How to Teach Grit - Five Minute Thursday - a podcast by Larry Hagner: Founder, Author, Speaker, Coach, goodadproject.com

from 2016-05-05T01:00

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Teach GRIT!

The Good Dad Project Podcast with Frankie Edgar was a game
changer for so many reasons. The coolest thing about the GDP
and having a dad podcast is that no matter fame nor fortune, men
jump at the chance to share their views, their journey, and even
their struggles.

For this week’s five minute Thursday, I wanted to recap some
highlights from the interview with Frankie.

When under pressure, be calm, cool, and collected

When the UFC Octagon cage doors close…anything can happen.
The secret to a successful outcome in the octagon is being prepared
for anything because anything can happen. Frankie shares that
being calm, cool, and collected is absolutely necessary to be able
to think rationally.

Being calm, cool, and collected is a skill that transfers from
the cage to the family. Through our journey of fatherhood,
there will be situations that test us under pressure. When we
respond calmly and avoid a knee-jerk panic reaction, it illustrates
our emotional resiliency.

How to teach GRIT

Teaching grit is probably one the most difficult lessons to
teach our kids. Our instinct is to protect them from anything
that is difficult. Our society also puts such an emphasis on
winning at all costs.

Frankie mentioned that he loves leveraging sports to teach his
kids grit. For example, he doesn’t really care if his kids
win or lose a wrestling match. What he wants to see if how
hard they fight for the win. If there isn’t a desire and a
fire in the belly to win, that is a bigger problem. None of
us can coach desire. Desire is either there or it’s
not. However, we can teach how to leverage our desire to win
to tap into our grit. We can even leverage our losses to
teach us lessons on how to win in the future. Finally, we can
teach grit through losing and failure. A victory is even
sweeter when we have to work at it extremely hard. Lessons of
grit are learned through sports and as parents we can use
situations like losses to teach these lessons.

For Parents of Youth Sports: Take a Seat and Enjoy

Frankie had some excellent advice for parents of youth sports
and that’s “take a seat and enjoy.” Be the silent voice of
love and support when it comes to sports. Its extremely
difficult to not get emotionally wrapped up in our kids sports
performance. I am speaking from a father who is a parent and
a coach of my kids sports teams and I see it all the time.

Parents can be extremely tough on their kids even when they
think they are helping. I didn’t really get this mentality
until I read "http://www.amazon.com/Matheny-Manifesto-Managers-Old-School-Success/dp/055344669X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462214459&sr=8-1&keywords=mike+matheny+manifesto">
The Matheny Manifesto by Mike Matheny, manager of the St. Louis
Cardinals. If you really want to see your child love sports
and if you want to see peak performance…take a seat, enjoy, and let
the coaches do their jobs.