Issue Number 21

Our mission is to give you the latest information on how to raise self-reliant, emotionally healthy, highly successful children and to help you maximize the benefits of their participation in sports.

How to Help Your Child Overcome Obstacles

From past newsletters you have learned that the third step to success is learning to overcome obstacles.

When my nephew, Billy, was six years old he decided that some day he would play for his favorite football team: the Philadelphia Eagles. He enrolled in Pop Warner football and played all the way through high school when he encountered three of his greatest obstacles: he wasn’t big enough, he wasn’t fast enough and he couldn’t catch or throw a ball particularly well.

Under these circumstances most kids would give up on their dream and quit. But not Billy. He contacted the Eagles front office and talked them into allowing him to become an assistant trainer. This gave him a chance to mingle with the players and discover his true talents: he was likeable and extremely persuasive, qualities better suited to a lawyer than an NFL player. So what did a bright kid like Billy do? He did what all high achievers do: he overcame his obstacles, modified his goal, and became a very successful attorney whose first clients were the athletes he befriended on the field.

Now let’s borrow a chapter from Billy’s book and see how we can pass the skills of high achievers like him to your child. Billy is typical of high achievers in that he uses a combination of methods for overcoming obstacles.

Researchers who studied high achievers identified the four that are most commonly used:

1. Learn to motivate yourself. The best way to do this is choose the goals you most want to accomplish and build little success experiences. Billy’s entry to the playing field as an assistant trainer was a small success compared to his big goal of becoming a player. Once he got in he scored another little success when he met players and made friends with them. He wound up staying on the field for two years, watching all the big games from the sidelines, making him feel a lot taller than his 5’ 5” frame.

1. Ask for help. Billy started by befriending people in the Eagles front office who helped him get on the field. Once he got to know the players he asked them for help in building his law practice and they obliged.

1. Modify your goal. Billy recognized that the obstacles to fulfilling his original goal of becoming an NFL player were too great to overcome. He didn’t drop his goal of becoming involved with the sport, he just changed it.

1. Change your goal. Eventually Billy changed his goal totally, becoming a lawyer instead of an athlete. But, as many achievers find out, new goals often relate to the old ones. That’s how Billy built his law practice: by representing the players whose skills on the field he couldn’t duplicate.

The lesson we can learn from high achievers is to become flexible: when setting goals and making plans the high achiever always takes obstacles into account and finds a way around them.

Wishing you a happy and productive week, this is Rafael Beer