>NOTICE: If you’re interested in discovering my most advanced techniques for raising children with 7 times more will power than the average child, watch this video on:
As I pretended to cower behind the couch taking machine gun fire, I gathered my wits, cocked my gun and sprang out to return fire at the laughing 6 year old wielding the new Nerf fully automatic dart gun.
This was a game I cherished as a child, and as I taught it to my nephews this last weekend I realized something very sad.
It was a mock up game of the old school Gladiator’s challenge I used to watch on TV as a kid.
In the challenge the Gladiator get’s to stand at one end of the arena wielding a monstrous tennis ball shooting gun that can launch tennis balls at nearly 100mph (or at least that’s what it looks like on TV).
The Gladiator’s goal is to prevent his opponent from reaching different points of cover. Each point of cover has a unique type of gun that the challenger can shoot back at the Gladiator to try to defeat him by shooting a target directly above the Gladiator’s head. The challenger can only shoot one shot from each barricade, and then has to scramble to the next barricade without getting shot by the tennis ball gun if he wants to take another shot at the Gladiator.
This was exactly what I had turned my Nephews living room into… a pseudo gladiator arena, with overturned couches and tables representing barricades that hid Nerf guns that the kid at the other end of the house was trying to prevent his brothers (and me) from reaching.
My brother and I played this game for hours upon hours as kids; but as I taught it to my nephews I noticed something…
They all got bored and wanted to go home after about 15 minutes. (except for one nephew)
“That’s weird I thought, my brother and I played this game for hours at a time as kids, why are they wanting to quit?”
At first I was sad. I’d been looking forward to sharing some fun play time with them with a game I’d loved as a kid. I felt like I had let them down.
But as I thought about it more I realized something…
The only kid who didn’t want to quit was the kid who had done the best.
And that’s when it hit me. The other kids didn’t want to quit because they were bored, they wanted to quit because they were losing.
There’s actually a name for this trait, it’s called, “Self Mastery vs. Winning”.
Researchers have noticed that children who grow up to be successful do not view losing as a blow to their ego, because they are more concerned about the process of getting better, “Self Mastery” vs. Winning.
These “Self Mastery” types of children focus on the process of improving. When they lose they look at why they lost, go practice so they don’t make that mistake again and then come back and use the competitive environment to see if they fair better. Competition is more like a progress chart vs. something that determines whether they are having fun; and this allows them to still have fun while losing.
Even in the cases where a child is losing a game, perhaps because they’ve never played it before; and the child chooses not to go practice after he has lost, a “Self Mastery” child will not be bothered by the loss because he knows the reason he lost was because he did not prepare. He’s still able to have fun, because his worth and happiness does not come from winning.
That was NOT the case of my Nephews.
My nephews were Winning focused, and when their brothers or I shot them while playing the Gladiator Nerf Shooting game they became increasingly upset. In fact it was so easy to upset them that after getting shot just two times, the child (not wanting to admit he was quitting) would volunteer to be a judge, or pick up darts between games… anything to not have to face the potential of losing.
There is nothing more sad to me than a child with this mindset, because it is a losers mindset and it predicts with scary accuracy the level of accomplishments that a child will make in their lifes, because it predicts how quickly your child will quit when the going gets tough.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
How To Train Children To Focus On “Self Mastery”
I have to admit, this is my own opinion, but because both my brother and I both used this principal to become high achievers in our fields of choice, his in the entertainment industry, and mine in business, I feel qualified to speak on the topic.
You might want to write this down and commit it to memory…
“The type of child who does not feel discouraged when he loses a competition, is the type of child who made an attempt to try a new strategy against their opponent and saw that it at least made them HARDER for their opponent to defeat them. Because with their defeat they have gained knowledge that their strategy played a large role in how the game turned out. Even though it might not have been enough to win, it must be enough to motivate them to come back again with an even better strategy; and to keep altering their strategy or technique until they achieve victory.”
From my personal experience this is accomplished by doing one MAIN thing…
The child must get strategic coaching on the best ways to alter their strategy or technique so that when they compete again they SEE a difference. If the child is allowed to try to many new techniques and strategies that do NOT work without realizing success, they lose their willingness to strive for “Self Mastery”.
The best example I can think of in my own life is when my mother went to a division I college baseball hitting coach when I was a little over 10 years old and hired him to teach me how to hit. My mother knew she couldn’t be my coach, and even more important she knew my little league coach wasn’t that great either. She sought out a professional, who exposed me to hundreds of tiny techniques that no father who’s son plays baseball even knows exist… and by practicing them I went from riding the bench in little league, to winning the batting title my senior year of high school for the entire town of Spokane, Wa.
All because I was taught to appreciate how strategic preparation was the key to getting better.
So when I would strike out as a child I wouldn’t blame the umpire, or the sun in my eyes like the other kids… I blamed my lack of practice on a technique; then went home and practiced correcting my mistakes in my batting cage.
This technique of “Self Mastery” sticks with a child for their whole life, and is something they can take with them into whatever field they desire. It is what will allow them to look at their failures and GROW from them, instead of run from them.
And it must be taught to your children.
For my most advanced training on how you can increase your child’s levels of “Self Mastery” before he reaches the age of 5 you need to go watch this video on Imprinting Success Before 5.
