As she’s making dinner, Mary gets startled by the slamming of the front door. Soon after her son shows up in the kitchen, furious and teary-eyed. “What’s wrong Brian?”, Mary asks. “The coach is making me run the 110-meter hurdles in the next track meet. I’m terrible at hurdles, I always either knock them down or fall flat on my face. Imagine falling flat on my face on every hurdle in front of all those people, and with my team counting on me. This isn’t fair! Mom, promise me you’ll talk to the coach to get me out of it.”, Brian responds. “Don’t worry Brian, I’ll give that man a piece of my mind and make sure he gets you out of it.” is what Mary wanted to respond but she held back. “Let me talk to your dad about it when he gets home.”, is what she actually responded. When Fred got home, Mary and him went to the bedroom to discuss Brian’s dilemma. After much discussion they decided it was best for Brian to take this up with his coach and that if the coach wanted him to run the 110-meter hurdles then he should go through with it. As right as the decision felt, Mary hated every minute of it. Brian was upset when they told him what they had decided and even more upset when he got home the next day as the coach told him that they really needed him to run it. “I could call in sick, people do it all the time.”, Brian said as he stared at the floor with an angry and thoughtful expression, “I’m not going to win, I’ll be lucky if I clear one hurdle.”. Mary goes deep in thought and after a short pause responds, “What if your goal is not to win, what if it’s just to show up.”. “What do you mean just show up?” Brian responds puzzled. “I mean just show up and complete the race, regardless of what place you finish. Make your goal to show up and be brave.” Mary responds.

It’s the day of the meet and Brian is lining up to start his race. The race starts and Brian hits the first few hurdles, then falls on the last two as his legs get worn out. But each time he gets back up and eventually completes the race, finishing last. After the race Brian comes over to his parents, and holding back tears he says, “That was pathetic and painful. But I did it mom, I showed up, I was brave.”. Mary can’t hold back the tears and gives his son a big hug.

There are two important points to take away from this story. I’ll start with the simpler one which is setting expectations. We often set our expectations so high that it keeps us from doing it all together. Sometimes just showing up is enough, sometimes just showing up is alone a big challenge. You’ll find that you’ll accomplish more in life if you start by deciding to just show up.

On the second point, as parents we have a natural instinct to protect our kids. Unfortunately we often rob them of growing and developing opportunities by doing so. Brian was proud of himself for showing up and being brave, even if the race turned out as bad as he expected. If Mary would have stepped in and gotten him out of the race, she would have kept him from this experience. As much as we as parents hate to see our kids struggle, often times we have to resist the urge to be their savior. By allowing them to work through those struggles, by giving them the courage to be vulnerable, we are giving them a much greater gift than saving them from a bad experience, we are proving them with a better chance for a successful life!

Note: This story was inspired by a similar story found in the book Daring Greatly by Brene Brown. This is one of my top ten books and will be sharing more stories about it. I highly recommend this book.