Well certainly you need to know when to pull the plug. You try bio 101 and if the goal is med school and you didn’t get an easy A it’s probably time for the next plan. But I consider that trying.
It’s also important to remember that you can only control yourself. If you train for your sport as hard as you can, that doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be the winner. The other guy may have trained more, or may have more natural talent. It’s not always up to you.
“Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted.”
I’m glad we never unnecessarily pumped our sons’ tires when they were younger. Life isn’t fair. There were circumstances in both their young lives that demonstrated that. We used them as teachable moments.
Ah yes, all those life lessons the kids learned through the years from preschool on helped make them pretty resilient. They had a lot of bumps along the way (chronic health conditions will do that to you), but honestly are mostly happy and productive.
If you’ve never failed, you can develop a terrible fear if failing and not attempt things that are worthwhile because you MIGHT stumble and/or fail. Having overcome a lot of obstacles shows you that each is a growth opportunity (whether you like it or not).
S’ baseball coach used to say, “Hard work doesn’t guarantee you anything, but not working hard virtually guarantees you failure.”
I think there’s a lot of truth in that.
This post came to mind last night…specifically the student athlete theme.
My freshman son made a monumental error yesterday afternoon that cost his team the game and mathematically eliminated them from the playoffs. He failed to execute something he’s done thousands of times in practice. It turned into a slow motion train wreck in front of several college coaches.
Post-game he sat, alone, for about 10 minutes on the sideline staring off into space. Eventually he stood up, grabbed all of his gear and headed towards the truck. He got in without a word, put his headphones on and closed his eyes for the entire ride home. He walked into the house and went straight to his room. He knew we had plans to try a highly rated BBQ place for dinner so 2 hours later he emerged, took a shower and got dressed.
Dinner was spectacular and he comported himself as if nothing happened earlier in the day. My wife and I made a concerted effort not to mention anything about the game. Thankfully his older brother had been golfing earlier and had no idea what happened.
After dinner we all walked the surrounding area, stopped into shops and then grabbed some ice cream. That’s when he opened up and initiated a conversation about the game. He broke things down very clinically, a true postmortem report. Then he told some funny stories about the profane things his teammates said during the game. When he was half way through his mint chocolate chip I said, “Hey, look at the bright side, you’ve made college recruiting easier because you don’t need to contact A, B, C, D or E.” He looked at me with a wry smile and said, “Shut up old man, I’m only a freshman…”
He’s on to next week already.
We live the message of hard work doesn’t always pay off. Always have. As entrepreneurs our companies go up and down. Our kids have seen big payoffs and hard times in the businesses. They know they story of my first company started with my own money and based on a dream. They know how I built it, how it grew and what happened. They know us as risk takers. They know us as imperfect people. They know it’s hard to do anything especially something big. They know we don’t make excuses for failures but adjust as we go.
When they were toddlers we downplayed participation trophies. We always emphasized excellence and getting in there rather than solely winning. But make no mistake my kids were always in it to win it. When they did sports they knew it was important to be a good teammate. They learned that you win and you lose. But if you don’t try or you are a sore loser, you have a deficit. We didn’t emphasis losses but learning. What did you learn? What would you do differently. Then as the kids grew they started to do bigger things than we expected and they succeeded. A large part of this is they were raised to think highly of themselves and others. Someone was going to do it. So it might as well be them. They have done things on a national and international level in multiple fields so I think we got the competition thing down right. They are fierce and fair and they are excellent teammates whether on the field or for an academic thing.
One of our kids had a major medical issue. That kid dug deep to do things which were very difficult physically. It looks years of physical therapy. Today that kid is an amazing athlete. It was literally rebuilding muscle step by step. Without fortitude that child wouldn’t walk. When our kid is in state championships she is carrying a different mindset than most. Try to beat someone with that drive. It’s very very difficult. And that is what makes our kid win.
Along the way we saw many parents making excuses. Their kids didn’t put in the time whether it was sports, academics or really anything. They gave their kids platitudes and scorned those who were too competitive. Those kids eventually stopped. They didn’t compete and when they did, it wasn’t pretty. Still happens when you watch any event. We are the people who take the time to congratulate others on their accomplishments and our kids do the same. We push our kids to be their best selves. We never talk about failure in the sense of losing. To us, the failures are those who aren’t trying and revamping.
One of the most stressful parts of high school was the premise, in the US, that everybody had to be good at everything, and that if you weren’t, it was due to lack of effort. It simply wasn’t acceptable to say that one was not mathematically inclined, or one hated sports, or would rather not struggle in French or art. Perhaps it is related to college admissions here. Not everyone is talented in all areas, regardless of effort, but we seem to expect everyone to be.
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Telling kids that hard work will get them what they want is ridiculous. Telling them that they need to work hard to try to get what they want makes sense … as does adding that no one actually does get everything they want, of course.
