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Your 2020 A-Game
A Mixture of 50 Smart Strategies to Be Happier and More Successful in the Next Decade
1. Be intentional with your kids
Today, I took my daughter to ballet, and she wouldn’t go in. She sat down and refused to put on her ballet shoes. I was “this close” to pushing her to do it — the sometimes-we-have-to-even-when-we-don’t-feel-like-it speech was on the tip of my tongue. I surprised myself by asking her why she didn’t want to go instead. She replied, “You know how you always tell me to listen to my body, Mama? Today, my body feels too tired. I need a little break.”
She’s 4. Who am I to push her to do a 75-minute ballet, tap, tumbling class every Friday? She wasn’t feeling it today, so I didn’t make her go.
It could have gone another way. I already pre-paid the month. We already missed the previous week. Also, I have a standing conference call on Fridays. It’s my catch-up day, so her not going meant I would miss out on 75 minutes of planned productivity.
I could have demanded she did it, handed her to the instructor, and left, and she would have been fine. But what would she learn if I pushed, demanded, or reinforced the message that sometimes we have to do something, even when we don’t want to?
