You can do it! Of course you can!

The 50th Anniversary Celebration for our Parents

Issue #67 Productivity July 25, 2022 (about 3.5 minutes reading time)

All of us, no matter our age, benefit from people believing in us, people who constantly tell us that it can be done. If we’re lucky, the first people to believe in us and push us toward our best selves are our parents. That was certainly true in my case.

I am the eldest of four daughters, and like most firstborns, I received a lot of attention from my parents. That is until my 1st sister was born about two years later. I don’t remember giving my parents permission to have additional children! I was perfectly happy as an only child! (OK, I’m just kidding, sort of.)

My parents always encouraged and pushed all of us to be and do our best in all situations, but there are two incidents from my childhood that came to my mind recently.

My Dad Showed Me and Told Me That I Could Do It

When I was in elementary school, the principal convinced my parents that I could just skip the 4th grade and go straight from 3rd grade to 5th grade. Since my birthday is at the end of October, my classmates were 1 1/2 years or older than I was. Now that I am an adult and a retired educator of all grades, I wouldn’t recommend that children skip grades under most circumstances.?

Anyway, once I was in 5th grade, one of our assignments was to memorize the Preamble to the United States Constitution. Now of course I was very smart and an excellent reader, which is why I was allowed to skip a grade in the first place.

But when I got home and looked up the Preamble in our encyclopedia set, I burst into tears. To my nine-year-old eyes and mind, the Preamble was so long, the print was so small, and there were so many unknown “big words” from the 18th century! I thought I’d never be able to memorize it.

But my Dad was unmoved by my angst.?

He simply took out a yellow legal pad and wrote out the Preamble in long hand, sentence by sentence.?

It was only eleven sentences! By reading each sentence and practicing the “big words” out loud, memorizing the Preamble became easy for me.

With my Dad’s help in breaking down what seemed to be something large into smaller pieces, I tackled that seemingly impossible task before dinner!

As the old saying goes: “The best way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time!” At age nine, I learned that I could accomplish almost any big goal if I broke it down into smaller pieces.

My Mom Just Made Me Do It

A couple of years later, I was age 11 and in the 7th grade. One of our classes was swimming. I knew how to swim—in shallow water—because of our annual vacations to our rented lake cabin in upper Michigan. I had fun splashing around the lake on the beach. But I don’t remember having formal swimming lessons in a real pool until junior high school. I was a musician, playing seven instruments by the time I was in high school. Athletics were never my thing.

One of the first major lessons was learning how to swim in the deep end of the pool. I was terrified. The deep end just looked so…deep! I refused to get into the deep end during class, I was failing swimming, and finally, my mother came to the school to meet with the swimming teacher.

After school, the only people in the pool area were me, my mother, and the swimming teacher. I was standing there in my swimming suit and cap, bawling my eyes out, convinced I was going to drown if I got in that pool. The teacher and my mother were ignoring me and just talking to each other.?

Before I knew what happened, my mother just pushed me into the pool! She just put out her arm on my shoulder and pushed me into the deep end of the pool! I was shocked. Of course my mother knew I wouldn’t drown; the teacher was right there and all I had to do to pass that part of the class was to get in the deep end and come back out again.

Of course, that is exactly what happened. I went to the bottom, came back up again, got out of the pool, and got a passing grade!

After that, I was not scared of the deep end anymore, and ended up learning how to swim laps with different kinds of swimming strokes!

All I had to do was to jump in (or get pushed in!) and all was well.

Whatever the challenge, just do it! People believe in you and know that you can do it!

As we now know, this applies to whatever you have to do in your personal and professional lives. Some things are easy, some things are hard, but most things are not as hard as you initially believe them to be.

If you are a creative or solo professional with challenges in your branding and marketing areas, I look forward to working with you in the Global Creative Community Heartbeat Group.?

The programs re-open next week, beginning on August 1, 2022. Make sure that you are notified when we open by signing up here.

I look forward to working with you! Here is the informational link again.

See you soon!