when our goals colide

When my kids were small I read a story of a mom who was growing her garden with her children. The rows were crocked, the plants were not evenly spaced and the garden was far from a picture-perfect beautiful space. When a helpful neighbor pointed out the imperfections and offered help, the mom, knowing her goals replied, I'm growing children, not a garden. If her goal was to have a perfect space in her yard, she could have done the work herself without "helpful little hands" learning and stumbling and being imperfect. We know that practice makes perfect. We may respect and be wowed by the perfect garden, but if our goal is mentoring, growing people, we need to be satisfied with imperfect, stumbling, "good tries". Grabbing the shovel to make straight lines would discouage and dishearten little hearts but cheering on the attempt at MAKING a line would encourge more attempts and each attempt would show improvement.

If my goal is a prize winning garden, I want only experienced, experts in to help me. Chances are I can't MENTOR and expect to win the BEST garden prize at the same time. So I need to choose my goal AHEAD OF TIME. Mentoring means being satisfied showing small steps forward and cheering for the imperfect. To mix my goals is to frustrate myself and those that I choose to mentor .