Heres the value of allowing your children to struggle

Heres the value of allowing yur children to struggleHeres the value of allowing your children to struggleHow can I sit back and watch my adolescent or teenage children struggle? Especially when I have the solution to their problem. Is there a benefit to my child discovering their own life direction independent of me? Am I taking something away from them if I provide a few shortcuts? Is there anything wrong with being best friends with my kids? If you have ever asked yourself these questions, read on. You may be surprised by the answersRaising children is often counterintuitive. Your natural response on how to engage your childs problem may not be the best solution. Sure, you can fix the immediate concern, but it will always be your solution, not theirs. Ask yourself if you are solving or supporting your children? Solving is providing answers, shortcuts, and helping them minimize and avoid struggle. Supporting is standing nearby with your hands in your pockets, biting down on a leathe r belt, and observing the wipeouts and wonders of your childs own personal discovery and recovery.Follow Ladders on FlipboardFollow Ladders magazines on Flipboard covering Happiness, Productivity, Job Satisfaction, Neuroscience, and moreAvoid drawing straight lines If you see your son or daughter wandering off the path in a seemingly sideways direction, DONT try to straighten their path. Let them walk head first into a mistake. And when they have struggled long enough with the confusion, and you know it is time to give them the answer DONT. Wait until they have found their own solution and praise them for their discovery.An eagle pushes its newly born young from a cliff-side nest. The baby eaglet plummets toward the ground. If the eaglet wants to fly, it does. If it doesnt, just before the baby hits the rocks below, the mother eagle swoops underneath, catches the bird in her mouth, and saves it from certain death. She flies upward toward the nest, and just as she reaches the safe p roximity of the nest, the mother eagle drops the eaglet again in a free fall toward the rocks below. How close do you let your kids come to the rocks? How often do you save them, convincing yourself it was for their benefit? Do you drop them again, or do you return them to the safety of the nest? Having them securely in the nest is easier, isnt it? At least for you, it is. You need to put on your adult-parent hat and begin training your kids for the day they leave the house by helping them learn how to survive on their own. Children are guests in your home. If you dont allow them to experience setbacks on their own, the discovery process as adults will be much harder, and the scars, often deeper.Suffering, struggling, and failure helps children build an waffen-repertoire of experience to help achieve success as an adult. Rebounding from adversity is a process that must be learned, not taught. ur setbacks in life typically create inner strengths that lace together in adulthood. Our s ubconscious calls on these memories of strife and struggle to help us persevere and assure ourselves that we will succeed again. The result of these tribulations in our childrens lives is the formation of their own personal pride which awards them the ultimate participation trophy, a badge of adolescent victory. It might sound extreme to say, but stop parenting so much. No more drone parents Our actions of hovering and dominating our children may be intended with love, but they cause harm to your childs future life.You dont want to take away their own growth, creativity, or resourcefulness. Dont dull the edges of a knife that will one day be needed to cut its way through the gristle of life. It shouldnt matter what mountain your child is on, only that he or she learns how to climb falls recovers and climbs again. Be patient with your childs life course. Let them stumble and pick themselves back up. Be sure to praise and affirm them when they do And when they are in a pit, assure them you have faith they will discover the solution to the setback.Also, if you have ever called your son or daughter your best friend, you need to look in the mirror and say to yourself, Quit trying to give your kid everything you didnt have And stop using them as a reset to relive your own childhood. Try saying to your son or daughter, I dont want to be your friend. I am one of two people who has been assigned the responsibility of being your parent. You will not always agree with me. But I will always listen to you, even when I think you are wrong. At times, you will be angry with me. I will let you make mistakes. I will encourage you when you pick yourself up. I will smile when you try again. And I might tear when I see your strength in the face of adversity.Families have always been stronger when parents exercise wisdom and maturity in teaching their kids difficult life lessons, even though it risks relational adversity between parent and child. We need to stop sacrificing our kids personal pride to stimulate our own. Effective parenting is about children discovering their own future, not children adapting to the future we parents think best for them. Let them embrace their unique future and achieve something you could never have done yourselfRichard Watts is the author of Entitlemania How Not to Spoil Your KidsAnd What to Do If You Have and Fables of Fortune What Rich People Have That You Dont Want.You might also enjoyNew neuroscience reveals 4 rituals that will make you happyStrangers know your social class in the first seven words you say, study finds10 lessons from Benjamin Franklins daily schedule that will double your productivityThe worst mistakes you can make in an interview, according to 12 CEOs10 habits of mentally strong people

