My 5 year old daughter was learning to skip rope today.  It wasn’t easy. She couldn’t get the timing down.  She tried once or twice and dropped the rope.  I’m wanna play a video game, she said.

I made her keep trying.  She tried again. Same result.  Her face grimaced.  She was getting mad.  You could tell she didn’t like the learning process. I told her she could stop if she could jump the rope just two times. She tried, failed, quit.  I told her quitting wasn’t an option.  She tried, failed, tried to quit, got mad.  I made her keep trying. She tried, failed, tried to quit. I wouldn’t let her quit.

Finally, she made it over.  She smiled.  She wanted to try again. She tried, failed, tried again.  She tried, failed, tried again.  She tried, made it, smiled and gave me a hug.

Learning and doing things we’re not good at or that are hard sucks if you let it.  When we focus on the failure it sucks, we want to quit. When we focus on the future success its motivating, we keep going.  Too often we get sucked into the failure. The times we don’t make it over the rope and we quit.

Don’t expect to skip rope with out getting it tangled in your feet. You’re setting yourself up for failure.  There is little in life we can learn to do without getting our feet tangled, accept it and keep going.  Eventually you won’t get your feet tangled and then you’ll know you did it. You’ll smile . . . then you can give me a hug too.