Developing Limitless Kids
A Child's environment shapes their upbringing, where they develop self perception, their perception of the world, their values and beliefs.
Perfection is an Illusion
Parenting, family, friends, environment, education, activities, life experience and all the hidden messages they pick up along the way, determine their identity.
These hidden messages rarely offer positivity, with many being the ruin of self esteem and self worth.
Rejection from a parent or significant family member, a comment here, a label there, a comparison or two along the way, certainly do nothing to build children up. In fact, these result in developing an insecure foundation upon which to foster self worth.
Those hidden messages have the power to damage ...
if not destroy lives and create limiting beliefs. Stereotyping create an unhealthy self perception
Well meaning comments about beauty, size, intelligence, unintentional labels (he always drops things), stereotyping create an unhealthy self perception. Success is no longer a contender when children have low self esteem or self worth or self limiting beliefs, failure is seen as the only available option.
Human beings are complex, any relationship with two or more people has the potential to be dysfunctional or problematic. Negative messages are going to slip through to children, mistakes will be made by parents and adults, children will see and hear negative things that impact their self perception. These result in an inability to recognise, let alone achieve their true potential. However, they can be taught to rationalise and organise their emotions and thoughts, therefore limit the impact on their self worth and become limitless.
Developing Limitless Kids
Find out more about improving performance at school or in sport, fostering mental strength and resilience or emotional empowerment- I’d love to hear your stories and look at ways to empower more children together.
Conquering self doubt is key to overcoming barriers and becoming limitless.
Self doubt and the inner critic are long term friends who like to blur perception. Along with the lies told by anxiety, it can be difficult to hear anything other than the negative self talk that goes on in their head.
Be louder and more consistent with your positive comments, your encouragement and your support until the inner dialogue becomes positive -or at least they recognise when it’s going on, and can choose to listen or not.
Self Knowledge is a super power -
Adults can help children learn to:
- Step out of their comfort zone and believe in themselves.
- Develop their own personal brand, no comparisons with others.
- Be proud of their achievements.
- Make mistakes and failures learning opportunities.
- Express emotional frustrations and fears.
- Think for themselves, problem solve, test potential outcomes.
- Change the inner critic to the inner cheerleader.
- Be realistic and push their boundaries.
- Challenge their problem solving abilities and explore potential outcomes.
- Develop an “I can” attitude and see the world as limitless.
Self Knowledge is a super power.
Emotions are the foundation upon which we make decisions and choose to behave. Emotion management is key to unleashing their super power. Every situation provokes an emotional response which triggers a thinking process which influences behaviour and the outcome.
We often let this process happen without realising that we can take control of how we respond and therefore the outcome. Teach children to recognise how a situation affects them emotionally, what feelings does it stir. Positive emotions ignite positive thinking, positive behaviours and positive outcomes. We hear a lot about physical strength, we also need to focus on mental strength and resilience.
Children with mental strength accept mistakes happen in the moment and move on.
They can reflect on what happened what went wrong and what went right and improve their performance. They do not compare with others, they compare with previous performance and focus on improvement. They can appreciate characteristics in others that they want to develop and set out to be the best they can be. They set goals, they know what it takes to achieve them and they believe they can.
Mental strength and resilience is not a natural skill in everyone but when you have self knowledge, you appreciate how things affect you and choose to take control of your reactions and behaviour. They make choices to do what is right for them.
Example:
Your child receives an award for helping others in school: they feel pride and happiness, it sows the seeds about being a kind person, they look for more opportunities to be nice to others.
Negative emotions like fear, sadness, anger or frustration cause negative thinking, negative behaviours and negative outcome.
Example:
Your child has a bad start in a competition where nothing went right: they feel disappointed, sadness, shame and frustration. They lose focus, they rehash the mistakes, the inner critic tells them they are no good, they continue to make mistakes throughout the competition and lose every round.
Mental resilience and emotional empowerment can be the difference between success and failure