The Iron Mike rule The one thing successful people do differently

The Iron Mike rule The one thing successful people do differentlyThe Iron Mike rule The one thing successful people do differentlyBy the time he welches 13 years old, Michael Gerard Tyson had been arrested 38 times and was sentenced to a Juvenile center in upstate New York.Tyson was a far cry from the typical profile of a juvenile delinquent he was pudgy, extremely shy, spoke with a lisp, and was afraid of getting into fights.In fact, he was regularly beaten up by neighborhood bullies who dubbed him the Little Fairy Boy.Like most street kids at the time, Tyson was raised by an alcoholic mother and grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a rough neighborhood that resembled the wild west- imagine movie scenes of people shooting one another, police cars and ambulances ringing deafening sirens whilst speeding down streets, robbers breaking windows, and young kids selling drugs to hookers.Given that Tyson was a product of his environment, the odds of him escaping a destined life of crime, drug dealing and early death, were slim to none.But as luck would have it, Tysons fate would change when he was brought to the attention of the legendary boxing coach, Cus Damato.The Iron Mike RuleCus Damato was a short, bald-headed, stern faced, Italian boxing trainer, who like Tyson, also grew up in a rough neighborhood in the Bronx, New York.Tyson would later describe Damato as a complex and dark figure who didnt have a happy muscle in his face. 1Damatos astounding resume spoke for itself he had successfully managed, trained and bred two heavyweight champions, Floyd Patterson and Jose Torres.On March 1980, Tyson met face to face with Damato in an old musky boxing gym, filled with weather-beaten newspapers plastered across the walls of a converted meeting hall, located above a police station in Catskill, New York.After a sparring session in a small ring- during which Tyson was punched in the nose and bled profusely- Damato invited Tyson to lunch at his white Victorian house.During the meal, Damato turned his head towards Tyson and said, If you listen to me, I can make you the youngest heavyweight champion of all time.Tyson flinched at the baffling words of the 70-year-old man he had just met, but committed himself to be under the tutelage and rigorous training regime of Damato.Day in and day out, Tyson would wake up at 4 a.m, run for 3 to 5 miles, and train tirelessly in the gym for up to 55 hurs, and 200 rounds of sparring each week.As he later noted in an interview, no one wants to get up and run at 4 in the morning when its pitch dark, but it has to be done, and the only reason I do it so early is because I believe the other guy isnt doing it. And that gives me a little edge. 2In the evenings, Tyson would spend hours watching and studying the fight videos of the best fighters at the time.And by 9.30 p.m. on most days, he went to bed and fell asleep.For the next several years, Tyson would repeat this tiresome and boring daily routine every single day.And eventu ally, his efforts paid off.By 1982, Tyson had beaten every amateur boxing opponent he faced. And on November 22, 1986, a 20-year-old Mike Tyson, knocked out a 33-year-old Trevor Berbick- in just five minutes and 35 seconds- to become the youngest heavyweight champion in the history of boxing.Damatos prophecy had come true and by the end of his boxing career, Iron Mike Tyson was inducted in the boxing hall of fame, recognized as one of the greatest boxers of all time.When asked to share the secret to his success, Tyson turned to the wisdom of his late trainer and father figure, Cus Damato, and explainedThe Iron Mike RuleDo what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.Mike Tyson and Cus DAmato training. Ken Regan/Camera 5 /Courtesy of Blue Rider Press PlumeThe Problem With Success PornWithin a few seconds of logging onto the internet, were bombarded with images of people with zero fat, lean perfect bodies, happy and loving relationships, a job that they love every single moment w orking, a thriving business making millions of dollars in profits and a Lamborghini parked in front of a 20-acre home in The Hamptons overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.But, is this reality?The problem is that mora so than ever, the results of success are highly visible, glamorized and deceptive.Just scroll through the images on your social media feeds and it would appear as if everyone else apart from yourself is enjoying success in life.But in reality, behauptung