Practice
“Practice makes perfect” is the classic saying but if you are practicing and fail how will you ever reach perfect? If you are feeling like a puddle how can you get enough courage to climb the mountain towards success? Yesterday I had the privilege of this exact conversation with a learner. Here’s how we got there….
During Quest time learners were split into three hot cocoa business teams and each group was tasked with deciding on their assembly line process and customer service tactic. The bell rang and the simulation of real-life began with Guides pretending to be customers. Some learners thrived, one gave a pep talk to his team saying “everyone just needs to think JOY and then we’ll all do well and make customers happy”. Other learners had a tougher time, got confused on their job role, argued with one another, and even yelled at the customer that they weren’t ready! This simulation had no winner, it was simply for all learners to practice. Afterwards the bell rang again, Guides shared customer feedback and learners shared advice on how to change and improve. This process was fantastic except for one learner who spiraled with defeat. She exited the group discussion and I found her deep in a puddle of tears in our beloved Zen Den.
We sat in her sadness for a moment and then I asked “Is it ok that you made a mistake today?” She waffled and whined a grumbled “yes but no, but I wanted to do well”. Her eyes teared up again and as her energy began to spiral I quickly asked my next question “Do you think that your team will learn from the mistake today and do better tomorrow?” “What will you do differently?” She thought for a minute and then got defeated again and so I broke Guide question code and shared this important thought with her “Today was a practice, tomorrow will be another practice with parent customers. These practices are preparing you for next week’s Business Exhibition and the Exhibition is another practice for your life when you work at a job or run your own business.” Her eyes and body relaxed knowing that the process towards success was a longer journey. So I then asked “Would you rather fail now or fail later when you are much older and have a job?” With great certainty she shared “Now!” and then she took a breath and walked back in. She became a mountain.
At Acton it isn’t about being perfect and developing perfect products with great profit margins, instead we’re invested in nurturing passion and a love for the process of learning. The best way we know how to do this is to allow learners at a young age to fail hard, fail often, and fail cheaply. Failure is a tool that we all can use to learn and to grow. Try embracing the language of failure at home and allow your child to hear you say things like “Wow, I messed up.” “I made a big mistake.” Then next share what you will do differently or how you are dealing with the consequences. Free the stigma of failure and embrace the practice of failing to grow.