Posts Tagged ‘Confidence’

Self Reliance

Sunday, July 25th, 2010

Thanks for you patience the last few weeks.  We had a death in the family and after the unexpected travel it took me a while to get organized.

Team Work is important and useful, but sometimes the only person your child will have to rely on is herself.  Sometimes the best person to do the job is your child; teaching her how to get it done on her own will help her on the field, in school, and later in life.  We’ve all heard the saying, if you want something done right you have to do it yourself.  I usually think of that saying to mean that someone else messed up, but if we choose to look at it in a positive light, it really has more to do with your personal ability to do something well.

There are moments in life where your child will have to make a decision, maybe a split second one, about how to handle a situation.  She may be able to look for help from a teammate, schoolmate, or co-worker, but sometimes no one is around who can or will help.  In those moments she needs to believe that she can get the job done herself and act without hesitation. In some cases, even a moment’s hesitation or a look for help at the wrong time can be the difference between success and failure.   

Failure to rely on herself is most likely the result of lack of confidence, or possibly a little laziness.   Everyone suffers from lack of confidence now and again, but making it a habit can be costly. 

I had a costly lapse of confidence during a road race in 2004. The bike race was part of a stage race.  A stage race is a several day race.  Each day there is a new race and the total time of that day’s race is added to the previous day’s total time. The winner is the cyclist who, when the last race has been finished, has completed all of the racing in the least amount of time.  So, you can win a stage of the stage race and not win the overall race.  I was having a fantastic stage race and was sitting fairly high in the overall.  On a climb several of the other highly ranked girls attacked the group and opened up a gap between themselves and the rest of us.  I was chasing them down, gaining slowly and dragging everyone else in my group along behind me.  I was tired and had a little lap in confidence.  I realized other riders were behind me and I thought I’d turn to them for help.  I pulled off to the side and the girl behind me took her turn at front, but she was going slower and we lost momentum.  By the time I realized we were slowing down it was too late.  I surged around her and continued my chase, but by that time the women had too big of a gap and we never caught them.  At the end of the stage I moved down in the overall standings and wasn’t able to gain the time back during the rest of the stage race.

I still regret my moment of hesitation, but while it was a hard lesson, it was also a good lesson.  One that I hope will come in handy the next time I need to rely on myself.  Talk with your child about her abilities and help her have confidence in them.  Let her know that there will be times when she is best off doing something by herself and when that time comes, she’ll be ready.

Remember to check out Gracie Goat’s Big Bike Race and Shawn Sheep The Soccer Star,  if you are looking for a unique gift for a child in your life.  Visit www.erinmirabella.com to order a personalized, autographed copy.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Confidence, self reliance | 1 Comment »

Responsibility

Monday, May 10th, 2010

Try This At Home……………………

Have your child make a list of everything she needs for practice.  Then make it her responsibility to pack her bag the night before and make sure it is by the door ready to go. 

                                                               ******************************************************

The best way to learn responsibility is to have some.  Playing sports, or being in another activity, allows your child many opportunities to practice being responsible.   From packing her bag for practice to performing her job for the team, she is showing her ability to handle responsibilities. 

Every child is different and some are ready for more responsibility than others.   Your child may be able to pack her bag for practice, while her sister might be up for washing her laundry between practices.  Like everything, learning to be responsible takes practice and your child may have to make some mistakes before she can be considered responsible.  The beauty of teaching responsibility is the natural consequences that go along with it.  If your child forgets her helmet, she may not be able to practice that day, if she isn’t ready on time, she might be late for a game, and if he doesn’t get her uniform into the hamper, she may have to wear stinky clothes to practice.    

Moving away from home to the Olympic Training Center was a lot like going away to college, and I found myself suddenly with a lot more responsibilities and freedoms.  Learning to juggle them was important if I wanted to succeed as a professional cyclist and make the Olympic Team.  It was interesting to watch how different athletes handled the freedom and responsibility that went along with living away from home.  Unlike most colleges, there were both sixteen year old and twenty four year old athletes living in the same dorm building.   In most cases there was a stark difference between their maturity and life experiences, however age wasn’t the only factor that determined if an athlete was responsible or not.  The foundation of trust, confidence and responsibility that an athlete had when they arrived at the center, made a huge difference in their ability to be successful there.  You wont’ always be there to help your child with every little thing, but the lessons you teach her when she’s young will stay with her.

