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“There I stood, overwhelmed with fear as my father cranked up that chainsaw and headed up the mountain, hell bent on bringing down the stair case that led to our tiny cottage…”

These were the words my uncle spoke to me describing the project my Grandfather had given to him to help build up my uncle’s psychological resilience and resourcefulness.

Here’s what the project entailed:

My Grandfather has a cottage above his home in the Seattle area, and there are 57 stairs that lead up the side of a hill (or the mountain from a child’s point of view). The stairs had rotted out to the point that they were in need of repair. So instead of hiring a company to fix the stairs, my Grandfather decided to use this opportunity to teach my Uncle that nothing was impossible.

How do you teach a child to be so resilient that he believes nothing is impossible?

You put them in what they *think* is an impossible situation, and then let them try to problem solve their way out of it. If the child figures it out, and the challenge was hard enough, nearly all challenges that child faces later in life will be thought of as conquerable because the process was focused on self mastery.

And what would be a harder task for an 11 year old than figuring out how to rebuild a flight of 57 steps up the side of a mountain?

But here’s the real kicker… “I didn’t know how to pour concrete, or build anything at the time.  He just said it was my job to figure it out on my own. The only encouragement I got, was that he looked me square in the eye and lovingly said, ‘Son, I’m 100% certain you can do this. It will be hard, you will do much of it wrong and have to start over, but in the end I know you’re a smart enough boy to figure this out.”

For my uncle that was enough.

Even though I’m sure as my uncle stood watching his father carry his smoking chainsaw back down the hillside, to be standing alone in a pile of rubble that an hour earlier used to be a staircase, that last bit of faith was enough.

My uncle went onto rebuild those stairs, and they still stand 50 years later. The stories about the mistakes he made, and the lessons learned from that one Impossible Project are endless. It was a project that seems to have built a psychological resilience that will be with him forever, and that far surpasses any failure mindsets taught by our colleges. But my Uncle looks back on those lessons now as a blessing; because now he uses those skills to live his dream, doing private sailing charters on a real live Pirate Ship. (Like the one in the Pirates of the Caribbean Movies… yeah my uncle owns one). And if you don’t know anything about living and working off an old school boat like that, lets just say it requires a LOT of upkeep, and some very handy hands on board to keep the thing afloat.

But I don’t share this story with you to brag about my uncle…. no, no.

I share this story with you, because I’ve noticed something.

The Real Role of the Family in Building Children’s Psychological Resilience

As you know if you read this blog regularly, I am a student of success, and completely sold out to raising children in ways that give them the highest possible chance of reaching their dreams. One of those responsibilities, is learning as a father how to teach my children psychological resiliency. So that when they come up against impossible obstacles and impossible projects, they dig in and get the job done.

On my quest to learn how to build a child’s psychological resiliency I’ve noticed that this “Impossible Project” type story is very common with people who’ve developed world class talent. It was in the Will Smith video I shared with you yesterday. Will’s father made him rebuild a wall instead of a staircase, but the project was so hard it took will 2 1/2 years to complete.

It’s also in many other wildly famous people’s stories…

For example, Richard Branson, of Virgin Records (and a billion other companies) was dropped off on the other side of London at the age of 4 and told to find his way home. It took him 10 hours!

A family friend of ours, Ken Frantz who just won the 2010 Better Men Better World contest tells a similar story. His project for he and his brothers during high school was to completely rebuild very bad fixer upper homes every summer all by themselves.

When you read enough of these stories from wildly successful people you realize something… these parents gave their children the gift of “Resilience”.  They also gave it in a way that can never be undone, because they now have a mental imprint about how to behave when faced with an impossible project. That small voice in the back of their heads is no longer capable of conjuring up the thought that they can’t do something this hard…

Because they’ve done something even harder!

This is how resilience is taught. It’s probably not the only way, but it seems to me that it is the role of the family to provide these experiences to children as early and as often in life as possible, until resilience is a part of who your child is.

Were you given an Impossible Project as a child? If so, please tell me about it by leaving a comment. I’m compiling a list of great Impossible Projects parents should consider giving their kids, and would love your feedback!