We watch our children try. When they fail, we help pick up the pieces. We encourage them to try again. We cheer them on. We share their joys and their sorrows. It is one of the toughest jobs of being a parent. And, perhaps the most rewarding.
As adults, sometimes we need the same thing. However, when we fail, it sometimes feels like the end of the road. The end of an opportunity.
Change is hard. Overwhelming. Scary. If we are lucky, we have a spouse or friend who can help us pick up those pieces. But, it feels different. We know too much. We are not as naive and sometimes not quite as hopeful.
As adults, how do we ask for a do over? Can we change course in our life – with our career, our homes, our relationships – and not have to apologize?
Growth mindset is one of the current buzzwords that we are encouraged to lean into as we guide our children to a goal of healthy and purposeful adulthood.
But when is the last time you’ve given yourself some grace in your growth? Indeed, our success as adults does depend on our time, effort, and I also believe in our ability to change, change, try and try again.
All of this hit me as I walked into my foyer to this array of shoes. Just over a year ago, this wouldn’t have been possible. A different job and a different home made circumstances well…different.There wasn’t room to welcome all these shoes into our home. I had made (with my spouse in support) decisions that reduced the size of our home including tightening up finances for the future and current educational investment (college is on our horizon).
I uprooted our family from our home of twenty years and moved to the next town over. Settling into our new plans, my husband and I realized this wasn’t the road we wanted to travel down, but it felt more like a detour and we needed to find our way back home.
As an adult, how do you get back on track? How do you undo things you worked hard to make happen? How do you lean into the uncomfortable to find where comfortable may be? How do you admit that the choices you have made may have not been the best choices?
Ah yes, that growth mindset.
Though I am grown and flown, I’m not done baking.
And isn’t that a grand feeling?
To admit that we are perfectly imperfect?
To have the ability to reprioritize and – not only that – make hard changes ask for a do over?
So, thirteen months later, I smile as I see this cluster of shoes in my foyer.
And, of course, it is not about shoes, it’s the reminder to me that I can make change. There is value in learning and growing, even as an adult. Change is hard, but sometimes needed.
And, even when we leave home, we can find a way back