The real reason I encourage children to practice at Home
Many of you who watch me teach the class are aware of one of the reasons that I encourage children to work out as soon as they wake up. The reason that I give them ties into something that I know they are interested in, success.
I remind them that success is growing up and realizing their goals and that their job is to go to school and get the best grades that they can so that they can get the things that they want out of life.
In order to get the most bang out of going to school, they should exercise when they first get out of bed because exercise wakes the mind and body up so that they can think clearly and absorb information.
There is another reason that is as equally important as getting the education to succeed, it is acquiring the tools, necessary to succeed!
The importance of this statement becomes crystal clear with the realization that if one does not have the right tools at the right time the job can not be done.
Think of it like this, suppose that you are a gold miner in a line of gold miners that are allowed to mine for gold on a property for a limited time. It is your turn to mine and you only have five hours to mine before it becomes someone else’s turn.
After two hours of testing, you come across a vein of gold. Because of your experience, you know that the gold, while there, is between a quarter of a mile to a half-mile below the earth. The only tool that you brought with you is a handheld shovel called a spade. At your business, twenty miles away, there is a multitude of hydraulic drills, dynamite, and other high tech equipment that could get you down to the ore. The problem is that you only have three hours left to mine the ore and if you don’t someone else will be allowed to come in behind you.
At this point, all of the knowledge that you have acquired over the years will do you know good because you have failed to bring the tools that you must have if you were lucky enough to find a strike.
It doesn’t take a genius to see that prevention really is better than the cure.
Case in point:
The thing that I am aware of now that I did not know then is that the Army is very good at instilling the necessary tools into you that you will need to succeed before you will need them. WE, or more specifically YOU have to also become very good at instilling necessary tools into your child before they need them if you want them to succeed.
Let me break here for just a moment to define our roles; yours and mine. I am but a teacher. Teachers by definition point students in the right direction; it is the student that must make the journey.
Adult students are equipped with the mindset to make difficult journeys by themselves. The reason is that because of experience they know the benefits of doing what must be done, and are therefore willing to sacrifice time and energy in chase of the reward.
Children, on the other hand, are like blank sheets of paper with no experience to look back on.
Real-life example:
I have a sister – in law that moved from a low-income existence to a high medium income existence by going back to school and acquiring a degree in the ITT field.
The thing that was the motivating factor is that she was in the throngs of poverty and NEW what it was like not to be able to have the income to acquire the things that she wants out of life. Knowing what she was missing she was willing to sacrifice by staying up late, working two jobs plus attend night school and give up her social life.
Children, on the other hand, don’t have knowing life experiences or the mindset to motivate themselves, instead, they must be guided by someone who in effect KNOWS FOR THEM!
Back to the point:
When I was a Private in the Army one of the first things that I became aware of was HOW UNCOMFORTABLE IT WAS TO BE A SOLDIER. We were made to stand in formation in the rain, sleep with the windows open in freezing weather, change from sweaty clothes to dry clothes outside in freezing weather, pull two hours shifts of century duty when there was no prisoner to watch over (we did it at the motor pool making sure that the cars would not escape ).
Why were we forced to do all of that? The reason is that Army leaders knew that if we were suddenly made to go to war soldiers would be made uncomfortable and in order to succeed with our objective (which is to win) we would have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s a concept that I call “The discomfort of success”.
You can be gifted with wealth, time, access to information, everything that you would need to become hugely successful but if you can’t bring yourself to get into bed before 2:00 am and get out of bed before twelve P.M. every day you are going to fail.
What I am trying to do is to introduce children to discomfort on there level. In other words, be marginally uncomfortable in order to get something that they want and then grow into it.
Here is a reality check, if a child is going to be successful when they grow up they will have to be able to be okay with being uncomfortable. The discomfort that I’m talking about is being willing to not be available for parties, to not skip class and have a good time, to not experiment with drugs and drinking and not be sexually active until an appropriate time.
The easy way to do this is to introduce the child to self-restraint and denial early and let them get accustomed to it instead of letting them build a life layered with different comfort levels and then ask them to refrain from it.
As a parent, you are the director of your child’s destination, the conductor of their journey. Teach them how to deal with the discomforts of life while they are young so that they can live a life of comfort when they get old.
May you have everything that you want, and want everything that you have.
— MB