Amplify Your Awesome™ with Yong Pratt

Hello and welcome back to the raising smart kid 2.0 podcast. I'm so glad you tuned in for today's episode because I feel it's probably one of the most important ones that we've done in our almost one hundred episodes before we get to that if I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you yet. My name is Yaşam Prax and I'm the host of raising smart kids 2.0 podcasts. More importantly, I'm a mom of two daughters a wife and have. Had the privilege working with thousands of students along with their parents. In my 17 years as a performing arts educator, I'm glad you tuned in today because you failed.

Now for some people, those two words can be completely devastating which is really unfortunate because it's through our failures that we learn more. Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb is said to have failed 1000 times. However, he didn't see those 1000 failures as failures. He says the fastest way to succeed is to double your failure rate.

In our society failure definitely is seen as a negative quality.

But in my 17 years as a business owner and my 14 years as a mom and 20 years as an educator failure is something that you need to instill in our kids as a positive quality and water. My favorite things to think about when it comes to failure is a little clip in the movie. Meet the Robinsons where the main character is devastated because something he created doesn't work. Louis is distraught. Meanwhile, the family around him start hooting and hollering and they are getting out the confetti cannons and celebrating his failure because of what they know is that the more times you fail the closer you are. At achieving that success. Over on this show notes page 4 of this podcast I'll include that clip from Meet the Robinsons because it really accurately depicts how we need to be able to see failure.

When my oldest was in kindergarten she came home and she was so excited because she had earned an eraser or something so some small trinkets from her classroom teacher. When I inquired about how she had earned this coveted trinket she said, "Mommy I didn't make any mistakes on my schoolwork and there were no eraser marks so I got a prize!"

And I thought oh man if kids are taught to not make mistakes we're not allowed to make mistakes and those mistakes aren't celebrated as part of the learning process. Wow. Our kids are going to have a hard time dealing with things as they get older enough to go into the world on their own. So today I want you to think about this. I have one of my favorite quotes and it's by Walt Disney in this quote he talks about not spending too much time looking back. Or in other words not spending too much mental capacity thinking about what you might construe as a failure because each of those mistakes leads to the success and leads you to where you need to be.

So he says around here, however, we don't look back for very long. We keep moving forward opening new doors and doing new things. It has. We are curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. And for me personally and in my 17-year-old business that couldn't be more true. When I opened our doors 17 years ago I did so with wanting to share my love of dance with my community as I progressed through my business and my kids desired to learn something new.

My oldest wanted to learn the drums and then she wanted to learn karate so it was my responsibility as a mom and really as a creator to make those opportunities available for her. So rather than just teach dance we offered more opportunities for more families to come together and enjoy all of our programs under one roof. Saving them time and money and really the hassle of having to take multiple kids to multiple places around town at the same time. And now as we round out 2017 heading into 2018 we're opening new doors here at the academy and here on the podcast as well. We're going to dive with both feet into the deep end and introduce ways to equip kids to fund their own future.

Now what that looks like is we're going to be offering courses on wine for kids across the U.S. and maybe even the world for them to learn marketable skills such as this putting together a podcast helping somebody else put out a podcast. Creating websites making videos taking photos all things that kids can do right now no matter what their age no matter what anyone else thinks. Kids are so capable and we just need to get out of their way and let them explore those things that light them up let them explore those things where their inner creator comes out and is magnified because they are loving what they are doing. And to end this podcast I want to close with another of my favorite Disney quotes and this has to do with kids and their potential and their ability to create their own Brighter Futures which is what we're helping you do here at the podcast and at the academy in 2013.

And here is the quote,

Yes.

And as we head into the future a future where 65 percent of the jobs today won't exist when our kids are adults we need to equip them with skills to create their own opportunities create their own brighter future and create ways for them to fund those dreams are you with me head over to Elco Arts Academy.

The interim Facebook page for the podcast and in 2018 we're going to roll out a new name to a new mission and a new way of connecting and impacting our kids in a bigger way. OK, my friends, I will catch you very soon. I wish you a very happy rest of your day. And here is to equipping kids to create their own brighter futures.

Cheers. Thanks for tuning in to the raising smart kids 2.0 podcast

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-X78sx6gPg&w=560&h=315