Perseverance, On the Importance of Being the Actors in Our Lives

This Week’s Character Strength ~ Perseverance

Eighth graders Lucy and Sofie shared the character strength of perseverance with all of us at this week’s All School Meeting through a quote that spoke to them: If nothing goes right, go left.

We have all heard about making lemonade out of the lemons life gives us. What I love about the quote Lucy and Sofie shared is that we are not confined to sticking to the lemons! It is not so much that we are the recipient of life rather we are the actors in it. We could choose something completely different, leaving the lemons behind.

We each bring our own perceptions to every occurrence in our lives. It is our unique stories and our cultures that define our interpretation or assessment of any one thing. What one girl or adult finds insulting, another may not. What one girl or adult finds humorous or trying, another may not. As Anaïs Nin wrote, “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

What can often get in our way of persevering through a difficult situation or a challenging math problem or a friendship issue is our own lens of how we interpret the challenge or the problem or the issue itself.

If we can prepare our children to understand that life’s bumps are a normal part of life, then persevering through those rocky times can be easier. One of the girls’ schools in San Francisco has a “No Rescue” policy so that if girls forget their homework or lunches, etc., at home, parents are asked not to bring the lunch or homework to school. They believe this helps their students understand the consequences, and gives girls the perspective that it is not the end of the world with even more impetus to remember the following day. Of course, I write this as a mother and a grandmother who is still pained when my grown children are pained, or my middle school granddaughter or my other grandchildren are. We feel it! And as a mother now of one child who is closer to 50 than 40, I wish I could tell you it gets easier, but it doesn’t. It’s different certainly, but those fierce parental ties to the hearts of our children never go away. And neither do life’s challenges!

Malcolm Gladwell and Carol Dweck have sung the praises and brought the research to us on how critical effort is in a successful life. That effort of trying and trying again, of working through the challenges, of working through what appears daunting, persevering through them seems to be key to success later on.

We can support the girls in our lives by helping them understand that the “bumps” in life are a part of it, and “holding” our children when they fail. We do this not by stepping in to make it better, but by helping them strategize through the challenge. Even if their perception is that nothing is going right, they will hopefully begin to see that going left is indeed a choice they can make.

With thanks to Lucy and Sofie,

Sandra

Back

Perseverance, On the Importance of Being the Actors in Our Lives

Julia Morgan School for Girls