Last fall we attended the Legacy Coalition Summit in Rockwall, Texas. The Legacy Coalition is an organization whose purpose is to better engage grandparents in the discipling of their grandchildren. You can find information on it here. Every workshop I attended was valuable, but the one that caught my attention was the one titled “Spine and Heart – Influencing Your Grandchildren To Be Leaders” by Steve and Valerie Bell. During the workshop they recommended a book that I’ve just finished reading. The book is Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance by Angela Duckworth.
If you are a parent interested in helping your children to be the best they can be, then you should pick up a copy of this book. It is not a Christian book. It is a very humanistic book written by a social psychologist, but the principles in the book are consistent with the spiritual growth process I see described in scripture. This is a very readable book filled with stories to illustrate the conclusions that the author came to from her studies and experiments.
As an illustration, one of my favorite things in the book was the description of the Hard Thing Rule. This rule has 3 parts. The first part is that everyone in the family has do a hard thing.
A hard thing is something that requires daily deliberate practice. – Angela Duckworth in Grit
The second part is that quitting is allowed, but only when a natural stopping point is reached. In other words, you can’t quit in the middle of soccer season. The third part is that each person gets to pick their own hard thing. Writing this blog everyday is my current hard thing, but it is missing some elements that would make it more valuable for growth. Probably a better hard thing for me would be my exercise routine.
If you have children or grandchildren I would recommend this book.
Finally, I was just forwarded a YouTube clip of a speech by Lou Holtz that seems to fit very well with this topic. It isn’t very long, and I think it is worth watching. You can watch it here.
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