I see it. I see it in my students... I watch it destroy their good ideas and restrain them from completing tasks. I watch it chain them to their current spot so that they cannot take the next creative step. I may not see it in all of them, but some of them create intense pressure to be perfect... to get perfect grades, to be the top in the class, to be better than the person sitting next to them. They have to restart projects and papers because they made one small mistake. There is no end to the lengths they will go to completely erase any failure so that only the good, the perfect is shown. In their minds, anything less than perfect is FAILURE. Competition abounds and they have to be the winner. So how do we help them understand that the only true failure is when you give up? How do we teach them that mistakes are what makes us stronger and that "failure" and mistakes help us grow and learn? Can they understand that mistakes are the catalyst to a new idea or a better way? How do we help take away the intense pressure that they feel to be perfect? This blogger is a psychotherapist in private practice in Eugene, Oregon who specializes in counseling gifted adults and consulting with parents of gifted children. She is also an adjunct instructor at the University of Oregon. Below is a paragraph from her article, "The Pressure to be Smart at All Times." Pressure to: live up to the label, always get the best grades, know everything before you learn it, be the winner, always do your best, find all learning to be easy, not disappoint anyone, do the right thing, always be kind, solve all problems, know all the answers first, attend an elite university, win a Nobel prize, be clever and funny, make no mistakes (be perfect), never fail (did I mention, be perfect?), save the world. That’s a lot of pressure. A LOT of pressure.
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February 2020
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