images are only a highlight reel of peoples best moments. The remaining 99% of their lives are as boring and repetitive as yours.To add insult to injury, success gurus promote their lifestyles, and must-buy self help books and products that will teach you the hidden secrets of success.Not only do these glamorized images of success create feelings of insecurity anddissatisfaction with our lives, they also overvalue the results and undervalue the difficulties of achieving success.And so, when times are tough and youre choseing behind on your goals, its much easier to give up than to stay consistent andfinish what you start, because of the unrealistic expectations created by these images.But the irony of this all is that its the process behind the scenes- which were often blind to and the media hardly promotes- that creates the visible success that we glamorize.The Unsexy Path to SuccessToday I will do what others wont, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others cant?Jerry RiceOn June 2, 2017, I published my first article onMayoOshin.Com.At the time I had zero readers and very little experience building an audience zugnglich (in fact, I had catastrophically failed to launch previous online projects).My plan was simple every week (till forever), Id write and publish a new article.It didnt matter how badly written the article was, or what tragedies occurred in my personal life that killed my motivation to write, or how afraid I was of failure andcriticism, I was committed to publishing at least one new article each week.During the first six months of writing, my website was a ghost town. Only a small handful of people- a few friends and family who had pity on me, and maybe a stray cat- read my articles.And although I enjoyed the process of writing, I found myself spending the bulk of my time doing the things I didnt enjoy researching, editing and marketing for up to 25 hours per article.After the first year of writing, my work finally started to gain a little traction, and was distributed by media publications.Slowly but surely, more people aside from my friends and family, started to read and share my articles.Almost one hundredarticlesand two years later, I am extremely grateful that today over 100,000+ people worldwide read my work each month.I share my story not to gain bragging rights, or even to label myself a success, but to emphasize the power ofconsistencyin achieving our goals.The path to success isnt glamorous or sexy. In fact, for the most part, its unsexy boring, repetitive and drawn-out.The difference between successful people and everyone else, is that theyve learned to fall in love with the process ofconsistently doing the unsexy workthat others arent willing to do.For exampleIf you want to be a successful author, learn to fall in love with the lonely process of writing for months and years, the paralysis of researching ideas for your book, and the tedious process of revising, editing and marketing your work after its published.If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, learn to fall in love with the lonely process of working on your business for months and years without profits, the tedious process of hiring and firing, marketing and sales, and pivoting your business.If you want to get into great shape,learn to fall in love with the tedious process of counting calories, cooking and eating boring meals, exercising 3 to 5 times a week, and going to bed early.Over the short period of a week or month, the advantage is marginal. But, over a time span of five to 10 years, the gulf between the person who consistently does what others wont do and the person who doesnt, is ginormousFall in Love With the ProcessEveryone wants to be successful until they see what it actually takes.- UnknownWeve all heard the saying that Rome wasnt built in a day, wise words that capture the idea that time is all it takes to achieve great things.But thats not the whole story.Just like how Rome was built through the tedious process of laying one brick at a time for many years, success is built by consistently doing the work that others arent willing to do.The difference between successful people and everyone else, is that theyve fallen in love with the process of pursuing their goals and thehardshipthat comes with it- the boredom, drudgery, loneliness, criticisms and failures.And most importantly theyve embraced The Iron Mike Rulewhich reminds them toDo what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.Mayo Oshin writes atMayoOshin.Com, where he shares t he best practical ideas based on proven science and the habits of highly successful people for stress-free productivity and improved mental performance. To get these strategies to stop procrastinating, get more things by doing less and improve your focus,join his free weekly newsletter.A version of thisarticleoriginally appeared atmayooshin.comasThe Iron Mike Rule The One Thing Successful People Do Differently.FootnotesUndisputed Truth My Autobiography by Mike Tyson AudiobookTysons training routinevideo.Iron Mike My life with Cus DamatoThe moment 20-year-old Tyson became the Heavy Weight boxing champion of the worldvideo.