Here are a few places to start giving your child some responsibility

  • Have her get their things ready for practice the night before and put them by the door, or in the car.
  • Have her pack a healthy snack to eat between school and practice.
  • Have her put their uniform in the hamper or teach her to wash her own clothes.
  • Have her set an alarm that warns her it’s time to go to practice or a game.
  • Require her to get her homework done each night if she want to go to practice the next day. 
  • Have her follow through with her commitments to the team.  Don’t let her quit in the middle of a season.

Learning to be responsible is an important lesson long after your child leaves the field of play.  It will prepare her for the real world.  As much as it is sometimes easier to do something for your child, try to be patient and allow her the opportunity to do it herself.  She has no reason to learn to be responsible if you are always doing everything for her. Slowly increase her responsibilities and before long her activities will be less stressful for you and she will gain confidence.  Giving her responsibilities also tells her you trust her; this is a good relationship to foster as she gets older. 

For more information about me and my children’s books, please visit www.erinmirabella.com.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Confidence, Responsibility | 2 Comments »

Goal Setting, Part 2

Monday, January 25th, 2010

 Try This At Home……………..

Next time your child fails at achieving her goal, have her make a list of everything that she did well and a list of all the things that did not go well.  Then have her analyze the second list and come up with ways to fix or improve upon them.   Once those things are fixed, have her try again.

                                                             *************************************************

We’ve all failed to accomplish a goal at one time or another.  It’s normal to feel lousy when it happens, but the more productive response would be to figure out why it happened.  Cavett Robert said, “Life is a grindstone, and whether it grinds you down or polishes you up, is for you and you alone to decide.”  You can let your failures control and define you, or you can learn from them and use them to your advantage.  The choice is yours.

Fear of failure was the thing that I struggled most with during my cycling career.  I was so afraid of not being perfect that I would agonize over the possibility of failure.  Like everything in life, the thing that you dwell on is what comes to be, and left unchecked my fear became a self fulfilling prophesy.  Fear of failure is a separate post all to itself, but I mention it because in learning to deal with my fear, I learned an important lesson about failure…….While failure is unpleasant, it doesn’t make you a failure and it isn’t the end of the world.  It’s simply a step toward becoming successful.  You won’t find a successful person out there who hasn’t failed a few times in the process. 
                                                           
We all want to protect our kids and hate to see them fail, but as I’ve said over and over again in my blog posts, your child will learn far more from failing than they will from success.  Sure, failure isn’t any fun, but it can teach a valuable lesson. 

                                                                                    Reasons Why We Fail

We Went About It Wrong

Most likely the reason your child failed is because she went about it the wrong way.  This is the most valuable lesson in failing.  If she can realize where she went wrong and fix it, then the next time she’ll be successful. Help her analyze the situation and figure how she can improve.  

Lack of Motivation/ Follow Through

If your child seems unmotivated to do what is necessary to accomplish her goal, then it might be time for her to access if the goal is still important to her.  Sometimes priorities change.  My husband quit his wrestling career in the middle of a tournament.  In the middle of a match, he decided it just wasn’t fun anymore.

The other option may be that she just doesn’t want to put in the work.  She wants the reward that comes with accomplishing her goal, but she isn’t willing to do what it takes to get there.  In the end if she fails at her goal because of her work ethic then she’ll learn an important life lesson.  Letting her learn this lesson the hard way, while she is young, is the best gift you can give her.

Lack of focus

Your child may fail to accomplish her goals, because she isn’t focused enough at the task at hand.  She needs to choose which goal is most important and give that the most attention.  She may not know how to focus.  Focusing is a learned thing and is something that is crucial to success in all aspects of life.  Check out my previous prioritization blog for tips on teaching your child to prioritize and stay tuned in a few weeks for my post on the art of focusing. 

Unrealistic Expectations

Your child’s goals may be unrealistic.  If she fails to meet her goal it’s a great opportunity for her to be completely honest about why it happened.  She may have inadvertently set herself up for failure by setting an unrealistic goal.  Help her learn to set realistic goals.  This doesn’t mean that she can’t dream big, it just means she has to be realistic about things like her timetable, talents, abilities, etc.  Some goals take a long time to reach, and some people are better suited at achieving some goals than others.  

If she has failed to reach her goal the first thing she should look at is her timetable.  Maybe her goal would be more achievable if she gave herself more time.  She may also need to add in some additional sub-goals.  Maybe her plan is missing a few steps.

The harder thing for her to do will be to access her abilities. She may find her talents lend themselves better to a new and different goal. She may find she has more to lose by continuing her pursuit than she does by throwing in the towel.  The choice is never an easy one, but this too is an important lesson to learn. 

Part of learning to set goals, is learning what to do when it doesn’t work out.  It is an important skill set for your child to develop.  Learning from their failure will make them successful.

