Occasionally I will look over at my daughters and wonder…do they know how good they are? Do they know what their strengths are? Do I? It is a fair question and one that was worth investigating, so I decided to ask them. Come to find out, they had a pretty good idea about what they “thought” they were good at but it did not always line up with the reality of the situation.
Actually that sounds like a number of people I know that are all grown up, but I digress.
The girls knew some things but there were areas that they excel that they did not even realize. In fact, they did not seem to much care about it when it came up. Like most mothers would be, I was a bit alarmed by this.
I know that our strengths are what power us in adulthood. It is often what we draw on and use most often and it can be a wonderful source of confidence. Now certainly our children can be aloof about these things and it be entirely harmless but I really would not want to take that chance. What if that continues into the teenage years? That sort of thing can lead teens into all kinds of image and self awareness problems, right?
As such, I decided to make it a priority in my home to celebrate my daughter’s strengths and to try to limit the time we spend focusing on weaknesses. That is not to say that we don’t work on the things they struggle with. We do plenty of that. I simply mean that when we talk about the wonder that is my children, we focus on the things that make them awesome..the things that make them unique…the things that might one day make them a Senator, President or Doctor…their strengths.
Celebrating strength as a woman is very important. We have to show them that they are capable, powerful women in a world that is often set against their moving forward. To do that, we have to believe in ourselves and cultivate the things that make us happy and strong. Our weaknesses are self evident and I dare say that none of us are in much danger of ignoring those. We are, however, easily distracted from the things we are good at.
Think about it…When you do a really good job at something and knock it out of the park, you generally forget about it within a few minutes or so. Yes, it might come back as pride in a memory or occasionally crop up in the days and weeks to come, but you generally leave it behind.
Not so with a weakness. A weakness that causes you to mess up or otherwise err will stay with you for hours and hours. Occasionally and for some people, it might linger for much longer. Why is that?
Why not make it natural for your kids to focus just as much attention on the good as they do on the bad? Why not celebrate that A in math for a heck of a lot longer than you spend on fussing about the C in English?
What say you? Do you think that our positives should be put front and center?
This is perfect and oh so important! I have 3 girls, and my oldest I have seen start to struggle with who she is, and really find her strengths. Thanks for the encouragement to focus more with them on what they’re good at.