True growth only happens when you get outside of your comfort zone.
Think about it for a second and let it sink in. I can tell you from experience this to be true for me in so many aspects of my life. From exercising,wanting to stop short to moving from MN to CA and blending families. Growth doesn't happen until you step across that imaginary line you made for yourself.
At this moment in my life I am experiencing things outside my comfort zone almost daily. I try to get all yogi about it and say it is happening for a reason, blah, blah , blah. But what I am really needing to do is look at where the growth is needing to happen.
I will give you an example of my oldest son Mitchell. He is a smart boy naturally, he is what I lovingly refer to as 'absent minded professor"type. smart but lacks common sense at times. So here is his story...
At the end of last school year he spoke of how he wanted to take this AP human Geo class as a Freshman. I thought it was fantastic he was so interested in the class. I also know Mitchell. He is not so great with getting homework on a timely basis, and has been known historically to have to re-do homework multiple times because he has lost the papers.
That said, he is really wanting to go to summer school (Calabasas high) so he could take the one class(HEALTH) that he needed as prerequisite for Human Geo. I have never had a child go to summer school in CA, I didn't know what it entailed. I told him I needed to investigate further before I agreed.
Well, my gut was thinking it was too much. He wanted to take Chinese, AP and have water polo as a freshman. What on earth was he thinking? So instead of making the decision based on my feelings, I asked Steve's uncle and aunt who are both educators(principal and school district superintendent)
Both thought it was admirable that he wanted to take on so much, but thought it might be a tad too much for freshman year. Phew! Ok, so my thought was then, Chinese has to go. With Mitchell on board, I was willing to write a fat check to have him attend 3 weeks of summer school .
Fast forward to the first week of school. I get a text from Mitchell explaining briefly that he has to take another elective for whatever reason. Chinese was the only option that he found interesting.... CRAP, exactly what I didnt want him to take on his freshman year he was about to happen.
So here we are at week 4 of school and he is struggling with the AP class homework. Hmm. Apparently 5 friends had already dropped out. I was digging deep to say the least. This was a lesson he needed to learn. I told him he was not dropping out.Period. He made the decision and he had to commit. I had to remind him his 'job', to get good grades. All social things that comes with school are low priority when are grades are effected.
He didn't like hearing what I had to say, but it didn't matter. God gave him to me to be his mother. To teach him about making sound decision and consequences for actions. That life is not easy ,you cant simply opt out if it gets too hard.
That is what I call a come to Jesus moment in child rearing.
The rules were clear, when he came home, his phone was given to me and all his extra screen time activities were yanked. He needed to dig deep and take responsibility for the choices that he made. For the next two weeks, he did some serious catch up with his homework. I can say today is that I witnessed growth happen. I saw my son take responsibility for making choices based on ego not logic. He played a mean game of catch up and knows going forward he has a boat load of homework in AP class. Dugh, I told him that last summer, but he didn't believe me.
Growth isnt always pretty when you are in the thick of things. The rewards can be amazing if you decided to step outside that zone.
I challenge you to think about what imaginary lines you have drawn stopping you from achieving things in life?
Wishing you all the best,
mac
Oh on a side note, he is kicking ass and taking names in Chinese and had enough common sense to say no to his teacher when asking him to move up to Chinese 2 so he could be in Chinese 3 for Sophomore year....growth...
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