Standards of Excellence
In the Army, that didn’t work all the time. If I was the best at what I did, I was sent on more missions, gone more often. In the rear, if I strove to be the best, I was either seen as the goto guy, or a threat to someones insecurities. No real big deal there anyways.
In the real world, my expectations seem to work out well, however. There is rarely the requirement that I follow step by step instructions from the boss, but more that I just get the job done. When I can consistently get the job done twice as quick as any of my peers, it seems to draw kudos, except for my peers.
I was always taught to lead by example, and that’s been my intentions most of the time. If I am an example of how to do the right thing, I figure I’m being a service to everybody. Seems that sometimes it just seems like I’m rocking the boat by some…anyways, that’s not the point I started out with.
My point that I wanted to make was that I try to do the best, and now it’s in school. I have performance metrics that I set for myself and try to meet those standards. They’re usually standards that are something like, I will ace this class. Then when I miss a few points, I get pissed, try harder. If I make silly mistakes, I get annoyed at myself that I missed something so damn silly, try to figure out the circumstances of why I overlooked the obvious, and make sure not to do it again if I can help it. This semester, 12 hours taken, and I got a 94.5 average of all the classes. That’s not too bad. I could have done better though. That average could of been, and should have been, closer to a 98. Two seemingly simple mistakes cost me. And here I am being hard on myself.
This is where I come into the dilemma. I want my kids to excel. I want my kids to have a wide range of topics they are interested in, learn the importance of being as good as they possibly can be, and to set achievable standards, meet those standards, and fit them into goals. I want to teach them that they can do anything they want to that they’re happy with, but also show them that contrary to our parents teaching, happiness can be gotten with money. To get that, you have to work your ass off to make goals realities, and to not slow down until you’re relatively sure that you won’t be knocked back down the ladder, having to start over. I have to try and teach them this, and press them to be the best they can be, but I know that I can’t push them like I push myself. I have to show them that mistakes can and will be made, and those are learning experiences, not anything else. I have to learn to balance this.
I see the news where parents get into fights because of their kids sports play, and I think, what standards to those parents have on their kids? Are they single focused goals that have only one path, and that’s why they push them so hard? Is the parent only banking on their son’s ability to play football for his whole future, and that’s what causes the stress? Would that stress be more evenly applied if they pushed their kids down multiple paths going in the same direction? In physics, this works out, just means that the object can’t move down all the paths as fast as if the same pressure was applied down one channel. It doesn’t mean that there is any less pressure though, overall.
I don’t know. Someday, when the kids are all out of the house, and on with their own lives, maybe I’ll have all these problems worked out :)
