Today’s kids live in a highly competitive world where parents do everything in their ability to help them succeed in life. This constant striving for excellence is not just limited to academics but also includes a whole lot of other activities like dancing, sports, music etc. All of this leads to a pressure cooker type environment for kids where they start looking at failure as a constant judgement on their abilities. As a result of this, kids start fearing failure. The results of a recently conducted survey were quite telling and revealed that a staggering 67% of the kids feared the consequences of failure.
Parents today denounce failure, society stigmatizes failure and as a result, the kids dread failure. However, children fail as often (if not more) than they succeed. Coping with failure is a key life skill that kids need to build With this context in mind, Surf excel kicked off its #HaarkoHarao campaign to change the perspective on failure to a learning experience.
To kickstart the same, Surf excel hosted a launch event with inspiring stories on defeating failure from Sourav Ganguly, former Indian cricketer and one of the most successful Indian captains and Pullela Gopichand, former badminton player turned India’s most successful badminton coach. The event also had Twinkle Khanna, film actress and now renowned author who spoke about her perspective on failure as a parent of two kids. The event also featured Mrs. Preeti Kumar, Headmistress Poddar School and Dr. Harish Shetty, one of India’s most renowned Psychiatrist in the field of child development.
This was followed by a panel discussion where the panelists brought in their diverse experiences to bring forth the current societal view on failure and what it means for kids as they grow up. The discussion also had some interesting thoughts on what we can do as parents and a society at large to change this current perspective on failure from a judgement on a kid’s abilities to an experience that kids learn from. The panelists vision of the future was a pressure free and happier environment for kids to grow up in.
Speaking on the occasion Twinkle Khanna Said that "SheFailed As An Actor After Spending eight Years in Bollywood I realised that I failed Spectacularly in Bollywood but though it is disheartening but it did not shattered me due to my upbringing that I realised that having failed at something doesn't make me a failure "
When I was in 12th grade I wanted to become a Chartered Accountant but since my parents were in entertainment they were keen that I join in which I did "
“It (the failure) meant that I now had the opportunity to try and succeed at million other things. I moved on and here I am today. Life is like flying a kite. Sometimes you have to hold on tight, sometimes loose. Sometimes your kite can fly effortlessly and at other times no matter what you do, you cannot control it.
Saurav Ganguly and P.Gopichand also shared their experiences with failure and how they did overcome it
The key takeaways from the discussion were as follows:
§ We live in a society that places a heavy emphasis on performance and achievement, so parents have high expectations from their children. This in turn translates into a fear of failure with kids.
§ Failure is a critical step in the learning journey. When we look back as adults, a lot of our character defining moments come from failure. We understand this with the benefit of hindsight but at that time it is important to not give up.
§ Learning to cope with failure helps kids develop key life skills that they need as they grow up. These include resilience, grit or learning something new about themselves which eventually enable success.
§ As parents and as a society, we can all contribute to creating a better environment for kids to grow up in by changing our perspective on failure to a learning experience
§ There is no failure, only learning
A short social experiment conducted by Surf Excel on this campaign: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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