations as a youngster can provide us with a better foundation for this aspect of stress tolerance in our later life. The more you can test yourself out in the safe development world of being a child, in small and limited stressful situations, the better. 

The Result

So we, as parents and teachers, must do all we can to introduce our children to early and small instances of failure, and to help them experience such stress, whilst still in a safe and protected environment - the more we do this (within reason), the better prepared our children will be to maximise their enjoyment, fulfilment and contentment in their adult lives, whilst also helping society better achieve its full potential.   

And,

As adults, we must also have several Plan B’s for ourselves for when Plan A (almost inevitably) fails!