Preparing for the glory, or heartbreak, of your own Olympic moments.
Using curiosity and compassion to build their character, so your teen can go for their dreams
I love the Olympics. I grew up dreaming about playing Olympic hockey. I love the stories, dreams, and drama of the athletes. I imagine myself in each performance and wonder, “how would you respond?” In the moments of Olympic glory and heart break, “what would you do?”
I love to think about all the training and hard work that’s put into the pursuit of excellence – “could you do that?” “What would it be like?”
My sense is that you have similar dreams and hopes, and so do your teens, but for them at this point there is likely an unrealistic understanding of what it takes to make dreams happen.
- Teen: I want to be a professional skateboarder.
- Me: Okay, how do you do that?
- Teen: “Work hard”, “Give it my all”, “go for it”, “Just do it”, etc.
Basically, the normal response is a string of cliches. This may be inexperience, or hope, or youth, or laziness, or something else, and to figure it out, lets use an old story:
- A traveler is walking down a path towards a town. As he nears the edge of the town there is a street light casting a round glow on the ground. As he gets closer, he notices someone crawling around on the ground in the light.
- As he approaches, he asks, “What are you doing down there?”
- “Oh, I am looking for my keys,” responds the person on the ground.
- The traveler, being a kind soul, puts down his pack and begins searching silently along with the young person, who offers a nod of appreciation.
- After what seems like a long time, and several laps around the glow on the ground, the traveler asks, “are you sure you lost your keys here?”
- And the person responds without hesitation, “oh, no. I didn’t lose them here, I lost them over there,” pointing out into the darkness beyond the edge of the town.
- The traveler, curious, asks, “then why are you searching here?”
- The response is again quick and matter of fact, “Because this is where the light is.”
It’s easy to blame your teens for searching in the light and it’s easy to want them to be searching in a better place, but they are young and our culture isn’t good at helping them, so they get stuck in the light and the cliches.
Curiosity & Compassion
You say, go! Be motivated, care more, work harder, and get out of the light. Then, it’s easy to get frustrated when they don’t do it, but this is a place for curiosity and compassion.
The Olympics provides a push, a huge amount of support, and coaching, for young people with extraordinary athletic talent, but what about all the others? They have dreams also, but need guidance and support to grow that fuller life.
Figuring out how to get beyond the words that sound good and into the actions that make things happen is tricky.
The arena is the place where dreams happen, but it’s also the place where dreams are crushed. It’s risky out there in the darkness. There are lots of reasons to avoid it, but deep down you know you want it. It’s confusing. And they’re young
By bringing that curiosity and compassion to their exploration and their journey you can help them build the team, the sense of self, and the character necessary to become the person they dream about becoming some day.
A person ready to go for the glory and risk the heartbreak of their own Olympic moments.
Remember that we’re on a quest to understand how to discover the Real You. You can share comments and questions on the Play Huge blog
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