Swimming with reef sharks taught me about fear and confidence

Swimming with reef sharks taught me about fear and confidenceSwimming with reef sharks taught me about fear and confidenceI inhaled into my snorkel and adjusted my mask to get a clearer look at the six-foot reefsharkswimming straight toward me below the surface of the water. The sunlight filtering through the top layers of the ocean illuminated the whiteness of hisjaws, revealing the serrated edges of dozens of rows of teeth. I knew that he saw me, that he sensed me. I started kicking my fins once more and extending my arms in front of me, propelling me closer and closer to thesharkwith each stroke. I welches off the coast of Bimini, the westernmost island in theBahamas, and we were in open ocean no cage, no wetsuit, no handlers.Sharks are the puppies of the sea, the captain, Neil Watson, had announced, moments before I jumped in the water. The founder ofBimini Scuba Center, Watson was busy chumming the water with lionfish carcasses while trying to convince the 40-plus people strande d on two boats in the middle of the Caribbean that sharks were harmless. He should work in shark PR.I was in the Bahamas with friends for theWoody FoundationsannualLionfish Bash, which raises funds and awareness for paralysis and other disabilities. Wed spent the past few days spearfishing lionfish, a venomous and invasive species destroying the coral reefs.Now, our prey was being used to lure our predatorsDozens of sharks began to frenetically circle the water between the boats, expectantly waiting to be fed once again. I was one of only a handful of people aboard a tiny motorboat that was bobbing up and down in the waves. The vessel was barely larger than the increasingly aggressive sharks, who kept drawing closer to the starboard side, near enough to touch.Watson began shouting reassurances from across the water - he was with the rest of the crew in a large, covered boat, aptly named Dive God See, sharks arent bad. Theyre just misunderstood. The man should really work insharkPR. He threw out the belastung of the lionfish remains. But theyre fed now, so they wont mind you jumping in with them. The smaller boat needs to go in first, or else well scare the sharks.I felt an oncoming rise of nausea - wed been at sea for nearly two hours, and I was beginning to feel increasingly dehydrated and perilously hung over. But no matter how much I was suffering on that boat in the 95-degree heat, I would certainly suffer more in theoceanwith the sharks. I had no choice. The rest of my friends were on the larger boat, and they didnt have to jump in first. Id opted for the smaller boat so I could work on my tan - and I was about to passiv in the name of a solid base.I looked down at my purple polka-dotbikini- the bright color and pattern was a magnet for sharks - and felt like bait. But I surprised myself when I found myself heading for the stern of the boat, slowly climbing down the ladder steps. I was either going to die of sun and alcohol poisoning on the boat, or b e killed in the water by sharks, I thought. At that point, I really needed to get out of the heat.Just remember, dont be scared, Watson called out one last time. Youre a big animal too. Thats the only rule I have If you act like prey, theyll think youre prey. But if they think youre a shark, theyll respect you like they wouldaelendher shark.I was the first one in the water. And now, here I was, swimming straight toward my death. I kept repeating in my mind I am a shark, I am a shark. But every muscle in my body was twitching, telling me to avert course, to at least try to save myself. There were worst places to die than the island ofBimini, I reasoned. The island was beloved by Hemingway, so at least it would have a literary angle (and relatively few witnesses).Out of the corner of my mask, I saw another shark dive below me and a third lurking beneath my floating body. I tried not to wonder why the rest of the party wasnt yet in the water. I looked up to see the oncoming shark and r ealized I had to act quickly. Was I going to change direction? And I kept swimming forward. I picked up the pace. I wanted to collide (and meet my fate) sooner rather than later. The shark seemed to swim faster too. We were eye level, both of us just below the top of thewater.Id never felt so vulnerable, so mortally exposedI dont think Id ever fully grasped my own mortality until that very moment, when I fought every natural reaction in my body to change direction, to panic, to shriek for help. But deeper than this impulse to escape was the knowledge that if I were to lose control - to splash and cry for help - I wouldnt survive.Finally, we were nearly head-on, face-to-face. Or jaws to snorkel. I needed to be near the surface so I could breathe air through my snorkel what was the sharks excuse? I was playing a game of chicken with a shark. What to do in this occasion? Politely swim below, so he could bite me and see if he liked the taste? Keep going straight? Punch him in the nose like Id seen onShark Week,or refrain from engaging in a fight Id surely lose?Ive never forgotten this moment, though Im not sure what my lesson was, because everything feels so trite. That were all connected? That were all animals on this crazy, rapidly changing planet, just trying to survive? Or that maybe in order to be brave, you have to force yourself. Maybe to be ashark, you have to pretend youre one already. Maybe such bravery can only be found when you dont have any other options. It was instinctive.So, I suppose, heres the lesson The only way to overcome fear - and its crippling limitations - is to look it in the face and not flinch. To swim toward what scares you and have faith in yourself to survive.I kept the course, and as we drew closer, at the last minute, thesharkdove down, just barely beneath me. His dorsal fin grazed the length of my body as we brushed against one another in the ocean. My entire body felt electric. He realized me. He saw me and let me live. And I saw him and chose to not be afraid. We coexisted. Maybe I was a shark.When I turned back to face the boats again, most of the sharks had vanished. By the time the people in the larger boat entered the water, none were left. Friends whod witnessed my interaction with the shark from the safety of their boat thought I was crazy. Delusional, they said. Who swims right up to a shark?Which, to be fair, is a valid question.This article was originally posted on Brit + Co.com.