Recently my daughter completed this lego set. Well whats the big deal. It is just a lego set. The greater significance of the set is less important than the story of how it was built. Allow me to elaborate. So last year she was gifted this set for her birthday. She loves anything Disney related, especially if it has to do with the fairy tale princesses. The set itself is huge, and runs approximately 5000 pieces and is rated 18+. So obviously for a new 8 year old, this was a fantasy come true, but the reality started setting in when she opened the box and realized this was way out of her league.
For several months, the box had laid unopened in the corner of her room, an eyesore of a reminder too big for her to tackle. Gently nudging by her parents finally yielded fruit when the box was at least opened and the packets were divided. 60+ packets to build with 5 manuals of instructions to follow, can be the tip of the mountain for which she had been asked to climb.
On numerous occasions during the early building process she freaked out and postponed her “lego building “ sessions. Fear, doubt, and the scale of the model got to her on many an occasion. She was confident in building smaller, though equally complex structures like lego friends but this beast may have been too much to chew. I was supremely confident that she could handle the pressure, so I did what any good dad does, I pushed a little each day. She would make progress, then regress. Deflated that her brother ( a master lego builder himself ) was not available to save her.
SO I tried a new strategy. I gave her music to play in the background and I sat in her room, more for moral support. ( let us be clear, my legendary lego skills are out of date and if they ever existed they were at least 30 years old. I never followed instructions, I created my own freely imagined structures. )
Packet by packet she conquered. I even played games with her eg you have 24 packets left, if you do 3 a Day you would be in a week, if you do 2 a day 12 days and if you do one a day then 24 days. And so like this I negotiated ( or bribed) her to keep going. Then suddenly something snapped in her.
She got more and more confident with her skills and proceeded to speed up on her own. She started doing the mental math of how much was left on her own. She did not need me to nudge her. She was now trying to get 2 packets a day done and then on the last day she says “I have only 4 packets to go, the last one is where I am ending anyway and I have to start with this packet in my hand so that leaves me with only 2 packets, I can do this, I am going to get it done tonight.” And boom just like that my little daughter followed my mathematical skills that I use when I fool myself during endurance events to get to the finish line.
She was done. And so proud of herself for completing this set, she was bursting with happiness. But I think it was more than just the cathartic feeling of completing this project that loomed in her room, but more of the feeling of confidence and realization of overcoming her fears has its rewards. Isn’t this a lesson for each of us? We know that hard work pays off, but only once we overcome those mindsets that hold us back and keep us chained to the prelaunch phase. Most of the time the reason why our dreams do not take flight is because of fear of risk.
It is not that the journey of a 1000 miles begins with one step, but the FIRST step begins with the letting go of a 1000 fears.
I am not sure what her next big confidence boosting challenge will be, but I do know that suddenly now she is asking for harder tasks in her sports and musical learnings.
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i love you
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