For more information on myself or my children’s books please visit www.erinmirabella.com  My book, Gracie Goat’s Big Bike Race, is an excellent way to talk about overcoming fears with your child.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Goal Setting, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Setting Goals

Monday, January 18th, 2010

Try This At Home……………………..

Using the steps below, have your child set a goal that he can accomplish in the next month or two.  (or less)

                                    ********************************************************

Did you set a new years resolution this year?  Did your kids?

This post may have been more appropriate as the first one of the New Year, but hopefully it’s still relevant because you are sticking to your resolution.  If you didn’t make a resolution, or you’ve already given up on your resolution, don’t lose heart, this is the perfect time to get back on track. 

A New Years resolution is just a fancy way to say you’re setting a goal for yourself.  Occasionally you’ll hear someone say they aren’t a goal oriented person, or they don’t really know how to set goals, but most likely these people are setting goals everyday.  Every time they make a to-do list, a honey do list, or leave the house expecting to arrive at a destination at a particular time, they’ve set a goal.  They just may not realize it. 

Your kids do the same thing.  They may not know the word goal, but they set goals for themselves all the time.  They may want to ride a bike like their big brother, own a certain toy or score a goal in their next soccer game.  When my son Micah was about a year and a half old, he wanted to jump so badly.  He would bend his knees, crouch way down and throw himself upward, but his cute, little, flat feet never left the ground.   Finally, with enough practice, he got some air.  I tell you this, because if a one year old can set a goal and find a way to accomplish it, anyone can.

It’s never too early to teach your child about setting goals.  Having goals will help him to be successful, give him a purpose, help him learn to manage his time and resources, and give him a sense of accomplishment. 

I’ve found that often people are good at setting goals; they just have no idea what to do after that.  Here are some basic things you can teach your child about achieving his goals.

Make a Goal

If your child doesn’t already have a goal, have him come up with one.  Like I said, he probably already has a goal; he just may not have defined it as such.  Have him write his goal down.  Explain the importance sharing his goal with another person, because they can help with accountability and problem solving.

Break It Down

Next, ask him how he thinks he can go about reaching his goal.  Let him come up with some ideas.  Some goals are simple, like I need to get a load of laundry done today. The only thing you have to decide in order to accomplish that, is when specifically you’re going to do it.  Other goals are more complex, like making an Olympic Team.  Goals like that are so lofty, that they need to be broken down into mini sub-goals.    The sub-goals work like stair steps. Each time you accomplish a sub-goal you move one step closer to the big one. I think most people fall short of their goals, because they fail at this step. 

Here is an example.

  1. Set a goal.
  •  Running a mile in ten minutes.

     2. Break it up into mini-goals. 

  • Buy running shoes
  • Find a place to run and measure off a mile using the car odometer. (Find land marks at the quarter mile markers as well.)
  • Run a quarter mile
  • Run a half mile
  • Run three quarters of a mile
  • Run 1 mile
  • Time yourself while you run 1 mile.
  • Run a mile is less than twelve minutes.
  • Run a mile is less than eleven minutes.
  • Run a mile in less than ten minutes.

Set A Deadline

On a calendar, have him write his final goal on a specific date and highlight it.  That is his deadline.  Then, have him work backward and figure out when each sub goal needs to be accomplished in order to accomplish his final goal by the deadline.  Have him identify the deadline for each sub goal on the calendar as well.

Developing a Plan

Now that he has a goal, and sub goals, he will need to decide what needs to happen in order to accomplish his first sub goal.  Maybe he needs to put some other activities on hold so he has more time to devote to his goal.  He may need to do some research, get more sleep, or set a specific time each day he will practice.  Have him write his plan down.

What You Can Do

Be interested.  Ask him how his plan is going and help him trouble shoot.

Celebrate

Don’t forget to celebrate the milestones.  It is easy to be so focused on the final goal that the accomplishment of each mini goal is over looked. Make sure to give him a hug, tell him he’s doing a great job and how impressed you are with his persistence and discipline.  There doesn’t have to be a reward for each mini goal.  The sense of accomplishment should be reward enough, especially if the end goal is one he really wants to reach.

Stay tuned next week for part two of goal setting.  For more information on myself or my children’s books, Gracie Goat’s Big Bike Race and Shawn Sheep The Soccer Star, please visit www.erinmirabella.com

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Goal Setting | 1 Comment »

Curing cockiness

Monday, December 7th, 2009

Try This At Home……………..

