Adventure. Doesn’t that sound exotic? To us the word conveys a sense of travel with new sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and experiences. To us the notion of adventure has been to answer the call of travel. Since Lis grew up in Sweden, we traveled to visit her parents every other year and took the opportunity to explore other countries. The stresses of travel can be pretty taxing on old and young alike, so having a family culture of adventure-mindedness sets everyone’s attitudes at optimal.
Because of travel, our children were expected to participate in our life, not us cater to their childlike tendencies. We desired that they be good life companions who endured the discomforts of travel, the newness of different tastes, and the sensational sights and sounds of different cultures – all at a very young age. In essence, we wanted them to be open-minded with a positive expectation to the variety of life.
The key here is to be open-minded with optimistic expectation. To encourage that mindset we coined the phrase “You gotta try before you cry.” The phrase over time became the family motto when confronting something new that the kids might consider unappealing. “In other words, you’re not getting out of eating this without giving it a hearty go. You might as well set your mind to liking it.” With practice, the kids would not only eat that questionable morsel, but do so with positive expectation. And that was a huge difference-maker. They didn’t have to eat the whole thing, but they had to try their darndest to like it.
Isn’t that what you want from your children? You want them to look forward to their life with eager anticipation where every new experience is going to add to the richness and enjoyment of life. Just because they didn’t end up liking it the first time, it’s ok. They’ll get another shot at it at some future point. “Gotta try before you cry” isn’t a one and done idea. No, they’ll get to try again next time because at that point they’ll have grown, life will have changed, and the experience will be different. “Let’s give the adventure another go.” It’s important that their little personalities don’t get cemented around the pattern of “I don’t like that” which could end up defining them as fearful and risk averse.
The result: We are pleased to say our kids are not afraid of life. In their early adult life, the adventure-minded perspectives live in the next generation. They’re open to new foods, of course, but also new people, new ideas, new life scenarios. The key here isn’t in just reading about how wonderful we think our kids are, but really assessing the difference between an open spirit and a closed one. You see, life is an adventure where kids might not like the outcome the first time; but must be encouraged to give it a hearty open-minded effort before they prematurely whine about it…and then try again. Design your family’s culture to try with an open spirit.
To your family’s Adventure-minded well-being.
Dave and Lis Marr