Helping young people find, engage in, and persist with activities that give them a sense of flow and happiness is crucial if they are to lead fulfilling lives. This requires slowing down at least some part of life so that young people can gradually engage in an activity over time, so they improve their performance and increase their pleasure. They need to persist with the activity, even though at times the challenges will seem too great. They must continue to challenge themselves when the performance seems to become too easy and, on the surface, boring.
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| Creating Fulfilled Life For Children |
These activities vary from person to person. For some it will be basketball or football, music or art, roller hockey or diving, writing or painting; for others it might be chess or skateboarding. You can't choose the activities that will give your child a sense of flow, but you can expose them to a range of activities and keep a keen eye out for those that absorb them.
While happiness is not the sole key to motivation, it's not a bad starting place. To add to this we need to integrate what we have discussed here about fulfillment, motivation, and happiness.
Staying focused
It is important to know that life is not fair. For that matter, school is not fair, either. The world doesn't generally, reward you for being equally good at everything. In fact it usually, only rewards you for two or three things you do well. One of the tricks of success in life is to find your strengths and make much of them, and to not worry too much about areas where you are less capable. Here are some general guidelines to help you steer your bright kid towards developing a more fulfilling life:
- Help your bright kid become aware of her strengths and learn how to play to those. Be aware that your child's strengths may not always be valued by her school. For example, a Negotiator's verbal repartee and jokester behavior may not be highly regarded in third grade.
- Help her to promote a reputation that highlights her unique or exceptional attributes.
- Assist her to develop skills that increase her irreplaceability (i.e., a unique set of assets, knowledge, talents, and strengths that make her irreplaceable).
- Help your bright kid to seek out groups that most strongly value what she has to offer - where her assets will be cherished.
- Help your bright kid to avoid social groups where her unique attributes are not valued.
The world is going to be a very different place over the next few decades, and young people are going to need to be adaptable. If, as it is estimated, 70 percent of the jobs that will exist in the year 2020 don't exist yet, we cannot teach our children the knowledge they will need. What we can teach them, however, is to be excited and adept learners, and to maintain high expectations of themselves. To find out more, you can check out Creating Fulfilled Life For Children.