Cut decent size holes in the top of two identical, empty boxes.  (Tissue boxes would work well.) Leave the first box as is, and on the second, tape plastic wrap over the hole from the inside.  Have your child sit with the first box about an arms length in front of him.  Have him close his eyes.  When you say go, he should open his eyes and drop a ball into the box as fast as he can.  Make sure it’s something he can easily do.  Each time he gets a ball into the box he gets a skittle, or some other kind of treat. (Don’t let him eat it yet.) After he’s done it successfully 3 times, raise the stakes. Tell him that you are going to make it more exciting.  This time he has a choice.  Before he drops the ball again, he can chose to receive one skittle as before or go for all or nothing.  Make sure that if he chooses the later, he understands that if he misses getting the ball into the hole he loses all of his skittles, and if he makes it you’ll double his total number of skittles.  Most kids will chose to take the gamble, but if not that is ok.  You can still finish the game. After he closes his eyes, switch the boxes out.  When you say go, he will open his eyes and drop the ball in as before, but the plastic wrap will prevent the ball from falling in.  If he took the gamble take all of his skittles away and tell him that this exercise showed the potential danger of being over confident.  Explain that there is a fine line between having a healthy self-confidence and being cocky, and that the game was designed to show him what can happen if he’s too confident in his abilities.  If he took the gamble, ask him what he was thinking when he decided to go for all or nothing.  Address his answer and if he needs help articulating it, suggest the following as the reason. Maybe he was having a lot of success dropping the ball into the box and thought that the gamble was a sure thing.  Explain that at some point in life he will find that he is really good at something and he may start to feel that he can’t lose, just like he felt after successfully dropping the ball in the hole three times. Explain that failure often happens when one starts to be too confident in his own abilities. Oftentimes cockiness leads to carelessness or causes him to underestimate a task or opponent.  Explain that the last time he played the game, when the ball didn’t fall in the hole, was a simulation of that failure.  Then, since you tricked him, let him enjoy his skittles.

If he didn’t take the gamble, then he only missed out on one skittle, but you can still explain the games lesson to him as above.

                                ***********************************

Take the opportunity to discuss the following definitions with your child

Dictionary.com defines the following:

Humble:  not proud or arrogant; modest: to be humble although successful.

Self confident: realistic confidence in one’s own judgment, ability, power, etc.

Cocky: arrogant; pertly self-assertive; conceited: He walked in with a cocky air.

Having a realistic expectation and positive outlook of your abilities is a good thing.  Being confident in your abilities can make you very successful.  Everyone loves the successful, yet humble victor.  No one, on the other hand, is very fond of the cocky, obnoxious one. 
 
As I said, there is a very fine and sometimes gray line between a healthy self-confidence and over-confidence.

I like to think of it like this.  Self-confidence is just that, for self.  Understanding and being confident in your abilities will allow you to perform at your very best and accomplish peak performances in whatever you are doing.  To me, self-confidence has nothing to do with anyone else.  It shouldn’t mean you think your better than others, it should just be a realistic measure of what you are capable of. 

Here’s something that may help your child put things in perspective. In the end, no one really cares besides him and the people who love him. Ask him who won their specific event last year? Ask him who won it in the Olympics 8 years ago, or equivalent event? There is a good chance that he doesn’t know. People may remember successes for a short time, but in the end they forget, and the only one who still remembers is the actual winner.
 
Being over confident means you have lost sight of reality and have an inflated opinion of yourself.  It’s when you have started to think you are better than other’s because of your success.  One thing I’ve learned is that no matter how good you think you are, there is always someone better.  You just may not have met them yet.  You will get beat; it’s just a matter of time.  From my experience, the cockier someone is, the harder they fall. 

If your child is struggling with too much confidence/cockiness, the best medicine is losing.  If your child is in a league that is way below his level and his success is starting to go to his head, then maybe it’s time to move him up to the next level.  Winning is a good thing and a great self-confidence booster, but as I’ve said in previous blogs, no one learns nearly as much from winning as they do from losing.  Ironically, the way to make your child better, is for them to occasionally lose.  It keeps their ego in check and helps them raise their game.

Here are some other things to think about.

Do you want your child to receive a trophy regardless of whether on not they win or lose?

Do you gush over everything your child does, even if it isn’t worthy of it?

Are you setting a good example when it comes to being humble?  Are the coaches?

Is your child’s assessment of his ability realistic?  Is yours?

In an attempt to be humble, do you forget to praise your child for his accomplishments?

Having a humble spirit and heart is not an easy thing, especially following success.  While I am far from perfect at it, it is something I strive for. You will hopefully find your own solution; I find mine in my faith.  I believe that all of my talents are God given.  Therefore all of my success is God given and all I’m doing is attempting to maximize what God gave me.  I’ve found that for me, there is nothing more humbling than thinking about the sacrifice Jesus made for me on the cross and God’s grace for me when I fall on my face. 

