One day, she was very depressed when her son asked her what was wrong. She told him, very honestly, she was down because she didn’t get the job she had applied for.
She said subjects like this were things she wanted to keep to herself and not share with her kids but also felt that doing so would be doing them a disservice. She strongly believes that disappointments can actually turn into a learning lesson if we allow them to.
This is why she shares both her successes and her failures with her sons.
When her kids were really young she never told them very much about what she was doing or what was going on in her life. All she would say, she was doing the very best she could for them but there were times she would make mistakes.
As they became older, she decided it was time to share more about herself as she believed they would understand.
No Such Thing as Rejection-Free Success
At one point, her oldest son was commenting on her successes in the publishing industry and said things like how popular her articles had become. He knew one of her articles had gone viral but she pointed out that the attention she was receiving was not necessarily positive.
She went on to explain that there are who will write things about someone else online but would never say to someone’s face. She told him that even though the attention was very good for her career some of the comments were very hurtful to her when people just attacked her work.
She also told him that her job was loaded with rejection, her sales pitches were not always accepted and sometimes as hard as she worked on something, it was difficult to have all her hopes put down for some reason or another.
For some reason, he seemed to understand what she was trying to say and gave her sympathy as well as encouragement.
It was important to her that her kids know that there are times when giving it your best shot is just not enough but it is how you handle disappointment and failure and what you do afterward that really counts.
When Doing your Best is Simply Not Good Enough
There were times she was tempted to gloss over many of her struggles for the sake of her kids but she knows that kids are stronger and smarter than adults give them credit for. No one goes through life without hardships and that includes kids and it’s up to us t model a healthy way to handle the situation.
Sometimes it’s really easy to forget that kids have bad days too. As parents we want our kids to always be happy but that’s just not reality.
She was reminded of the day that after asking her son a few times what was wrong, he said he was in a bad mood, and it was his right to be moody! We are all humans so yes, everyone has a right to be moody from time to time.
She added that life can be challenging but sometimes things do go the way we want them to, especially when you worked hard to reach that goal. That’s why she shares her successes with her kids and allows us to celebrate how we got there.
She told them how wonderful it feels when you get an email from a reader because they connected with something she wrote. She tells her readers how fortunate she is for having a job she loves and that somehow the good always seems to outweigh the bad.
Opening up and talking to her kids about her failures as well as her successes has been a very positive experience.
On top of that, her kids are now sharing with her about their failures and successes. They tell her something just didn’t go their way but they were proud of themselves by continuing the good fight which is success unto itself.