The attitude that hard work always pays off, that if you just persevere you can achieve your dreams is simply not realistic. I think of a few kids of friends for examples. One girl got into musical theater at her small, rural high school and was pumped up to think she could be an actress in NY. She spent years working very hard, trying everything she could, but twelve years later has still achieved no success. The reality is she’s not talented enough and should have made adjustments in her career aspirations instead of clinging to false hope. The son of other friends had the same experience with pursuing a professional music career. He’s now forty and still hasn’t done anything but play at small coffee houses. His parents still support him too.
Sometimes people differ in their level of ambition.
Both of my kids played band instruments for many years and were good at it. When it was suggested to my son that he might want to try out for the all-county and all-state honors bands, he said no. He said that turning music into a competitive experience would ruin it for him. His sister felt differently. She didn’t mind the competitive auditions, and she prepared seriously for them. She ended up in all-county five times and all-state twice.
Did the kid who chose to compete have a better experience? Not necessarily. I think each of them had the experience they wanted.
The article seems odd to me, trying to use the example of an athlete, who must expect to fail pretty frequently if they are challenging themselves, to teach a lesson about other students who may not ever encounter and be resilient to failure if they are reasonably competent and “work hard” in high school (or even in college in some cases).
There is an argument to be made that valuing and praising hard work over innate talent is something than has increased in the last generation, in order to expand opportunity and make more kids feel valued. After all, anyone can work hard, but by definition only a limited number of people have above average talent. So it’s become easier to get a 4.0 in high school and there are more high SAT/ACT scores because of hard work (test prep). And when there are 30 valedictorians you are going to have quite a few who simply aren’t that smart. Then colleges want to admit based on factors other than pure academic merit (e.g. test optional), not to mention that doing an EC that takes 20-30 hours per week while still maintaining good grades in high school is much more about hard work than ability. Even in college, if high school GPA is said to be a better predictor of outcomes than test scores, then that suggests hard work is valued more than talent by colleges.
But is that good or bad? Undoubtedly bad for the individual if you’re a smart slacker and good if you’re a hard working average student. But I don’t know about the country as a whole, and it’s certainly a contributing factor to all the pressure felt by teens nowadays to take on more and more activities. And in the long run, you need to be realistic about your talent if you are to avoid problems like going into fields where you won’t be successful, as pointed out by other posters.
Hard work does pay off, and effort is one thing that people actually can control. The mistake is the all or nothing term “always.” Life and success or failure isn’t absolutes, it’s way more in between the absolutes. Does the slacker make it big once in a while? Surely. But the large majority of successful people become successful because of all the little decisions and efforts they make along the way. And, yes, there’s always a risk of failure, actual failures (that are viewed as temporary set backs), being said no to, being the second on the short list, etc along the way.
Persistent effort is a special thing.
There are lots of areas where the great majority of people who try them fail, no matter how hard they work:
- Admission to colleges that these forums disproportionately focus on.
- Becoming a physician.
- Becoming a professional athlete.
- Making a financially-sustainable career in the arts.
Perhaps because kids from lower SES families commonly get the opposite message that they are destined for low expectations regardless of how hard they try, so growth mindset interventions may counter such low expectations messages that may be less commonly encountered by other kids?
You are correct @ucbalumnus, however many feel compelled to try those things no matter what the risks, but failing at any of the things you mention doesn’t necessarily equate to failing at life.
True, but it does mean that anyone trying for such an elite-or-bust goal needs to have alternative plans and appropriate expectations. For example, a student or parent who has appropriate expectations will not have a meltdown if the student does not get admitted to any reach colleges and has to attend a safety college. A pre-med needs to know when to move on to alternative plans in order to avoid wasting more effort, time, and money on a futile endeavor.
Absolutely @ucbalumnus, becoming successful takes openness to the twists and turns, some of those being “failures” or at least the unexpected. There are very few people who’s lives are a linear step by step everything as planned outcome perfect formula. (At least I kind of hope not as that would be kind of boring).
Alas.
Agree: who tells kids hard work always leads to success? Faulty premise. But “always” seems to only appear in the article title. Headlines aren’t always accurate. And so, that reflects on this thread.
I don’t know her full creds, but the bio is- and this is my opinion only- a bit silly and dare I say, girlish.
I tell my kids to work hard and to give it all, not because they would succeed every time, but so they would have no regrets. There is nothing worse than “could have, should have” feelings. It’s better to have tried and failed than doing nothing at all.
Over the years, my kids have not gotten everything they wanted in life, but they have probably achieved more because how much work they put into everything that mattered to them. They didn’t get into their dream school or even dream job sometimes, but I think they feel good about where they are in life.
I’ve had many challenges in my life, both work and personal. My kids have watched me work hard, give it my all, and pick myself back up when I have failed. I don’t think I would be where I am if I didn’t work hard and be willing to take on new challenges.