My children’s book, Shawn Sheep The Soccer Star, is great for starting a conversation with your child about cockiness.  For more information or to purchase a book, please visit www.erinmirabella.com.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Confidence | 3 Comments »

Raising Confident Kids

Monday, November 30th, 2009

Try This At Home………………

Take a glass jar and at least thirty colored strips of paper.  On each strip of paper have your child write down one thing that he or she likes about his or herself or does well.  Fill the jar with the strips and have them put the jar someplace they will see it everyday.  The next time your child is feeling down or is lacking confidence, have he or she read through all of the papers in the jar and remember how blessed and loved he or she is.  You can always have your child add five or ten more strips to the jar for good measure.

                         ***************************************

I recently spoke to a group of moms with children ages 0-5, about how sports can facilitate teaching their children the fundamentals for success.  One of the discussion questions afterward asked if there was a related issue that their child was struggling with.  Two of the moms said their child lacked self-confidence and one said her son was over confident.  This caught me off guard; I hadn’t expected children to be struggling with confidence at such a young age.  It reaffirmed for me what an important topic confidence was and how vital a healthy self-confidence is to a child’s happiness and well-being. 

This post is going to focus on lack of self-confidence and I’ll tackle the issue of being over-confident next week. 

Sports, or any activity that your child loves, are a great opportunity to increase confidence.  The most important thing, is to help your child find a sport, or activity, that he or she loves and can excel at.  Your child’s success will help them gain confidence in his or herself and abilities.

In addition, being in sports, especially team sports, makes it easier for kids to meet people and make friends.  Two of the biggest concerns for children and adults alike are being accepted and worrying what people think of them. In sports your child already shares something in common with his or her teammates and that makes developing a friendship that much easier.  Furthermore, sports offer the opportunity to develop social skills such as teamwork, tact, cooperation and compassion.  

We all worry about what we look like. For tweens and teens their changing bodies can be a confusing and sensitive subject.  An added bonus of sports is that they make kids more aware of, and in tune with, their bodies.  Athletes tend to be very comfortable with their bodies and have a more realistic expectation of what their bodies should look like.  They can compare themselves to other athletes instead of the models they see in magazines, and they’ll understand that bodies can be used for more than just looking good. 

Another added benefit is that self-confident kids are less likely to fold to peer pressure, more willing to try new things and probably more successful, because they believe they will succeed.

There are two steps to gaining confidence, building it up and maintaining it.  Sometimes an incident can get in your head and mess with your confidence forever.  It’s happened to all of us and years later we are still haunted by it.  That’s why it is so important for your child to get back up on the horse after a fall, so to speak.  While my husband Chris and I were discussing this week’s post, he pointed out that in the NFL, teams often give the ball back to a player immediately after they fumble or miss a catch, in order to rebuild their confidence right away.  The longer your child has to think about a mistake before he or she performs again, the more it can shake his or her confidence. It is better to address it as soon as possible.

Lastly, whether it is in sports, school, or in daily chores around the house, celebrate your child’s accomplishments big and small.  You don’t have to compliment him or her for the sake of it, but when they have earned it, go ahead and give it.  A compliment coming from you will mean so much to your child and will build his or her confidence immensely. Sometimes it’s easy to take accomplishments for granted, or to brag to your friends but forget to tell your child how proud of him or her you are.  Your child wants to please and impress you, and you can use that to help build his or her self-confidence by praising them.

I won my first senior national points race championship when I was 20 years old.  I had one of the greatest races of my life.  I raced hard and finished the race absolutely exhausted.  By the time I recovered, I was whisked away to awards, drug testing, etc., etc.  Afterward, my very proud boyfriend, the one I married, commented that I hadn’t even seemed to enjoy it, and I didn’t even take a moment to celebrate with him.  I realized he was right.  I was so busy doing what I was supposed to, what was expected of me and focusing on what was next, that I forgot to enjoy it.  If the person winning can forget to celebrate, then it has to be even easier for parents and others to forget to share how proud they are of their child.

Confidence is a fragile thing.  Help your child build it and nourish it, so that he or she can enjoy success of all kinds. 

In my children’s book, Gracie Goat’s Big Bike Race, Gracie struggles with confidence and fears.  the book is a great way to start a conversation with your kiddo about these important things.

  • Share/Bookmark

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Confidence, Overcoming fears, Strengths and Weaknesses, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »